About Us

  • We encourage all of our readers to practice social distancing, wear a mask, get vaccinated and stay safe while on the road.

Thanks for finding us!  We are Abi and Patti. When we’re not on the road, our home base is in the state of Maryland. Here’s a little about our story, and our travel adventures, while embracing full time retirement.

Beaune, France
Two Careers

In 2011, after 30+ years of living/working in San Jose, CA, we retired from our careers. We’ve each had two careers, Abi in local government and Patti in education, but the foundation career for both of us was hospitality. We owned and operated a French Restaurant and Patti worked in the hotel industry.

After retiring from our careers, and with our background in hospitality, we packed up and moved 15 miles north of the CA/OR border to Ashland, OR.  We bought an amazing 107-year-old house, which was (is) a Bed & Breakfast Inn, and took on the challenge of restoring the house and re-branding the B&B. It was a true labor of love and the lifestyle of an innkeeper is like no other.

Our beautiful B&B in Ashland, OR
Big Bold Changes

Although we had a 10-year plan for our life in Ashland, in 2014, just 3 1/2 years in to our lives as innkeepers, the universe presented us with an opportunity to make perhaps the biggest and boldest change to date.  We sold our inn, downsized our possessions even further and packed what was left into a 16′ big yellow truck we named, Big Betty, and drove across America; landing in the state of Maryland.  We’ve chosen Maryland as our home base primarily to live near our son, daughter-in-law and grandson.

Traveling Through Life

We’ve been traveling through life together for 40+ years embracing each new chapter and each new adventure with open minds.  Our travels have taken us to four continents – North America, Europe, Australia and Asia – and to date we’ve traveled to 19 countries.

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands.

Adventures Abroad

We walked 350 miles across Spain in 2015 following the Camino de Santiago, which was by far the most challenging – both mentally and physically – travel experience to date, but it was also all kinds of fabulous.  Four years later we walked 145 miles on the Camino Portuguese from Porto to Santiago.  There is no better way to experience a country than to walk across it.

There are so many more travel destinations awaiting us. We feel as if we’ve just scratched the European surface. Portugal is one of our favorite countries, so much so that we lived in Porto for three months and we maintain our Portuguese residency, as we spend our time between the US and Portugal. The City of Porto is our favorite city in the world… so far.

On the Road

We’ve driven across the United States a total of four times and each time we gleaned a great deal of insight. The US is massive and as such there are a multitude of dialects, cultures and beliefs to experience as one travels from state to state. To date, we’ve traveled to 47 of the 50 states.  We really need to get to those elusive three states, Alaska, Iowa and North Dakota.

And, that’s the gist of our story. Thanks again for finding us and we hope you’ll travel along as we continue to explore the world One Road at a Time, while continuing to redefine retirement.

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