Posts on A Divided Mind

AUGUST 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 20:55:36 -0700

AUGUST 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

August was our most inexpensive month yet! But that isn’t too surprising since it was also the first month in which we didn’t cross any state borders and stayed pretty still for the most part. We finished up helping and hanging out with friends in San Francisco and headed over the mountains toward Yosemite. We didn’t do any climbing there, but we plan to one day.

365 Days of Learning Spanish

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 19:43:51 -0700

On August 26th 2025 I watched my first Dreaming Spanish video. 57 minutes later I was hooked. I had spent the previous 1.5 years trying to learn Italian on my own and I wasn’t getting very far. I could barely understand anything I heard in Italian but my reading was starting to get decent. But since I wasn’t really seeing much progress I was getting frustrated with Italian. I remember thinking, I just wish I could watch a video of someone telling me they are cutting a carrot, while they are cutting a carrot. Somehow I had figured out that what I needed to learn a language was comprehensible input. I just didn’t know that’s what it was called, or that it was a genuine way to learn a language.

JUNE 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 20:55:36 -0700

JUNE 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

We finished up our time in the Badlands and headed toward Jackson, Wyoming to meet up with some friends from Ireland who just so happened to be vacationing there for the week. We were planning to head that way eventually but decided to head over to take advantage of seeing people we would otherwise never get to spend time with.

And while we were in Jackson, we also learned that some other friends from LA would be visiting their family in Montana and they were hoping we could head that way to spend some time with them.

MAY 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 14:30:56 -0600

MAY 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

May was a busy month. I had to be back home for a wedding and afterwards we pet-sat for the newlyweds while they were on their honeymoon so we had a place to stay while we were back home. We spent that time downsizing the storage unit from a 5x10 to a 5x5 and will now be saving about $60/month in storage fees. We also had dentist appointments and other adulting things to wrap up so it worked out in the end to spend so much time back home.

APRIL 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:24:28 -0600

APRIL 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

We spent the beginning of April making a beeline to Utah where we spent a couple of weeks exploring Arches and Canyon lands National Park, hiking and climbing. We spend the last half of the month in Grand Junction, CO rock climbing in an area that was suggested to us by someone we met in Moab.

LOCATIONS

4 Days driving from East Coast to Utah
14 Days in Moab, UT
12 Days in Grand Junction, CO

MARCH 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

Sun, 31 May 2026 13:55:26 -0600

MARCH 2026 EXPENSE REPORT

We set out on the road on March 4, 2026, but we didn’t go too far. While our eventual goal was to spend as much of our time on the west coast as possible, I had a family obligation that required my presence back home at the end of March so we decided to hang out in West Virginia near some areas we had rock climbed before.

HOW LONG IS A PIECE OF STRING?

Sat, 30 May 2026 13:48:59 -0600

I mentioned in my last (and first) post that I did a lot of research before setting off on this trip and a part and how hard it was to figure out how much money to save up for a year long road trip around the USA. But it actually makes sense now that I’m on the road.

How much does it cost?

Well, it’s the same answer to the question, how long is a piece of string? The answer is that it depends. It depends on so many things, but thankfully, a majority of them are in your control.

AM I BRAVE? OR JUST STUPID?

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:14:55 -0600

Bravery and Stupidity are the same thing, the outcome determines your label. ― Hayden Sixx

“Did I just make the biggest mistake of my life?”

This is something I have been asking myself every few days since my partner and I quit our jobs, sold almost everything we owned, stuck the rest in a small storage unit, rented out our houses, and hit the road in our 2014 Chevy Express van (extended edition).