The infrastructure for living is definitely not setup for nomads. Convention assumes a person has a home-base to conduct daily life such as banking, healthcare, connectivity, streaming favorite shows, etc. Good news is, unconventional solutions do exist for people like us and is ever evolving. Start digging around YouTube and there’s a plethora of advice on how to accomplish this. Here’s Part 1 of the behind-the-scenes look at how we chose to structure our nomad life operations…for now.

Within 3 months of each other, we had the honor of visiting both the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (A-Bomb Dome) in November 2025 and now, the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Both were devastating acts against humanity in the name of war. Both memorials exist not only as a deterrent (hopefully) but as a reminder. With the recent passing of the last survivor aboard the USS Arizona, Lou Conter; and the last generation of the A-bomb survivors dwindling, we can all be more intentional about remembering and keeping the stories alive. If you have the opportunity, we highly recommend visiting both memorials in your travels.

Kudos to our friend Michelle G. for finding the perfect article for us, “Homebase is the new home” by @theangrytherapist that describes our why, our purpose for coddiwompling!

Imagine waking up in an opulent Gilded Age luxury hotel room, but it’s actually your dormitory room in college. You walk down an ornately carved wooden staircase under a gold-leafed rotunda with goddess frescoes. Then you cross a lush courtyard with a sundial fountain to go have breakfast in the school’s dining hall, enveloped in Tiffany glass windows. This is the former Ponce de Leon hotel from 1888 turned Flagler College since 1968 in St. Augustine, Florida.

St. Augustine, Florida was founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and is recognized as the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States. It predates other major settlements like Jamestown (1607) and Plymouth (1620) by decades! It’s a charming walkable city full of history, great architecture, scenic views, art, and souvenirs.

Who knew?! Disney and The Villages aren’t the only destinations in Central Florida. This area is a hidden backcountry gem full of sprawling horse ranches, beautiful trees swathed in Spanish moss, and miles and miles of pristine natural spring water-fed rivers for manatees to hibernate in over the winter.

When we shared that we were planning to give away ALL of our belongings, sell the house and cars, and downsize to a backpack for all our worldly possessions; reactions were, “I could never do that”, and “That’s gotta be so emotional…so hard.”

We are coddiwomplers “who embrace the journey and the serendipitous discoveries along the way, rather than focusing on a fixed endpoint.”