About Us – Restless Pursuits

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. 

Can you relate?

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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. 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. It was incredible. But, our 2 year commitment came to an end and we were ready for hot showers, reliable internet, being able to drink water out of the tap, and better food options. 

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 did do some traveling when we could around this time in our lives; we are travel addicts afterall. Instead of hopping on planes and traveling the world, we traveled more locally and took road trips. Visiting California to visit family was an 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 downtown just isn’t as fun when you can’t really leave the kids at home in order to socialize with adults at the local establishments easily. 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 that fall. 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 on 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), and 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 and then returning to Bozeman, Montana for 6 months to earn money. 

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. We had learned that we loved to travel full-time, but didn’t like the solitude that it brings. Missing our community of friends and family, we brainstormed ways to make this work and 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. 

1. 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. 
2. 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. 
3. The Netherlands has a pretty easy visa process for Americans. 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.
4. 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 with ease.

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So Happy You’re Here!

Check out the blog and find adventures you want and get started planning the trip of a lifetime.

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