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.
Our Plan
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.
Life Happens
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.
Why are we doing this?
Life is short, and the world is big. Join us on the journey!
