What, How, Who, Where, and Why…well maybe not why. I know its kind of a lot to take in.

So here is an introduction to some answers to these questions. We have been planning to travel for a few years now…how could we get the most out of life? Initially I thought it was through working overseas like my pops. So I got a job at a international company in Oklahoma City right out of college and thought, ok, lets do it. After working there for 3 years I was starting to notice that number 1; opportunities to work overseas don’t come that often when your young and number 2; you have to put your time in before you go. By time I mean living in Casper Wyoming for 5 + years…who wants to do that with no real guarantee.

So we decided at that time for Katie to get her graduate degree in nursing, since that is something she has always wanted to do since being a nurse. Since that would take 2 years and I was looking at switching jobs we stopped pursing any option to go overseas and focused on our new roles. About a year ago we started to seriously think about it again. After a lot of discussion we decided to go for it. I had to convince Katie in the start, but after talking it through and really thinking about life, she was on board. We already were saving a percentage of our income, although we definitely had to tighten our budget if we were going to make our savings goal to travel for a year or longer. We decided that we would quit our jobs after Katie got her nurse practitioner license and I was at the two year mark with my new company which was around March 2014.

What was our inspiration, where did the idea come from? When I found out that working overseas wasn’t going to happen we started to research about quitting our jobs and just traveling. I started to think more about the vacation system in the US and how having 2-3 weeks off doesn’t afford much time to travel anyways. During that little time off it seems that we have about 3 days to completely relax and then we are consumed with what work is awaiting us on Monday. I watched Into the Wild while working my first job and got majorly inspired to just go. We could take our time and truly explore rather than having destinations already planned out in a compact 1-2 week timeframe. Time is valued in life.  If only everyone had more time. If we only had 10 years to live, would we continue to work work work and impress our peers to get a promotion year after year. I think we would slow down, spend more time with others, and definitely would enjoy the little things.

I remember when I graduated I couldn’t wait to have some money. In college all I was doing was drinking and hanging out with friends all the time. Which was really awesome actually, but I didn’t have money to take that trip to Liverpool or the Swiss Alps that I had yearned for. I wanted to do so much but I didn’t have the means to do it. Now that I do, why not quit and do it now? Why wait for retirement? What are we doing with our time? What are we working for? What is our goal? We kept asking ourselves these questions. We work to have more time off, so why not make that more a priority when we are young.

It Began In a Balloon describes two things. We took a hot air balloon ride in Switzerland 4 years ago, which is when I asked Katie to marry me (even though I am terrified of heights). When I proposed I wanted the balloon to symbolize our life to come, filled with adventure and different outlooks than normal life. It Began In a Balloon describes our new life and a different outlook on that life. It’s how our lives started together and how our travel started. We will now be travel blogging throughout our adventures for the next bit of our lives.

So here’s to travel, celebration, love, and inspiration for others.

– W