Because life is short & the world is big
The Messy Suitcase travel blog offers a revolutionary retirement option, through travel and new experiences that allow us to constantly grow and learn. We hope that by sharing our creative alternative, we’ll inspire you to be more adventurous in your later stage of life!
Bob Greenawalt and Lisa Hamm-Greenawalt have reinvented retirement. We left Colorado in 2018, packed up our Tacoma Tacoma with two bikes, a few suitcases, three musical instruments, and three cats, and hit the road to explore this planet. First, we traveled around Europe, then visited family and friends in the USA. In January 2019, we headed to México! Tlaquepaque, Guadalajara, Leon, Guanajuato, la Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Cancun, Mexico City, Acapulco.
Open our minds and our hearts. Collect experiences instead of stuff. Live well with less. Walk more. Connect with our community.
We live for at least a month at a time in different places — mountains, villages, beach towns, cities — long enough to internalize the flow of life. We avoid high-crime areas, a common-sense strategy we would use anywhere we lived. We avoid expat havens and are working to learn Spanish.
We launched this blog and the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel. Lisa has written a couple of children’s books and is working on a third. Bob advocates for education back in Colorado, stilll our official residence.
Our travel has been derailed now and then by life, family and the Coronavirus, but we live life as an adventure, wherever we are! We spent winter 2022-23 in Puerto Rico (broken up by a month in Washington, DC, for Christmas near family), and fell in love with the island. In the end we decided to buy a house in Cabo Rojo, on the west coast, three blocks from the sea.
So now the plan is this: We call ourselves nomadic snowbirds. We spend summer at our family’s lake house in Vermont, and will spend winters in Puerto Rico. We will travel in the transitional seasons, or whenever we feel like it! One cat went to college with our son Gavin and another passed away, but Kaylee the orange Maine Coon — a.k.a. Esponjosita,which is Fluffy in Spanish — still lives with us, and enjoys housesitters when we are on the road.
Life is short, and the world is big. Join us on the journey!
Messy Suitcase visits Buda Castle in Budapest. Check out the amazing city panorama!
We went to a fascinating art exhibition called “To Be or Not To Be” the Clam-Gallas Palace in Prague’s Old Town. The first is called Hamlet, and the bust is a study of the contrast and struggle between life and death. The last image in this series has the names of the artists.
We just visited a Czech Orthodox cathedral where seven Czechoslavakian paratroopers hid after assassinating Himmler’s sadistic right-hand man, Reinhard Heydrich, in Operation Anthropoid in 1942. They resisted proudly but paid with their lives, as did their collaborators and many others. The attack set off a wave of far-reaching recriminations . I have never seen such …
The Messy Suitcase YouTube Channel shows you some of the fascinating people, places, and things we have encountered on our journeys. Please subscribe!
We started our journey accompanied by three cats who reluctantly became intrepid travelers, driving through the United States and Mexico, as well as by plane. One lives with us part-time when not at college with our son, one passed away, one still accompanies us.
In August 2019, Ellie went off to live with our son, Gavin, at Champlain College. She is his emotional support cat but often needs emotional support from Gavin! She spends summers and school breaks with us. Follow elliesmoit on Instagram.
We lost our dear cat Equinox, a.k.a. Noxy, on Feb. 8, 2020, in Mexico City. It turned out that he had heart disease. He is dearly missed, especially by his buddy Kaylee.
Kaylee is now the lone cat in our household, except when Ellie is visiting. She doesn’t like being cooped up in her carrier, but once she is strapped into the car, she sits like a little Buddha and watches the world.
To meet other cats we have encountered on our journey, continue here.
