There's a version of long-term caravan travel that looks like this: you wake up every morning somewhere new, you explore all day, you fall asleep exhausted and happy, and you do it all again tomorrow.

That's not quite how it worked for us.

And honestly? We're glad it didn't.

Making Space for Normal

When you're traveling for a full year with three kids and two working parents, you learn quickly that "travel mode" every single day isn't sustainable — and more than that, it isn't what you actually want. What we wanted was a life. A different life, a lighter life, a life lived mostly outdoors and mostly on our own terms — but still a life, with rhythm and routine and all the ordinary things that make a family feel like a family.

So we built that in deliberately.

We had brought school books from Israel — mostly Maths and English, the subjects that need consistent practice regardless of where you are in the world. We made time each day to sit with the kids and work through them, not in a formal structured way, but enough to keep their minds engaged and their skills sharp. For the rest of their education, we trusted the road itself.

And the road delivered. Geography comes naturally when you're driving through it. History appeared on every sign, every ruin, every cobbled town square. Science happened at lakesides and mountain peaks and in Benny's vegetable garden — but I'm getting ahead of myself. The kids learned more that year than any classroom could have taught them, and we watched it happen in real time, which was one of the quiet privileges of this whole adventure.

Staying Strong, Staying Sane

Exercise and self-care have always been important to me and I wasn't going to let caravan life change that.

Every morning — wherever we were parked, whether overlooking a valley, tucked into a forest or squeezed into a castle car park — I unrolled my yoga mat on whatever flat surface was available and I moved. Yoga flows, stretches, core work, bodyweight exercises. The mat rolls up to almost nothing and weighs almost nothing — it was genuinely the single best piece of equipment I packed for the entire year.

My resistance bands completed the picture. Three bands, three resistance levels, the whole set fits in the palm of your hand. Between the mat and the bands, I had a full strength, flexibility and resistance workout available to me every single morning without a gym, without equipment, and without taking up any meaningful space in the caravan. If you are planning any kind of long-term travel and wondering how to stay fit on the road — this is the honest answer. Keep it simple, keep it light, be consistent.

When it came to running — and I ran throughout the whole year, on mountain roads, coastal paths and campsite perimeters — my Skechers running shoes were the ones on my feet every time without exception. Reliable, supportive and genuinely comfortable even after months of hard daily use across every terrain Portugal threw at us. I cannot recommend them highly enough for active long-term travel.

And hydration — which matters enormously when you're exercising outdoors in the Portuguese summer heat — I handled with my infuser water bottle. The infuser insert let me drop in a handful of fresh berries or a few slices of cucumber from whatever we had in the fridge — and suddenly plain water became something genuinely refreshing and special. On a hot morning after a run, that small ritual of making my infused water before exercise became one of my favorite quiet moments of the whole year.

My complete exercise kit for a full year on the road: one yoga mat, three resistance bands, one pair of running shoes, one infuser water bottle. Together they weigh less than a sweater and take up less space than a shoebox. That's it. That's all you need.

There's something about spending long hours outdoors that does something good to a family. Arguments still happened — of course they did, we were five people in a very small space — but they dissolved faster. The fresh air, the movement, the absence of screens for long stretches of the day. It leveled everyone out in a way that was almost impossible to ignore.

Yes, We Were Still Working

To support a year of travel, Hagi and I both kept working. Not at full capacity — that would have been impossible — but enough. Hagi maintained his 3D visualization business for a selected group of loyal clients, laptop open on the caravan table, phone calls taken outside with whatever signal we could find. I managed what I could around the rhythms of the day.

The right tech setup made all of this possible — a reliable laptop and a portable power bank for the days when the campsite signal was too weak to rely on and we needed to work from the car or a café. Without both, remote working from a caravan simply doesn't function.

It wasn't always graceful. But it worked, and it kept us on the road, and that was what mattered.

The In-Between Hours

When work was done and schoolwork was done, we found simple pleasures with embarrassing ease. Campsite swimming pools. Card games from a tiny plastic box we'd brought from Israel — we played hundreds of rounds of those same games over the course of the year. Nature walks that turned into small discoveries. Conversations that happened naturally when there was nothing else competing for our attention.

We ate outside whenever we could — our folding camping table and camping chairs came out at every stop without fail. They became the heart of our outdoor living — where we ate, where we played cards, where we sat in the evening with a drink and watched the sky change. If you are setting up any kind of long-term outdoor life, these two pieces of kit are the ones that earn their weight every single day.

And sometimes — the best times — we did absolutely nothing. We just sat. Outside, in the shade, nowhere to be. No agenda. Just the five of us, in the quiet, letting time pass without chasing it.

We had forgotten what that felt like. We hadn't realized how much we'd missed it.

the card games we packed in a small box.

This post contains affiliate links. If you book or buy through them we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps us grow and share as many recommendations to help you have your best trip.