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. The rest of their education, we trusted to the road itself.

And the road delivered. Geography came 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 the caravan life change that. I kept to a morning exercise routine as best I could — not perfectly, not every single day, but consistently enough that my body and my mind stayed steady. Walking in nature took care of the rest. We covered serious ground on foot plenty without even trying — exploring campsites, hiking to viewpoints, wandering through village streets. Our step counts would have impressed anyone.

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.

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.

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.