Hello Traveler!
Hi! I’m Amanda from Restless Pursuits!
I believe that traveling teaches us new interesting perspectives, creates strong family bonds and brings joy to our lives!
It is not always easy to just go on a trip though, right?
We get caught up in the everyday; the soccer matches, the laundry, the endless lists, work….
We are also influenced by the many voices around us that sometimes make us doubt ourselves.
We fixate on the unknowns and it makes us so anxious we don’t take the first step forward.
Booking that dream trip, traveling internationally, or simply getting away for the weekend. These dreams get set aside while we wait for it to be the “right time”.
But when is the right time?
If we don’t feed that desire, we don’t take those first steps, we are left with only what ifs:
- What if we got out of our comfort zone and booked a trip to The Netherlands instead of Florida this year?
- What if we went on an epic adventure in Yellowstone?
- What if we prioritized travel and took 2 vacations a year?
What is your what if?
What if your what if turned into a reality?
Because, let me tell you, it can!!!
And I’d love to help.
How Can I Help YOU?
Hi! I’m Amanda. I help busy professionals and families make life long memories without the stress of doing it themselves.
From 2016 to 2022, my family and I lived in Bozeman, Montana. We loved living in Montana. There’s so much to see and do in this part of the world. With being so close to Yellowstone National Park, we visited often and got to know the insides and outs of the first national park.
At the end of 2022, we took off on an incredible adventure and started traveling full-time with our kids. What was supposed to be 6 months, became 8 months and ended with us ultimately moving to Europe.
Now we live in the Netherlands and have been here since 2023. We have been able to easily travel around Europe, but have also discovered the charm of the Netherlands.
These two destinations, Yellowstone and the Netherlands, are what I know best.
I love helping others travel. For years, I wrote travel guides, travel itineraries, and helpful travel tips using our personal experiences traveling the world. I will continue to do this, but in addition, I want to take it one step further.
I am niching down and truly focusing on where I am an expert. That means the content I will be writing will be more focused on The Netherlands and Yellowstone National Park.
In addition, I also provide travel planning services to the Netherlands and to Yellowstone. I call them custom travel toolkits. They include a personalized travel itinerary created specifically for you and travel resources that will help you travel seamlessly to your destination of choice. I even offer VIP support during your trip, so you can get answers in minutes.
You are welcome to explore all the free resources I provide in my blog posts to help you travel. However, if you want to save yourself time and energy and take the guesswork out of planning a trip to the Netherlands or to Yellowstone, my personalized travel planning services are for you.
If you are a busy professional and are too busy to plan a trip, want a unique, customized itinerary that fits your needs, or traveling internationally is outside your comfort zone, click here to learn more about my personalized travel itinerary services.
Helpful Blog Posts For The Netherlands And Yellowstone
Here’s some free resources for visiting the Netherlands and Yellowstone National Park
The Netherlands
I am always adding more and more content to my Netherlands travel guides. Below are some of my most popular posts. Click here to find all of my Netherlands content.
- Best And Worst Times To Visit The Netherlands
- It’s Tulip Time: What You Need To Know To Visit Keukenhof Gardens In 2026
- 5 Undiscovered Tulip Fields In The Netherlands That Are Beyond Beautiful
- A Local’s Guide To The 12 Best Things To Do In Groningen
- 17 Groningen Restaurants For Those Who Love Food
- 8 Cute Small Towns In The Netherlands Worth Visiting
Yellowstone National Park
I already have many free posts that will help you plan a Yellowstone National Park vacation. Below are some of my top posts. Click here for the full list of Yellowstone and Montana travel resources.
- Ultimate Yellowstone National Park Itinerary – 4 Days To See It All With Kids
- The Best and Worst Times To Visit Yellowstone
- These Are The Best Hikes In Yellowstone For Families
- Your Ultimate Guide To Visiting Grand Prismatic in Yellowstone National Park
- The Areas Of Yellowstone To Visit And What Makes Them Special
How I Can Help Your Family Experience The Beautiful Places in the World?
Family Travel Tips
I’ve got tons of free resources for families with teens and tweens looking to explore the world but don’t know where to start.
These tips include ways to save money on travel, how to find the best vacation rental, travel budget tips, full-time travel tips, travel hacks, safety tips and more.
Plus I have created a great free trip planning checklist for you, so you don’t forget anything along the way.
Learn MoreLocal Travel Guides
Read advice on family-friendly travel destinations from locals that actually live in these places. Who knows a place better than its locals, right? See why I’m niching down into what I know? I have always believed that locals give the best advice.
Get advice on the best hotels, where to eat, activities, and places to explore. Not only do they include the popular attractions but also the hidden gems with less crowds.
Make your trip planning easier and use the knowledge of a local! All of the local travel guides can be found at the top of each destinations page.
Learn MoreReal Life Inspiration
You can travel with teens and tweens and have a great time too! It’s possible and we will show you how we did it through our travels.
We not only tell our stories, but also provide helpful tips along the way.
Steal our trip itineraries and make them your own!
Learn MoreOur Story – The Short Version
Let me tell you a little bit about how Restless Pursuits got started. I initially started this blog to document our full-time travel experience and provide some inspiration to other families interested in experiencing the world. Also to let our families and friends read a little bit about our adventures too!
Traveling has changed our lives. We have created life long memories with our kids that we will cherish forever. We only live with our kids for a short time and much of that time is sleeping, working and school. While you travel, you get uninterrupted time together while doing fun, exciting things everyone will remember for the rest of their lives!
We want to be able to share that joy with others. We hope many people can experience a life that includes visiting places around the world and making happy memories with your family along the way. Even if you don’t have kids or they have left the house, travel can change your life.
While we traveled, the blog has transformed into something more robust as we have learned so much more about who we are and what we can help others with. Many people have asked us how we do what we do. Other families want to do something similar or just travel more, but life gets in the way, or they don’t know how to get started.
Now my goal is not only to inspire other families to see the world, but to give you the resources you need to take that first step. As a family of 4, we know how busy life can get. Researching destinations is time consuming. I have done the work for you! Use my research and free resources on the blog to plan your adventures!
If you are a busy mom or dad that wants to plan an epic trip, but doesn’t want to dig through numerous blogs to plan it or join an expensive cookie-cutter tour, we are here to help you! Book a call to see how I can create a customized itinerary for your dream vacation.
Don’t see something you are looking for, reach out! I am always open to answering questions. If I don’t have the answers, I will find someone that does!
Meet The Family
Amanda
Age 42. Content Creator. Blogger. Hiker. Reader. Doer.
Visited 28 countries and 28 US States
Favorite Destinations so far: Paris, Spain, Ecuador, Italy and Banff
Mike
Age 43. Accountant. Hiker. Snowboarder. Planner.
Visited 28 countries and 29 US States
Favorite Destinations so far: Switzerland, Scotland, Ethiopia and Mexico City
Levi
Age 13. Year 1 (7th grade). Gamer. Golfer. Smarty pants. Loves chocolate. Baker. Skier. Pizza lover.
Visited 22 countries and 13 US States
Favorite Destinations so far: Cartagena, Transatlantic Cruise, Galapagos, Italy
Isaac
Age 11. Group 7 (5th Grade). Video gamer. Dreamer. Skier. Super kind. Loves seafood. Golfer. Bike Rider. Cars fanatic!
Visited 23 countries and 11 US States
Favorite Destination so far: Cartagena and Scotland
We are not quite luxury travelers, and we are not quite budget travelers either. My days of staying in hostels are over.
We like a mix of city and culture and a lot of outdoor time! We don’t plan our trips solely around our kids, but make the adult activities we have planned enjoyable for the kids.
We prefer to travel slowly, but sometimes do things quickly if we need to. Eating food at a destination is always a priority. Museums are not.
Can you relate?
Our Story – The Long Version
Mike And Amanda’s History
We grew up in Michigan, USA around the now somewhat hip city of Grand Rapids. It wasn’t even remotely cool back then. As our undergraduate years neared an end in 2006, we schemed to move out to Colorado. Think about when Fat Tire was all the rage.
We spent a little over three years in Estes Park. For those who don’t know, this is the gateway town to Rocky Mountain National Park. It is windy as hell in the winter, pretty nice in the spring, overcome with tourists in the summer, and absolutely stunning in the fall! (Visit in the fall.)
We truly enjoyed it there, but stable job prospects that offered advancement opportunities were rare. We’d also seen about all we could see in the national park. We got restless. Consequently, a larger adventure was necessary.
First Big Trip
In 2009, we signed up for the Peace Corps and soon afterwards found ourselves on a plane to Panama. We improved our Spanish skills, met some amazing people, did some meaningful projects, lost 30 pounds, picked up a dog, and more all in 2 years.
It was an incredible experience. We were able to see many parts of the country that normal tourists don’t visit. We traveled to small indigenous villages, hip surf towns, touristy mountain towns and everything in between.
Family Matters
In 2011, we returned to Colorado so Mike could attend the University of Denver for a graduate degree. In just over a year, and with $50,000 of further debt amassed, he had a nice piece of paper with his name and degree on it that we could hang on our wall… after paying $100 to get a custom frame for it of course.
We continued to hunker down in Denver after this. Amanda was progressing her career quickly, Mike was trying to find an organization that would hire him in a field that related to his degree, and kids were about to enter the picture.
When our son Levi was born in 2013 our goals shifted. More accurately, they disappeared and were overtaken with a day-to-day goal of keeping him alive. We succeeded (yay!) and in 2015 we added our son Isaac to the mix.
During this time in our lives, we still wanted to travel but didn’t really think it was a possibility. Traveling on a plane with a young child seemed hard, our finances weren’t completely stable (we were definitely in the growth phase at this point), and honestly we felt so overwhelmed that it was hard to make it a priority.
We know now that it is possible, but it wasn’t something we did much when the kids were small.
Traveling is a passion of ours, obviously, so we did do some traveling when we could. Instead of hopping on planes and seeing the world, we traveled more locally and took road trips. Visiting California to visit family was a fun adventure, and we cut costs by staying with them. Finding nearby attractions like taking a trip to the mountains or eastern Colorado were more in the cards.
In 2016, we’d begun to sour on Denver. We had a 2-bedroom row home with no yard. The park close to our house began to be overtaken with used needles, and the price of a babysitter plus the cost of going out downtown wasn’t worth it most of the time.
Additionally, the population boom caused trips to the mountains to be full of annoying traffic jams or waking up much too early early to avoid them.
Where To Next?
We kicked around a lot of ideas of where we could move, but nothing ever got us over the hump until a trip up to Yellowstone National Park in the fall of 2016. During that trek we spent a couple days in Bozeman, Montana.
While sitting on a patio, on a perfect day, staring at the mountains while drinking a delicious local craft beer and being able to have our kids roam without worry, we decided this was where we wanted to move.
We drove back to Denver, put our house up for sale a few days later, sold it in a month, and drove up to Bozeman. That was the end of 2016.
Restless Pursuits Is Born
In 2021, we had been static for much too long. We were restless, hence the name of our blog and a theme in our life story.
We were actively pursuing a new adventure. Since we weren’t financially independent, but had a little income coming in from rental properties that we owned, we decided on taking a 6 month-long trip. After traveling full-time for 6 months, we would return to Bozeman, Montana for 6 months to earn some money. The goal was to repeat this each year if it went successfully.
2 months into that trip, we knew we didn’t want to stop the journey and realized we weren’t spending as much as we thought we would. So we kept going.
Ultimately, we learned that we loved to travel full-time, but didn’t like the solitude that it brought. Missing our community of friends and family, we brainstormed ways to have both, a community and be able to travel more. We landed on moving to Europe.
Skip Ahead To August 2023
Currently we are living in Groningen, Netherlands. This may seem like a strange spot to move to, but we have good reasons behind it.
- Mike’s ancestors are from the area. We visited here when his mom came to visit during our trip in April 2023. The city of 250,000 people piqued our interest, so we added it to our list of potential cities.
- We have friends in the Netherlands already! We didn’t have to start from scratch at making friends. They are a couple hours away, which is a bummer, but it’s better than nothing. Also, trains make it easy to visit.
- The Netherlands has a pretty easy visa process for Americans who own their own business. We applied for the Dutch American Friendship Treaty (DAFT) visa when we arrived. We got our residence permits! So we can stay until at least 2025.
- As I am updating this in 2026, we are still here in Groningen, have made friends and have renewed our residence permits which are now valid until 2030.
- On a more broad scale, living in Europe makes it easy for us to travel and discover new places. With Amsterdam’s airport a train ride away, we can fly to many different destinations we haven’t visited before with ease.
I’m So Happy You’re Here!
I hope you enjoy browsing the blog and finding resources that will help you discover new and exciting destinations around the world.
Again if you are interested in learning more about how I can help you travel to the Netherlands or Yellowstone National Park, please contact me. I really enjoy helping others travel.
See you at the airport!