Well, I’m finally writing about it. Or at least, part of it. To keep things manageable, this post will only outline the various strategies we use to maximize Jen’s time off. I’ll address how we’ve created my own time freedom in a future post.

I offer this post as a glimpse into how we approach maximizing her time off, knowing that the specifics apply to us alone. But hopefully they give you some insight into how we pull this off, and perhaps generate some inspiration for finding similar ways to increase your own travel opportunities.

Setting the stage

A job in the federal government comes with various benefits and detriments compared to one in the private sector. It’s a job that, at least historically, has offered quite a bit of employment security and job-task stability. Your position isn’t suddenly “redundant” after a merger, and your job description doesn’t radically change one day because your company pivoted to a new industry.

You qualify for a retirement pension¹, which is increasingly a rarity among our age cohort, and you get a generally good slate of holidays off and vacation time earnings, which rise along a set schedule of tenure.

The detriment is that the pay is much, much lower than you could command in the private sector², and there’s very little way for high performers to increase their salary. For instance, you can’t bonus your way to a higher paycheck like you could working in sales in the private sector, or go work for a competitor for a big pay bump. Indeed, in the federal government, your pay is tied to a set salary table that only changes by a literal Act of Congress³.

And the same goes for location and time freedom. If you’re a high performer in the private sector, you could spend your leverage to negotiate to work remotely⁴, or for additional annual leave, or even for a sabbatical as part of your compensation. Not so in government—you must comply with broad, established policies that rarely offer any wiggle room, even for the very best employees. This structure can be especially frustrating if you’re trying to travel as often as possible.

In general, the biggest limiting factor to our travel is Jen’s work schedule⁵. But that doesn’t stop us from pulling out all the stops and using every trick in the book to maximize what travel we can do given those limitations.

So let’s get to it.

As background, Jen has worked more than two decades in her position, opting to remain out of upper management (to the constant consternation and prodding of her bosses)⁶. Since virtually anyone with her impressive resumé would have sought a promotion ages ago, she now has the highest seniority in her office—which means that she gets priority for what time off she requests. If she requests to use vacation time on a certain date, it’s always granted.

In terms of PTO⁷, she now earns a total of 8 hours per pay period—the maximum allowed for a federal employee. That equals of total of 208 hours per calendar year, the rough equivalent of 26 days off. Not too shabby!⁸

PTO is for travel

First, we consider PTO hours to be sacred. They are not to be wasted on anything but travel. No “mental health” days off and no staycations here—that’s what regular two-day weekends are for. Every hour, and yes I mean every single hour of PTO, goes towards some sort of travel.

3-day weekends

Jen works a 9/80 “alternative work schedule,” meaning she works the standard 80 hours⁹ per pay period, but over the course of only 9 work days. That means working an extra hour every day, but with the important benefit that she gets every other Friday off. Those three-day weekends—two per month!—are absolutely key to our travel scheduling. They essentially add an extra weekend “holiday” 24 times each year. That’s a big deal!

And so we maximize the fuck out of them. In fact, we list out every single three-day weekend for the entire upcoming year in our travel database (along with all the normal paid holidays), and have a database view focused exclusively on as-yet-unscheduled 3-day weekend travel opportunities, just to make sure as many as possible get used effectively. An untraveled three-day weekend is a fail, as far as we’re concerned¹⁰. Every long trip we take incorporates one or more of these three-day weekends (yes, there’s a way to get them on back-to-back weekends, stay tuned for more on that).

So, how best to utilize those three-day weekends? Well, one strategy is adding an extra PTO day to the mix. Four days off feels like a much bigger break than just three days, especially if you fly out of state. Similarly, having three days off is much better than just two days—it opens up many more trip destinations, even if it’s just a simple camping trip. It’s uncanny how much of a difference that extra day makes.

Right after work

Another strategy is making sure that Jen leaves right after work, which can sometimes be as early as 3pm (again, stay tuned for a deeper explanation). By doing so, we can often get to our destination on Thursday night (even really late is worth it), which frees up an entire Friday for exploring our destination(s). She’ll then return as late as possible on Sunday to maximize the time we can spend on the trip.

Holidays

Of course, as a federal employee, my wife does not work any of the federal holidays—11 in total. As you’d expect, we try to plan travel to utilize every single one of these. It’s free time off. If we can pair a Friday off with a holiday weekend ¹¹? That’s golden.

Flex work schedule

Another schedule benefit that Jen gets is that she can “flex” hours during pay periods. For most of our time together, she’s been required to work between the hours of 9a to 3p, which are designated as “core” work hours¹². The underlying idea here is to offer some flexibility on start/end times to accommodate work needs while still requiring employees to be working during the main part of the day.

So if she wants time off during those six hours, she needs to take PTO or sick leave. But—and this is an important but—if she works at least 80 hours in her (two-week) pay period, she can flex how many hours she works each day (with a maximum of 12 hours worked per day, specifically 7a-7p).

That means that she only has to use 5 hours per day off (9a-3p, minus an hour for lunch) as vacation time, as long as she works a total of 80 hour per pay period. So, she can work 12-hour days (within that 7a-7p working window mentioned above) before and/or after a trip to “make up” for the time she spends traveling.

And boy oh boy do we make use of this tactic. For nearly every long trip we take, she works 12-hour days leading up to it¹³, and then again after, the actual trip dates. That adds some complications to our schedule, but it also allows us to “save” an extra 3 hours of vacation time per traditional 8-hour workday she takes off. And that’s a big deal!

Splitting pay periods

Keeping the above flex work schedule in mind, a related strategy we often use is ensuring that our trips are scheduled to overlap into 2 different pay periods. That allows her to work those 12-hour days on one side of the trip (in one pay period), and then work 12-hour days after the trip (in another pay period).

Yes, that sort of schedule is demanding and requires some forethought, but we have a plan for how to deal with that—and it substantially reduces the number of leave hours we need to use for a trip.

Doubling up Fridays

Sometimes Jen can change her normal “Friday off” during a particular pay period for work needs. That means that we can occasionally double-up consecutive Fridays off in adjacent pay periods, which can effectively add an extra day off to a trip.

Annual carryover

Jen can carry over a total of 240 hours of annual leave into a new calendar year¹⁴. If you end the calendar year with more than 240 hours of leave remaining, you lose it¹⁵. You can imagine that there’s absolutely zero chance in hell that we’re giving back unused leave to the government.

That said, we do our best to maintain a bank of 240 hours of leave,¹⁶ allowing us to take as long of a trip at any point in the year without worrying about whether she’s accumulated enough leave. Without this reserve, we wouldn’t have been able to take our 100-day adventure.

Time off bonuses

Because Jen has developed herself into a critically important employee in her office, she occasionally receives performance bonuses for exceptional work. When these (generally rare) award opportunities come around, they’re offered in terms of a cash bonus. But, sometimes these end up being offered as annual leave instead—which is what we prefer.

Admin leave

Another somewhat rare occurrence is the granting of “administrative leave.” This usually comes from DC headquarters and functions as general time off. It’s usually 8 hours of leave, but is—again—pretty rare.

Occasionally, admin leave¹⁷ is also granted by the President for Christmas Eve or the day after Christmas, when it falls on a day that can allow for a four-day weekend (and POTUS is feeling generous? Not sure why this happens, but we ain’t complaining). We can’t count on this, and unfortunately, it’s not announced until just a day or three beforehand, so it’s hard to plan around. We often stay in town for Christmas anyway, so we usually can’t take full advantage.

Work travel

Occasionally, Jen has to travel for work, most commonly for some training conference. It’s only happened a handful of times since we’ve been together, though I made quite infamous use of one of her extended trips¹⁸ (an unusual month-long detail to the DC office). On some of these trips, she could add an extra weekend on her own dime to visit some national park units or something, but it doesn’t provide any additional “time off” beyond the flights themselves being counted as “work time.”

Comp time

The exception is when that work travel has to happen on a day she normally has off (usually the weekend). In those cases, she can earn compensatory time off. Banking a comp day is worth the disruption to the weekend, as it allows us to add it to another trip, which we value far more than a normal weekend day off.

Changing duties

This section is about making the “space” to take frequent time off, as opposed to how to maximize the leave Jen earns. I mentioned above that she’s remained in the same job position for a very long time. While this is true, she has been able to shift her responsibilities and even her “duty station” in the last five years. This change in job duties, with her seniority, has resulted in a bit more flexibility.

Back in 2020, we came up with an idea for taking a mini-retirement, which eventually became our 100-day Adventure Around the World. That plan seemed like a long shot at the time, but that didn’t stop us from starting to save money, reduce expenses, and make the moves necessary to increase the probability of pulling it off.

One of those moves was focused on shifting Jen’s job duties in a way that would make her absence a bit easier for her boss and coworkers when we traveled. By shifting from a set of “core” duties that needs to be completed every single day (meaning she’d need someone to cover that task anytime she was out of the office), she shifted towards a position focused far more on training and special projects. This would make it easier to take time off, as the resulting absence wouldn’t affect the office in the same way. As an added bonus, this work was more fun and the new duty station was better, too. This took a year or two to subtlety shift until the official big change, but with ongoing strategizing and a bit of luck, she pulled it off. I’m not sure we could have taken the 100-day Adventure without making this move.

Wrapping up

While Jen works a traditional government job, we do everything in our power to exploit as many possible avenues as we possibly can to increase our ability to travel within its constraints. Sure, there are some useful scheduling benefits above, though very few of her coworkers take advantage of them, at least to the degree we do. But we’re still stuck with the basic job framework, which generally translates to: work Mon-Fri, from 9a-5p, in this particular office. No remote work, and no negotiating for more time off, and (probably) no early retirement¹⁹ either. Compared to similar jobs in the private sector, it’s at best a draw. But it’s the job she has, so it’s the one we’re working with.

Another factor that might impact our optimization strategies is that Jen is an incredible employee that the rest of the office, and her bosses, trust and rely heavily on. She’s an extremely dedicated worker, putting in far more hours than she should (which I occasionally grumble about). So I imagine that her professional reputation helps smooth any edges in office jealousy at hearing about all of her travels. Everyone there knows she deserves more time off than the job actually affords her.

Ok, so what about Scott?

I know, I know…we didn’t get to how I fit in here. Simply put, it deserves its own post. But it’s safe to say that we’ve done our best to ensure that my work allows us to travel as much as possible, too.

Final thoughts

I often shy away from posts like this because all too often the default response is “see, she gets more vacation time than I do! Therefore, I should disregard all of her strategies.” Or some other dismissive excuse along those lines. That’s a shame. After all, it’s not a competition. The point of writing publicly about all of this is to explain how we manage to maximize the particular opportunities we face, which hopefully helps spark an idea or strategy that might in your own situation.

1. We’ve known the specific date for ages now, and are actively counting down. Jen even has a countdown clock on her desk.
2. How much of a difference? This, of course, varies with the specific job and job market in question. But it can be substantial.
   
   One of my wife’s former colleagues, who left this summer for a private sector job, reported back that equivalent positions in her new firm earned 150% more in base salary. Put another way, she now earns $2.50 for every dollar earned in her old government job.
   
   That’s one helluva salary jump!
   
   Oh, and it also shows you how much value we’re getting for our tax dollars.
3. Jen can tell you exactly what she’ll earn in each year until retirement because it’s already in that standardized salary table, save cost of living increases. It makes it easy for financial planning purposes, and you’re guaranteed some sort of raise over time, but it also severely restricts your overall earning potential.
4. Oh dang, if she could work remote? We would knock that out of the park. If you have any option for remote work at all, it’s a no-brainer. Take less money, choose the location-freedom.
5. Yes, money is a limiting factor, too. But you can travel for cheap, especially if you have aren’t constrained to a few weeks off each year. Need proof? Just look at all the (poor) college students that travel the world in a gap year, or the van lifers that explore the US while effectively earning peanuts. Cheap travel is possible, but it requires extra time, and far less comfort and convenience that what we generally regard as “vacation mode.”
6. Oh, she’s had plenty of opportunities to advance, but is very comfortable in the role she’s in. That’s an important facet of this, too. Climbing the career ladder entails adopting more responsibilities, which often ends up translating into less time freedom and a lot more stress. Is it worth the (minor) salary bump? No, no it’s not.
   
   It also means that she can gain seniority among her coworkers, which allows us to travel more regularly than if she didn’t have it.
   
   And, it also allows her to become indispensable at work, which means she has more negotiating power with her boss in taking time off.
   
   As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best career decision she’s ever made.
7. PTO = Paid Time Off, which is what “vacation time” is often referred to as in the US. Sometimes, PTO includes both vacation AND sick time, but other employers separate the two.
   
   Luckily, it’s separate for Jen. If she has a dentist appointment during work hours, she can take sick time without affecting any of her vacation time.
   
8. Yes, this is generous compared to far too many jobs in the US, but it also took more than two decades of employment to reach.
   
   But don’t dismiss the rest of the post after reading that she starts with a solid chunk of time off—we use a variety of strategies to stretch that time even further, and hopefully some of those can serve as inspiration for yourself.
9. Sigh…of course, this is only what she’s technically required to work and the number of hours she’s paid for. But, in practice, she works many, many more hours than 80 in most pay periods.
10. Unless, of course, we have an ASU home football game (which often disrupts fall travel for us) or another important event to attend here in Phoenix. We don’t actually travel every three-day weekend, but we certainly try to travel each of them, even if it’s just a camping trip somewhere in the state.
11. If a holiday lands on one of these Fridays off, she doesn’t lose the day off; instead it’s moved to Thursday.
12. This has recently changed with this new administration, but may revert to the old standard, depending on various lawsuits currently in play.
13. To be clear, she has plenty of work to do, so filling this time isn’t an exercise in finding something to work on—it’s about getting the stuff she’s already working on done so she can take the time away.
14. Technically, it’s actually the end of the pay period if that period extends into the new calendar year, so there’s usually several days of buffer, but you get the point.
15. Which is why it’s often referred to as, “use or lose” leave. And yes, waaay too many federal employees don’t use all of their vacation time. But there’s also an option where you can donate your unused PTO hours to a specific person in a qualified need (such as someone with cancer who has exhausted their sick time).
16. How did we acquire so much unused leave, you ask? Well, there are occasional years when life intervenes and blocks us from our travel plans. Two of those years was when Jen needed major surgeries that prevented travel. Another was 2020 when the covid pandemic blocked most of our trips. Another was 2024 when my dad’s death canceled our substantive summer travel plans.
17. I’m not sure if this is technically classified as “admin leave” but we’ll classify it here nonetheless.
18. This formed the basis of my 100 National Parks in 100 Days to celebrate 100 Years of the National Parks trip back in 2016. There’s a long story here, but just know that I utilized the hell out of this opportunity beyond anyone’s expectations.
19. Early retirement is set by law, and requires her t work to a minimum retirement age of 57, no matter how many years of service she’ll have before then. It’s another item we’d absolutely negotiate if she worked a private sector job instead.

The post Our vacation time strategies appeared first on rscottjones.

First, I should note that we’re looking forward to full retirement. Scratch that, we cannot wait for retirement. Unfortunately, we still have more than a decade to go—and yes, we are actively counting down the days¹. The future is unknown, of course, but that hasn’t stopped us from thinking carefully about it and creating the best plan we can. Let’s start with some context.

Our retirement plan is to travel the world nearly full-time² for at least the first decade or so, as we work towards completing Jen’s quest to visit every country in the world. But we will maintain a “home base” here in the US, so that we can do our various doctor visits, change out clothes/gear for our next adventures, and catch up with friends and family, of course. After that initial nomadic period, we’ll likely shift toward shorter, easier overseas trips mixed with more domestic travel. Eventually that mix will flip and we’ll spend increasingly more time traveling the US, as international travel gets harder and riskier for us as we get older and older.

We’ve plotted out much of this in a lengthy document we call life block planning, which splits our remaining expected lifespan into five-year blocks. For each block, we plot out our expectations for things like major life events, family caregiving needs, our own expected health (and yes, even my death date), our financial planning, and so forth. For us, a major part of this planning is centered around the types of travel (and even specific destinations) that we want to prioritize in which periods of our lives.

For example, we’d rather camp in the African bush while we’re younger and save “easier” European destinations for later. If we want to visit some politically fraught areas³, we might want to do that soon, just in case a crisis breaks out. And if I want to hike the Tour du Mont Blanc, I’d better not wait until I’m in my 70s to get around to it. So this planning can also serve as a motivation device, ensuring that we don’t “someday” important things we want to do. We have lots and lots of places we want to visit, and even in our mid-40s, it already feels like shockingly little time in which to accomplish it all. So this sort of planning is crucial, even as it remains a living document that’s routinely revised and updated.

Another important detail for our planning is that—because we don’t have kids or extended family that can help—we’ll need to navigate aging without the direct family assistance so many others rely on. After caregiving for my dad for so many years, that’s a sobering reality that we see as a key factor in where we end up.

Here’s how we’ve thought about it

Ok, so that’s the background, now let’s get into the specific requirements we have for where we want to retire.

Proximity to a major airport – Since we plan to travel frequently during retirement, this is a key consideration. As I age, I’m less interested in connecting flights, awkward arrival and departure times, and limited flight schedules.

Somewhere in the West, in a not-cold area – When we’re not traveling overseas, we’ll likely be traveling domestically. For us, that probably means van life (and probably eventually some sort of RV) until we can’t anymore. And that also means living out West where all the great public lands are. Similarly, when we are in town or have aged out of frequent travel, I want easy local access to parks, preserves, and public lands, too.

Also, the last thing I want is to deal with cold weather. I am not a fan, hence why I currently live in Phoenix. There will be no shoveling snow off my driveway, no wondering if I should try to drive before the plows arrive, and no trudging out on ice—especially when I’m older. The only salt use I should encounter should be rimmed around margarita glasses by the pool. And yes, the not-cold places are often the quite-hot places in the summer, so I’d also like generally easy access to cooler summer temps.

Easy access to medical care, including specialists – Look, unless you die prematurely, you’re going to end up with plenty of doctor appointments and specialists as you age. So living in an area with a whole slew of those folks is preferred; it can have a significant impact on your quality of care, and therefore your health span. I want lots of potential choices here, not just one single specialist who is only in town 2 days each week. Navigating the medical system is often a real pain-in-the-ass, so I want to have plenty of options for finding the right doctor for me, for getting second opinions when warranted, and if my preferred doc isn’t available, for having a variety of scheduling options with other fallback providers.

Major city conveniences and services – No, we don’t mean concerts or museums or an art scene or sporting events, though those are nice, too. I mean major city conveniences—like plenty of rideshare drivers, delivery services, retail establishments, restaurants, and other entertainment options. If I’m not up for driving during rush hour or at night or in the rain, I want to easily find a driver who is. If I want a pizza delivered at midnight, I want to live in a place where that can happen. And I want several pizza options, not just one that’s attached to a gas station. If I want same-day delivery on an order, I want that to be an option. Or, if I want to fiddle with something in person before I buy it, I don’t want that to involve a long drive. If my pharmacy is out of my new prescription, I want to get it from another pharmacy just one extra mile away. If I want to read a new book, I want it to be available at the local library. You get the idea.

Ample opportunities for community – One of the most important things you need to plan for as you age is maintaining community—a large cadre of friends to regularly socialize with, share and learn from, and rely on. This will be especially important for us, given that no kids thing, but it’s truly one of the most important factors in quality of life as you age. Along with sharing it with a loved partner, it very well might be the most important factor in how your final years/decades turn out.

I also want hundreds of local community hang-outs, not just one local bar or bowling alley that you might have in a small town. We’re not into formal religion, so church—where so many people make those connections as they age—isn’t a viable option for us. So we’ll need a variety of third places as a substitute.

Similarly, there should be a wide variety of organizations I can volunteer at, community events I can attend, and clubs or sports leagues I can participate in. If I develop a sudden love for, I dunno, shuffleboard or something, I want to be able to join a shuffleboard league (is that a thing? I have no idea). I do not want to spend my final years just watching tv, as so many end up doing.

Another consideration here is that as you age, many of your friends…ummm…churn—which is a nice way to say that they, well, they die or move away. It’s an unfortunate problem of growing old. So it’s important to be in a place where you can constantly refresh those all-important social connections with new friends. It’s hard enough to do that in large towns, let alone in small ones. But it’s a critical component of growing old these days.

Independent and assisted living care – At some point, living on our own will become too dicey for our aging bodies, and we’ll need to seek independent or assisted living care. I’d like to live in an area that has a number of options available, so that I can find something that works for us (and that we can afford—holy shit that stuff is expensive!), and is still in the general area of our existing social community. We’ll need the support of those existing ties as our lives change during that transition; it can be hard to start from scratch.

Cost of living – We’re feeling good about our financial future in retirement (so far at least!), but we also want to focus our resources on travel for as long as we can—not on a fancy house to retire into. After all, our primary retirement goal is to travel, not to be at home! So that immediately rules out a number of the country’s more expensive areas. We need to find a house that we can age into, meaning it’s appropriately designed for seniors, with a special focus on mobility limitations. We won’t need this immediately upon retirement, though, so we should have some time to renovate an existing property towards our future needs. But that means sticking to a reasonably priced home in a reasonably priced city.

In the United States – Finally, we plan on retiring here in the United States. Perhaps this will change at some point, but even with its faults, there are very, very few countries that can offer what the US does. Jen and I have traveled to many countries, and we’re incredibly fortunate to have been born in America—there’s just no place I’d rather be.

To honor my dad, who immigrated from Northern Ireland, I plan on gaining Irish/EU and United Kingdom citizenship in the next few years. Since I already seem to qualify (thanks Dad!), this essentially just amounts to filing some paperwork. There are clear travel benefits to having multiple passports, including cheaper travel visas. But we’re especially interested in using that EU status to travel more cheaply across Europe by buying and registering a campervan there instead of having to rent one. It’d be a fun way to explore the continent when we’re older. That said, I’m 100% an American, through and through. This is home. Perhaps we’ll spend a few years overseas, but I can’t see us choosing to live anywhere else permanently.

So where does this lead?

While a slow, quiet place somewhere in the wildlands is a romantic notion for retirement, it’s clear that our retirement necessitates a major city—we need the conveniences, the medical support, and the ample opportunities to develop a large friendbase. And that major city is likely located somewhere in the mild winter temps of the Southwest, since Southern California is too expensive. So that leaves metro Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, El Paso, and…well, I guess that’s about it.

We’ve already decided!

After considering all of the options, we’re going to retire in Sun City, Arizona.

It’s the original planned retirement community (yes, the very first in the country!), and a suburb of Phoenix where we already live. I’m well acquainted with Sun City, as my grandparents were early residents. An age-restricted development, it was celebrated for its community aspects—it famously has more than a hundred social clubs (and eight recreation centers), and is known as the “City of Volunteers.” There are a bunch of master planned retirement communities in Arizona, but none offer the social community that the original Sun City does.

It checks all the major boxes for us. It’s located in a major metro area, in good weather, in the West, with plenty of senior-focused health care, a major airport, the nation’s largest collection of city and county parks and preserves, and a reduced cost of living. Well, most any community in the Phoenix area offers the same—but what sets Sun City aside is its focus on community and social clubs.

That will be a key aspect for us, since we’ll be away much of the year traveling. So we want a location with enough built-in socializing that we can pop in and out and easily re-enter social circles and make new friends even when we aren’t there all the time. Sun City is perfect for this, as a good chunk of its residents are snowbirds.

In addition, while it’s located in metro Phoenix—one of the largest metros in the country—it retains a small town pace and vibe. Many residents drive around in golf carts (its shopping centers even offer golf cart parking), the streets are incredibly wide and easy to drive, and the entire area is very safe. Even the mail is delivered in a slower pace: the postal carriers deliver it house-to-house while riding specially outfitted bicycles.

The houses are a bit dated at this point, but most all are receiving serious updates this decade. They’re generally much smaller than what you’d find in most neighborhoods here in Phoenix. But that’s fine with us—we’ll be downsizing anyway, and that helps keep the overall cost much lower, allowing us to focus more of our budget on travel instead of home prices. I’m not a big fan of the West Valley (the part of metro Phoenix where it’s located), but we can deal with that.

And we’ve already gotten started!

We started planning for our own retirement location a few years ago, in conjunction with choosing a better home for my mom to age in. As part of that process, we purchased a home in Sun City, and moved my mom into it in the meanwhile. She’s 83, but in great health, and we wanted to find a place that could allow her to live as independently as possible for as long as possible.

So that meant downsizing her house, and finding one that was as ADA-compliant as possible, such as very few thresholds to step over, walk in showers, wide spaces around toilets in case she needs to use a walker or wheelchair at some point, a stove that has the knobs on the front, and a thousand other little considerations.

It was a big change for her, but she’s responded beautifully. She’s busy af with new friends and countless new activities, which has been really impressive. She’s in a bunch of clubs and classes, including tai chi, aerobic swimming, line dancing, birding, photography, drawing, and most recently, the ukulele club (which somehow has 150+ active participants—they’ve got to be close to a Guinness World Record, right?). I’m sure I’m leaving out a bunch of ones she hasn’t even told me about. Honestly, she has a far more active social life than we do. That experience has really helped convince us that, even 60 years after it opened, Sun City has retained what made it so special at generating social community.

So the plan is for her to live there as long as possible, which will hopefully extend beyond our own retirement date. We’ll stay put in our current house until she’s moved on to assisted living, or has passed away, and eventually, we’ll move ourselves in.

Anyway, that’s the plan, as it currently stands. Perhaps something unforeseen happens between now and then that forces us to change it substantially. That’s life, and that’s perfectly fine—we’ll adjust to whatever is thrown our way, as we always do. But there’s something reassuring and settling to have a plan for this eventuality, even this far in advance.

1. I bought my wife a nondescript countdown clock that shows the days remaining before she can retire. Her boss is less than thrilled to see that on her desk.
2. One of the reasons we wanted to do our 100-Day Adventure Around the World last year was to test our assumption that we’d enjoy long-term travel abroad, since it was a major part of our retirement plan. The experience confirmed that, yeah, we’re going to enjoy it.
3. And that’s why we added Taiwan and Hong Kong to our 100 Day Adventure Around the World.

The post How We’ve Thought About Where to Live in Retirement appeared first on rscottjones.

In the last month, the federal shutdown has canceled my wife’s scheduled leave, and a bout of pneumonia while wrestling with heart arrhythmia RX changes has canceled mine. It had already been a rough summer of cancellations, so this was especially frustrating. But luckily now that the weather is turning, we can start doing some more local things outdoors.

We just bought folding ebikes, and I suspect we’ll make good use of those in the coming weeks, especially as we adopt some new local cycling quests, like participating in this year’s #Coffeeneuring and section-biking the Sun Circle Trail.

On the home front, we’re in the midst of several home upgrades, most notably replacing all of our windows and adding plantation shutters. The house has been in a bit of disarray for a couple months now as that process slowly unfolds. Next up, we’ll turn our attention to our backyard to make it more usable for the cooler weather, and I’ll finally get around to purging my dad’s remaining possessions (mostly clothes and such) that we removed immediately after his death. We’ve punted on purchasing a new vehicle this fall, opting instead to continue to use my 2015 Outback for road trips while we determine our next adventuremobile.

Our hope is that we’ll be ready to get back to a full travel schedule in the new year.

The post October 18, 2025 appeared first on rscottjones.

At some point, unless you add more scrolling to your day, you must rely on algorithms to choose what you see, and what you don’t. You cede free will over what you consume, and what you consume determines how you view the world.

It’s a simple problem, with a simple solution, but one that still dominates our current world.

Our collective folly has been insisting that we should receive so many different types of content—news, funny videos, personal updates from your friends, political commentary, cultural memes, sports replays, info about our hobbies, travel photos, celebrity gossip, and on and on—in one single firehose. One single unending channel that sends us everything we want to know about the world, and many things we don’t, all in one format, and increasingly controlled by one (or just a few) companies.

It’s utter madness, really. Why have we done this to ourselves?

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The photos

After our original May travel plans got crunked a bit with the unexpectedly quick death of Jen’s aunt, we salvaged the second half of the scheduled time off into a trip to mark off the two newest national park units, which had been designated in the waning days of the Biden administration while we were off in Africa.

You’d imagine that my photo “reclaiming” the completion of my national parks quest would get top billing for the trip. But, I had extended my itinerary quite a bit over Jen’s portion, which sent me barreling around remote areas of OH, PA, WV, KY, and IN without her. I spent a lot of time in the rugged, very rural mountains of coal country, where it seemingly rained every single day, even while I found to run across some real gems. So this quick snapshot of a rain-soaked black bear, somewhere on private coal mining land at the edge of Pennsylvania, seemed to be a more representative choice.

It was also a struggle to chose a photo for our Utah-Idaho trip, but I think this is a good choice: the EBR-1 Reactor, a place that had been on my list for awhile, but that I hadn’t quite gotten to. Because in a number of ways, the entire trip was about “cleaning up” some of the spots in the region that have been on our to-do list for awhile.

Definitely the worst part of the summer was when my mom had to put down her dog, a major center of her life for the last 14 years. Needless to say, it was a rough day—though I’m proud of how well my mom has embraced her now pet-less life.

A good chunk of our summer—way too much of it, really—has been dedicated to replacing our windows and buying shutters. From initial research, to hosting many, many salespeople, to (still) dealing with required fixes, to waiting for the shutters to finally arrive while living with sheets tacked over the new windows. We didn’t order this configuration, but I’m excited to get almost any style over the windows at this point—I just want to be done with it all. I hate home improvement projects, even the ones that you farm out to others to do the actual work.

This shot seemed like the best to represent my health challenges this summer. I’m still under “sorta” restrictions, vague recommendations from my doctors as they try to figure out what caused my heart arrhythmia. For a bit, that meant no alcohol at happy hour, so here was my foray into NA beer. Luckily, that was one of the first restrictions lifted (whew! that NA stuff is terrible).

Our LA weekend trip was anchored by a trip to a Dodgers game with three friends, the first of three MLB ballparks we’d mark off in just over a month for Jen’s rekindled ballparks quest. It’s also noteworthy as we transition to focusing on quests other than national park units, which have dictated so many of our domestic travels this last decade.

Here’s my favorite photo from our random weekend in central Nebraska. We had a lot more fun than expected on our short trip to this unlikely destination.

A haboob rolls in while I’m at happy hour. We’ve missed so many summer storms the last few years, either because we were traveling or because they simply never managed to materialize. So it was fun to get a solid monsoon storm, even if it was a bit wild of a bike ride home.

Our return trip to Ohio and Pennsylvania was certainly a surprise, after our Canadian Rockies camping trip was canceled due to those doctor orders mentioned above. But it made the most sense to return to the region so Jen could mark off another 13 national park units. There wasn’t much new for me on the trip, save a visit to see Bockscar, checking out the now-completed Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 National Memorial, and marking off Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis NHS for my NPS Affiliated Sites quest. I chose to highlight Bockscar here, as a subtle nod to the Enola Gay Hanger we visited at Wendover Historic Field during our Utah-Idaho trip above.

The final photo is instead a map of my current progress on our counties quest as it stands after our summer trips. The light green are counties I revisited this year, and the dark green are new counties I visited this year. You can see the two meandering routes through Ohio and Pennsylvania cross one another multiple times, plus the large blotch we completed in Nebraska, plus our foray through Utah and Idaho and adjacent states.

Compared to our initial travel plans, which included two very long road trips, this progress is a bit disappointing. But dashed hopes and canceled trips are part of life, so I’m glad we were able to rebound and get in some travel, even if it was a bit less exciting than we otherwise had planned. I have one additional long-ish road trip next month, but that’s likely it for the remainder of the year.

An assessment of the summer

I guess it makes sense to add a final wrap-up assessment of the summer.

Overall, it was a less-than-stellar summer. I wish we had another month of it left; I really wanted to get a trip or two into the mountains. Fall is always our “stay home” season, in large part due to the ASU football schedule. It’s often when we focus on non-travel projects, like improving some part of our home or working on some other aspect of our lives. As I pull back a bit from my ASU fandom, however, we’ve added in a bit more travel than previous years, but I’m still bummed that we didn’t get in at least one really big road trip during the warmer months.

That said, we did do the best we could with the limitations we had. Jen’s made some serious progress on her national park units quest, and is now poised for finishing in 2027. And I’ve made some good progress on my counties quest, specifically in reaching the 50% mark in a number of states I was deficient in. We’ve also gained some additional clarity around how we want to proceed with an “adventuremobile” purchase this, and how that fits into our travel strategy for the next 6-8 years. So in those ways, the summer’s been productive, even if we weren’t blown away by our travel destinations. I’m excited for spring and summer 2026 travel, especially as we can better dial in our road trip vehicle and gear.

The post My 2025 summer in 10 photos appeared first on rscottjones.

At our best, when my wife and I face a life challenge, we try to ask ourselves, “What could be good about this, and how can we lean into that benefit?”

For example, earlier this year, we got word that my wife’s flexible work schedule was being rescinded and replaced by a rigid, Mon-Fri 9a-5p type schedule. This doesn’t seem like much, but beyond wreaking havoc in her day-to-day job duties, it would also eliminate many of our weekend trips—effectively cutting our travel in half. For us, that’s a huge deal. We had built our lives around having this type of schedule flexibility, making big life decisions based on optimizing for an at least somewhat flexible schedule. So it was a big blow.

I got the news via text, and after a few moments of fuming, sat down and scribbled out a quick list about how we could make the best of it by leaning into the benefits a more rigid schedule could offer us, plus what actions we could take to take advantage of the new situation (and yes, my wife later added a little easter egg comment on there). We met up for happy hour after work to first commiserate a bit on our misfortune, but then secondly, to discuss how to make sure we gained sufficiently from this unfortunate change.

I adopted a similar attitude more than 15 years ago as my first marriage was falling apart. Distraught over the sudden and surprising separation, I knew things would feel bleak for quite some time.

But I told myself, “Look, if I have to go through something this shitty, I might as well get something good out of it, too.” I couldn’t change the impending divorce (which, I’ll note, sucked at the time, but also set me on course for an overall better life anyway—a “blessing in disguise,” as the saying goes), but I could ensure that I received at least some benefits from enduring the mess.

The most obvious way I could do that back then was to build a new friend base, as mine had always been shared with that ex-wife. So I got on this new app called Twitter, joined some conversations, and then forced myself to go out and meet a bunch of the people I had been chatting online with in person.

Early twitter, back when it was simply social networking (not social media) and no one looked at posting as “creating content” or “building a following” or “how I get my news,” getting together with others who used the app was a common occurrence. There were a number of in-person tweetups each week, so I started showing up at them. This was waaay outside of my comfort zone, but I pushed myself to do it anyway.

And, boy oh boy, did I gain from that endeavor! I made countless friends—literally dozens upon dozens—a large chunk of whom I’m still in regular contact with. Some of them became my closest of friends.

I’m a much better person for it all. Not just because I developed a great group of people to call friends, but also because the “project” gave me a sense of efficacy in this period of life that otherwise felt like it was happening to me. It gave me a goal to pursue, something to track progress against, something new to enjoy, something to distract from the “loss” that the bad thing had created. And it produced an enduring asset for my life. It made a significant difference in the trajectory of my life since.

I have a number of friends who are hurting right now, enduring their own period of shittiness of some sort or another, living through tough times that they don’t deserve. Some of them have adopted this philosophy, while others have struggled to do so, preferring to retreat and hunker down amidst the turmoil and, well, all the feelings. I support each of them, of course, and wish they didn’t have to deal with what they’re going through. It can be hard to take this “there must be a silver lining” approach, but I think it leads to a much better outcome.

The post Getting some good out of a bad situation appeared first on rscottjones.

Luckily, I’m not the asshole she was referring to.

Instead, it was Scott’s Cheap Flights, which rebranded to Going a few years back. Its owner was Asshole Scott, and he was an asshole because he had just sent out a mistake fare or otherwise stupidly cheap flight deal that we couldn’t take advantage of for whatever reason, and were therefore going to miss out on a great deal to a place we wanted to travel to.¹

And so I’d get a text that read: “Asshole Scott has $232 RT to Amsterdam in April “ or something similar, and have to reply with a frowny face or remind her that we already have April fully booked with other trips. Less exciting trips, I’m sure, but still—we at least had plans to go…somewhere.

I haven’t gotten nearly as many of these text messages the last few years, a consequence of fewer amazing deals combined with the impact that the pandemic and my dad’s health had on our ability to spontaneously plan trips. But those limitations have receded in the last year, so I hope we can take better advantage of some of those flight deals moving forward.

In the meanwhile, Asshole Scott has become a bit of a generic villain for complaining about a trip we’d love to take right now, but can’t for some reason.

“Man, it’s a scorcher in Phoenix today. I wish we were in the Canadian Rockies right now instead. Thanks Asshole Scott.”

1. What an asshole, amirite? Just rubbing it in like that? ︎

The post Asshole Scott appeared first on rscottjones.

There was a point, however, right around the time that ZenHabits.net and other minimalists were ascendant in the blogosphere, where I got into minimalism. I was already rather anti-consumerism, so this was probably a more natural default for me anyway.

During that period, I purged more than 50% of the things I owned, and even spent a couple days perfecting a 100 Things list to help re-orient my brain towards only keeping what was necessary. Of course, I actually owned waaaaay more than 100 things—I’m certain I had more than 100 things of ASU Football memorabilia alone—but it was a good exercise nonetheless. Being a backpacker probably helped in all of that; you don’t really need much to live.

These days, however, I’ve probably swung back in the other direction. First, I now have enough money to solve convenience problems by buying things, which is, admittedly, much better than the alternative. I’ve also evolved on how I think about these sorts of things. I have fewer of the extraneous things that I once owned, but I probably still own the same number of total items.

My goal now is to reduce friction in the things I want to do, not necessarily to own the fewest things.

For me, that often means purchasing duplicates of things I already own, simply so they can remain in a ready-to-go kit to make things quicker and easier—especially around camping and travel.

For instance, I have a whole slew of charging adaptors and cords stashed away in each bag I use (and in each car, too) so that I never have to worry about grabbing a random cord to charge something before I leave the house. I even have a dedicated charging kit for the tent, so I can just grab that as we head to bed during a trip. Stuff like this seems a bit silly, but when you add up all these little improvements, it ends up making a surprisingly significant difference.

Similarly, I have multiple fully-stocked toiletry bags to match different trip types. One is a very lightweight ”short hotel trip” bag with only a few essentials, geared towards just a long weekend away that involves flying and staying in hotels or at a friend’s house (and that fits into a small personal item or carry-on).

And I have a more meaty camping road trip toiletry kit, which includes additional items, like what I’d need to shower at a campground, that is also big enough to accommodate additional items I’m more likely to need on a longer trip (like my beard trimmer and razor).

All I need to do is to grab the appropriate toiletry kit, add in the RX pill case for the scheduled duration (yes, I have several of these ready to go too!) and I’m ready to go. Easy peasy.

All of these kits means I do in fact, own lots of things, even if a whole bunch of it are simply multiples of the same general stuff. Far more than a minimalist could own. But that’s more than fine with me.

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As I started my national parks quest, I naturally spent some time in each visitor center bookstore, which nearly always included one or more Falcon Guides for the park or surrounding area. I’d pick up a book here or there, figuring that it’d come in handy for planning my current visit, as well as future adventures. They also served a bit as souvenirs, little reminders on my bookcase of a cool-ass place I had visited.

The consistent design of the spine makes a collection of them look great on a bookshelf, and after collecting a dozen or so of the books, it became a bit of a tradition to pick up a new book whenever I visited a park or region I expected to return to. They weren’t always the best guidebook for the park or region, but they were the ones I’d buy anyway.

We also started to log our hikes in each of the books—just a quick note of the date and who participated. And when my ex-wife and I got engaged at the shoreline of Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, we recorded the GPS coordinates, too.

By the time my ex-wife and I split up, I had filled two full bookshelves of Falcon Guides. The collection looked great, and guests would scan through the titles, often running a finger across the spines. I was pleased; it was a fun thing to own. I nearly considered office decor, the way an attorney might in having a nice set of law books adorning their credenza.

Quite a bit of time has passed, however, and I’ve only added one or two books since then. And I’ll admit that it’s been ages since I’ve actually relied on the information in any of the books. As much as I prefer traditional guidebooks to the crowd-sourced subscription alternatives (looking at you, AllTrails), too many things could have changed—such as wildfire damage or new public lands pass requirements—to not consult a more recent source of information.

I’ve been reorganizing our charging station and the area where I store all the various cords, battery packs, chargers, and other electronic accessories we have. And it’s clear that I need some more space to accommodate that burgeoning assortment of stuff. So I started eyeing those two shelves of Falcon Guides, which occupy prime real estate. I don’t really need these anymore, I tell myself. They’re a relic of a previous era of my life. I should finally bite the bullet and get rid of them.

But before purging all of these books, I sought to memorialize the memories they represented. So I flipped through each of the pages of each of the books, transcribing any hike logs and notes I found in my personal memories vault, along with title, author, and edition. I also pulled off the custom nameplate sticker—containing my name, email, phone, and address—that I had added to each of them (I often played there role of “outdoor library” for my friends).

I’m a sentimental guy, so it’s been a trip going through all those old memories. I’ve gotten distracted many times reliving old hikes and cherished trips. Just leaning back and letting the memories wash over me. Smiling at the good memories, and frowning at the hikes I had always anticipated getting to, but haven’t—yet, at least (and yes, I also logged all of the hikes I had flagged in each book). And I spent some time simply remembering the role this whole endeavor has played in my life.

Preparing to purge these books has been surprisingly difficult. I guess I hadn’t considered what an important phase of my life they represented. And while I’m certainly not losing that part of my life—I have many new hikes and new trips in my future—it does feel like I’m closing the door on a previous era of my life. One that helped define my life’s general direction.

I’m still keeping about a dozen of the guides, for various reasons. But I’m ready to donate almost 50 of them. It’s the end of an era, for sure.

One final note.

I had forgotten how many of these books included messages of advocacy, especially around wilderness and the value of public lands. From that first Hiking Arizona book, for instance, here’s a foreword by former Sec. Bruce Babbitt (a board member of my former employer, the Conservation Lands Foundation), along with an ode to wildlands and the 1990 Arizona Wilderness bill, which set aside millions of acres of BLM land as wilderness, and a list of hiking clubs and conservation organizations.

The post I’m finally purging my Falcon Guides appeared first on rscottjones.

Our big remaining trip this summer is the Canadian Rockies in August. I’ll drive from Phoenix and pick up Jen in Calgary, then drop her off in Seattle a couple weeks later and make my way back home. ASU Football season starts in the fall, which limits our weekend trips, though I expect we’ll take a shorter international trip during breaks in October or November. Our two main summer trips were roadtrips in OH-PA-NY-ME-WV-KY-IN and UT-ID-MT-WY. We also flew to MI for a funeral.

I’ve been working on a number of web projects, though can’t report on any of those. The big two web goals for the rest of the year are transitioning both this site and GoQuesting.com to Kirby 5. To quote the last /now update, which remains generally current:

I’m working on a full design of my website—yep, this one right here—that will transition it from WordPress to Kirby. It’s a big undertaking, in large part because I have to learn Kirby and enough PHP and CSS to make it work, as well as somewhat manually repost all the posts, pages, and photos. But I’m excited about it, as I think it’ll be a much better solution overall, and I think it’ll help me post more regularly about our adventures.

Which brings me to another big project that I’m similarly excited about—transitioning the Go Questing website from Notion/Super to…you guessed it…Kirby. That’s right, after several years of hiatus, I’m finally getting a chance to get back to his half-completed project. With dedicated pages for more than 1500 different quests, and another 300 or so waiting to be published, this will be an even larger and more complicated transition. And I still have plenty of work to do in building out many of these existing pages, too.

In addition, I’m working on plans to convert this entire effort into a stand-alone nonprofit, which of course involves far more work than just the quest directory website.

We’re currently in the process of several home renovations, mostly notably replacing our windows and getting new window treatments (finally! We’ve needed to do this for years and years and years). We’re also working on repairing our back wall, and building out a shade structure for the backyard. I’m never a fan of home projects, but I think each of this will have a material impact on our enjoyment.

The post July 13, 2025 appeared first on rscottjones.