RoadSchool, About Our Family

We are the Nodland family

2020 Context	As I type it is March 24, 2020. It is becoming the year of COVID-19. The majority of our website covers our travel adventures from 1998 to 2004'ish. The information below was written about 20 year ago and reflects our thinking at that time. We still have the Roadschool.com domain and let our older duaghter use it as she travels with her family. We are the original roadschool family.
General	We are a family of four; Ed, Cheryl, Mitch and Max. We also have a wonderful dog named Cocoa. As of 1998, we are in our forties, Mitch is eleven and Max is eight. Our dog, Cocoa, is six years old and is a mixed breed but looks, acts, (and is often mistaken for), a Chesapeake Bay retriever.
Where we are from and why we travel	We are from an area 50 miles north of Seattle, Washington. We lived in a beautiful waterfront home on Lake Goodwin. Ed went to work for the Boeing Company everyday, just as he'd done for the past 20 years. Cheryl dropped the kids off at school every morning and then operated her own computer business from home. We paid the mortgage, property taxes and all of the other bills that responsible homeowners have. We were very involved in school and community functions. After a couple of years of looking carefully at what we were doing, we decided that there had to be more to life than this daily routine. Even though we loved some of the teachers, we didn't like handing our precious children over to the public school system. We wanted to spend more time with our boys and with each other. So we bought a 32 foot RV, sold our house and hit the road! After four years on the road, we haven't regretted this for a second. Ed has spent most of his life in Everett, Washington but had traveled through many states and Canada as a young boy. Cheryl is originally from San Diego, lived ten years in Las Vegas and loves the sunny weather of southern California. Mitch and Max were born in Seattle and spent most of their life on Lake Goodwin. We both have two older kids, now grown with their own families for a total of five grandkids.
Our Interests	Currently, our overall interest is in traveling and learning. As time goes on we want to develop a web page of learning resources and share our own life learnings, philosophies, and how our perspective on life changes though out this adventure. Cheryl really enjoys cooking and now has time to make some excellent meals. Ed enjoys physical activities rather than sitting in front of an office computer all day.
How do we do it?	Often people we meet express surprise that at our relatively young age we are full-time RV'ers. A common question is "how do you support yourselves?" Last week a fellow asked if we had an oil well in Seattle. Well, no, we don't. Fortunately, Cheryl's business is able to travel with us. We do a little computer programming and data processing. All we need is a phone line to hook up to every few days and we're in business. As of 2004, we are using a satellite link. We also contract work to three other moms that work from thier home. We are often asked if we have any growth opportunities, sorry but no we don't. Our cost of living is lower than it was when we owned an expensive home, so we easily live on "one paycheck".