Unique digital nomad travel adventures from around the U.S.
I recently had a very close encounter with a pickpocket in Lisbon, Portugal. Thankfully, nothing was stolen. But I learned and relearned a few important lessons that I wanted to share here with you. My hope is that my story and a few tips on …
Twelve South’s Airfly Pro Bluetooth transmitter is a handy little device for being cord-free on a plane. The device plugs into the auxiliary jack receiver near the monitor and then sends a bluetooth signal to your headphones of choice. Note: This post may contain affiliate …
There are a lot of towns in Montana that start with the letter B. After spending a couple weeks in Butte, I decided a road trip to Bozeman was in order. Here are the highlights from that hundred mile, two-and-a-half hour Montana road trip.
The first destination after leaving Butte is the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. This state park was a former national monument before it was turned over to Montana in 1937. It has one of the largest limestone caverns in the northwest, which can only be explored by one of two tours. I opted for the shorter of the two (being as I don’t love being underground) and was really impressed by the tourguide and the caverns. On the Paradise Tour I only had to walk down a straight path, very reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, which then opened up into a large room full of stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. The tour guide taught us a trick that I might remember: stalactites hold tight to the ceiling and you might trip on a stalagmite.
A Montana road trip should definitely include outdoor time and a hot springs will ease your stress from driving. After the caverns I headed south to Norris Hot Springs. I love a good natural hot springs and was happy to visit one of the many in Montana. Norris Hot Springs is an interesting blend of hot springs, organic food, and music. The water itself is in a wooden encased pool that is 40×40 feet. I would guess there were about 25 people hanging out in the pool, most with drinks in their hands and yummy looking food in front of them. I only lasted for about 30 minutes but I can see if you had food, drink, and live music playing that this would be a really unique way to spend an evening under the stars.
The final stop on the road trip is Bozeman, about a 45 minute drive through very pretty country with not a lot of people around. (I guess that about summarizes Montana as a whole, though.) Bozeman surprised me; I hadn’t realized just how hip it was going to be. Main Street is thriving with boutiques, shops, and restaurants. In 2020, Bozeman city limits had 53,000 people, but it has seen a lot of growth in the last few years. Montana State University makes it feel like a college town, albeit one that is more outdoorsy than most.
After some retail therapy on Main Street I attended a concert at the very cool Live from the Divide music venue. I didn’t know the artist, but I liked his sound and the intimate venue (50 tickets sold, everyone sits on benches) was cool enough to go to even if you didn’t like the music. I overnighted in a hotel and the next day visited the highly touted restaurant: Storm Castle Cafe for a breakfast of eggs and enchiladas and finished out my trip with a visit to the interesting Museum of the Rockies.
A Montana road trip is a great way to see this beautiful state. Butte to Bozeman is not very far geographically but quite a lot happens in those few miles. If you find yourself in this corner of Montana, I highly recommend hopping off the interstate. You can explore, shop, eat, and listen to live music.
R and I spent six weeks living, working and playing in Savannah, Georgia, in January and February. It really was a dream. Here are our trip recommendations for Savannah if you will be traveling there during the winter season: Trees, squares, architecture and food Savannah, …
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If your Instagram feed looks anything like mine, you will have seen an ad for Suav shoes. I must confess the ads got me and I bought a pair. Below is my review of the Suav Zilker shoes for travel, in case you also are …
Wondering how to plan your fun as a digital nomad? We have a simple but effective approach. Hint: it starts with a pen and piece of paper. That’s right. We recommend you go old school here and write down your list of things to see and do. That way you can hang it on the fridge or put it on the coffee table. Having it in plain sight means you will be more likely to make stuff happen.
Whenever R and I show up to a new location to stay and play, we start a list. The research begins before we arrive, but the list is what keeps us on track and helps us plan our adventures. We like to break our list into categories like shopping, food and activities, but do whatever works best for you. We also add to the list as we go along if we read about something fun or get a good recommendation from a local.
I have found that periodically looking at the list and making a plan to check something off is one the best ways to experience a new location. It’s also a flexible approach to making plans since nothing on the list is set in stone, at least not until we make reservations.
Of course, not everything on the list can be done at all hours of every day. You may have to make reservations or adjust your work schedule. We like to take advantage of our weekends to explore nearby areas and that usually requires some extra planning. But planning is part of the fun in my opinion.
We knew we wanted to visit St. Augustine, Florida, during a recent six-month digital nomad stint in Savannah, Georgia. Given that St. Augustine is about three hours from Savannah, we had to find the right weekend to make the trip south. We needed to rent a car, find a hotel room and make some plans. It was not a heavy lift, but it required some coordination. But that coordination was totally worth it to check St. Augustine off our bucket lists.
The best part of the list is checking things off. I love looking at the list towards the end of a trip to see everything we have gotten to see and do…and eat. We sometimes have to make a push to get everything checked off, but we’re committed like that.
If you are staying and playing as a digital nomad in a new location, I suggest you write down your fun and keep it somewhere where you can see it often. Then get busy having fun and checking things off.
Charleston, South Carolina, one of the best cities in the south brimming with American history, charming boutiques, and tasty restaurants. President’s Day Weekend in Charleston is a terrific time of the year to visit. Background I have been fortunate enough to spend President’s Day Weekend in …
Weekend getaways and microtrips are a great way to do more exploring. We recently enjoyed a quick weekend getaway to the compact and historic city of St. Augustine, Florida. Below are our recommendations from that trip. Spending six weeks living and working remotely in Savannah, …
Last January and February B and I headed to the southern coast for the second half of winter. We both love Idaho winters: skiing, snowshoeing, and watching fluffy white flakes of snow fall while bundled up in a blanket drinking hot chocolate. However, after a couple months of winter wonderland…we’re over it. 60 miles of white sand beach as a digital nomad in Myrtle Beach, SC, was an excellent trade to 42 days of white snow on the roads.
We landed on Myrtle Beach because of an affordable rental, beach access, and proximity to a decent sized city. We learned from our experience in Pass Christian, Mississippi, that all are needed to sustain a comfortable digital nomad journey.
Myrtle Beach, SC, is primarily known as a spring break party town. My first spring break trip was when I was 9 and we traveled down to Myrtle Beach from North Carolina. The party hasn’t changed much in the ensuing 30 years. However, January and February in Myrtle Beach are a much quieter affair, mainly full of retirees enjoying their high-rise condos with views of pelicans flying up and down the coastline.
With its proximity to other fun coastal towns and daily walks on the beach, it was glorious to spend the dog days of winter being a digital nomad in Myrtle Beach.
I’m going to talk a lot about the beach in this post. That’s because it is really nice. I would wake up at 8 (6:00 a.m. in my work time zone) and take a leisurely stroll up and down the coast most mornings. Sometimes the tide was high and the beach was more crowded with walking groups of senior citizens. Sometimes the tide was low and birds out-populated people. Every time I was able to breathe the sea air and look at what the ocean churned up over night in the form of seashells and shark teeth. Speaking of shark teeth, shark teeth hunting is a thing. B became a black belt in it and amassed a very impressive collection of the black fossilized teeth from sharks of yesteryear.
Myrtle Beach also has a robust boardwalk area with shops, restaurants, and bars. There are a couple of mini-amusement parks with carnival rides. These were quiet during the off-season we were there, but I imagine lots of squealing kids riding them once the crowds showed up.
In all my travels, I have never seen a larger collection of miniature golf courses in a square radius as what there are in Myrtle Beach. These are not the type we have back home either, these courses are varied and intricate and have multiple stories. I enjoy putt-putt, but am not passionate about the sport, so we only tried out one course. We were quite impressed with the thematic course and have no doubt the other courses were just as robust.
The main concentration of activities in Myrtle Beach are centered around the boardwalk and the ocean, but the city has branched out in a couple of areas that have fun shopping, eating/drinking, and entertainment. The Market Common was cute, with a communal feel with houses and retail mixed together. Broadway at the Beach seems to be a competitor with the boardwalk area for entertainment. It is (ironically) a couple miles from the beach.
I’ll bring up shark tooth hunting again in the not-so-obvious things to do because it is not obvious what people are doing when they are looking for these little fossils. Some people have tools (some manufactured and some modified) that are essentially poles with a mesh bag at the end. They scoop up the sand and sift the teeth from the chaff as it were.
As a tourist town, Myrtle Beach has plenty of accommodations. We ended up in a townhouse complex two blocks from the beach. This rental was through VRBO and was $2900 for 6 weeks for a two bedroom, two bath home. It was conveniently located one block from a Walmart grocery store. This is super important if you don’t have wheels or public transport! When working while traveling you’ll need to make sure the internet is reliable. Read reviews to make sure this is in working order before you make a reservation.
There were many restaurants that were closed when we first arrived in town, but as we got closer to the Spring Break time, the town was slowly awaking. As we were on the coast, B of course made sure to get some seafood. If you enjoy carnival/fair food, you will also finds lots of options.
Sadly for B, the ice cream shop that sold Swedish Fish flavored ice cream was closed for the season, but I bet she would highly recommend Rita’s if they are open.
The shopping up and down the boardwalk area is not great, unless you are in the market for kitschy coastal chotchkes. However, there were some nice regional stores at the Market Common and at Myrtle Beach’s mall.
Public transportation exists in Myrtle Beach. This stretch of coastline a couple of miles surrounding Myrtle Beach is called the Strand. However, the Strand’s public transport consists of one bus that makes a slow loop around the area. Unlike some bigger cities, there was no bike share system. Instead, I bought a used bike my first weekend in town and then sold it before I left. I was able to cruise around for about $20 net. Our VRBO was conveniently located within walking distance of the airport. This allowed us to rent a car easily, which we did whenever we felt like going on an adventure.
Myrtle Beach is close to a lot of cool places to explore.
I was able to check off another national park by driving 2.5 hours to Congaree National Park in the middle of South Carolina. This national park was slightly flooded when I visited but I was able to see the beautiful hardwood forest on the Boardwalk Trail. I learned afterwards that a couple of weeks later the mosquitoes emerged for the year, but my time at the park was lovely.
B and I wanted to check out what was to the north of Myrtle Beach, so we cruised about 1.5 hours north to Wilmington, North Carolina. This town is really cute. It is now famous for being the setting of tons of shows/movies such as Dawson’s Creek. We arrived and ate some very tasty food and walked around the boutiques that are sprinkled throughout the town. The highlight of the trip was definitely visiting the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden. This area of the Atlantic coast is the only place where Venus Fly Traps are natively found. We saw several of them and other carnivorous plants on a little walking trail.
Charleston, South Carolina, is two hours south of Myrtle Beach. This wonderful southern city could fill several posts. If you haven’t been there before, go. We spent the weekend eating, shopping, and my favorite: soaking up all the history of this incredibly historic town. We almost missed the boat (literally) when we got to town and boarded a ferry tour to Ft. Sumter. This fort is famously the place where the Civil War started. We also spent a sobering hour at a The Old Slave Mart Museum This spot was formerly a slave market and the small museum was powerful and thought provoking. We made sure to go take in some live music at the revived Riviera Theater. In between all these activities we walked through the streets and marveled at houses that dated back to the Revolutionary War.
We were able to explore much of the area around Myrtle Beach by renting cars and driving. If our VRBO was further from the airport we would have spent a lot of money shuttling back and forth to the car rental at the airport. In bigger cities, there are more central options for car rental facilities that aren’t at the airport. If you plan on renting cars a lot, you should think about how much of a hassle it will be to get to the car rental facility.
I knew Myrtle Beach as a Spring Break party town. What I didn’t realize was how many retirees there are. I loved seeing all the older folks in walking groups strutting up and down the beach. It made me really want to be retired.
B and I were really pleased with our mid-winter getaway. The weather in the South can be oppressive, so going in winter is really the only time we would be comfortable. While we can’t really be called snowbirds, since we were working while we ventured south for the winter, I can see the appeal of this migratory lifestyle. Being a digital nomad in Myrtle Beach provided a terrific beach to walk on and a central location to visit other areas in this region.
Why work and travel in Omaha, Nebraska? I have three reasons for you: midwest nice (it’s a real thing), tasty food (except for something awful called a Runza) and sports (I have never seen volleyball fans like I saw in Nebraska). But wait…there’s more! R …