The big idea behind our big change
We just gave ourselves a virtual face lift that would make Joan Rivers proud! (RIP Joan) Sure we may look prettier, dare I say hip, but what is really important to us is the idea behind the big change.
We originally started this website for ourselves, to document our personal adventures. We were in search of our own American Dream, a new place to call home and our blog was just a photo album that would be the envy of all of our friends.
But our trip and our lives have forever changed. Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that millions of people would tune into our far little corner of the web. So, over the years, our site and our mission have evolved with us.
We realize this incredible potential we have to make a positive change in the world around us…the people, places and things that make the world worth exploring (and preserving). Thank you to everyone that’s come to us over the years and said “you guys changed my life”; hearing those words come out of anyone’s mouth is unbelievably humbling.
We don’t believe or think we are special, in fact we are nothing more than ordinary. Which means: if we can do this, so can you! And that notion is the big idea behind our big change.
We are ordinary people living an extraordinary life. If we can do it, so can you.
We share to show people that no matter what stage you are at in life (working or retired), you can find a way to travel and create the life you want.
For Pete’s sake we didn’t even think this road trip of ours would last more than a year or two much less that it would turn us into perpetually traveling sedentary lifeaphobics!
But alas, almost five years later that’s exactly what we are. Now, as for where we are, well that’s a little difficult to define.
We are at an intersection in our lives. There are lots of different paths we could take and we’re not sure yet which one we want to go down. One thing we do know for sure is: we want to continue to share the journey and hope you will continue to join us.
However, our sharing platform (gonewiththewynns.com) needed a serious overhaul. It was cluttered, outdated, hard to navigate and becoming increasingly difficult to work with. Add that to the fact we didn’t feel our site represented our personal style and we knew we had no choice but to go back to the drawing board and start fresh.
After days, weeks and months of work, we finally have a whole new look! We are a little sleep deprived and in need of some serious outside time (the cats hate us right now) but I think it was well worth it!
We are still putting the final touches together, adding content to the map and fixing bugs. So, if you notice something is off or have any troubles, please let us know.
It may take a little getting used to our new look, but we hope not. We tried to keep everything, simple, clean, easy and colorful (just like us, wink wink) to make it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.
So please, click around, have a look, find something you haven’t seen before and let us know what you think! Pull up the site on your phone, your PC, your Mac on your friends Linux system; our new face lift is supposed to work seamlessly on all platforms. We would love to hear your thoughts and feedback, after all you’re the ones clicking around and reading our crazy stories!
A few noteworthy new features we’re super excited about with our new site:
- Home Page – We’ve streamlined the home page so you can actually see what our website is all about and who we are.
- Navigation – No more drop down menus from the title bar! Just click one subject and your directed to a page with sortable icons and articles that are much easier to read. We think this is awesome, if you remember our old “RVin” page and compare it to this one…whew, so much cleaner.
- Map – We’ve changed the functionality of our map to make it easier to navigate (there’s still a lot of cleanup work to be done here so don’t spend too much time poking around just yet)
- Footer – You can always find our “where we are now” map, our social links, the website search function and the best ways to support us here…go ahead and scroll down to see it.
- Travel Store – It’s a huge change for us from our last store that was buggy and glitchy. We will continue to grow our store with only our favorite gadgets and gear, anything you find in here has our stamp of approval!
A huge thanks to:
- Our longtime friend Ky Lewis for creating our fancy new logo and video intro. There are advantages to working with friends, they know what you like.
- The WordPress guru Chris at RTW Labs! He has been managing our site now for several months, he’s ensured our safe and happy website swap and he’s saved us a ton of time (which equals money). How we ever survived without him I don’t know.
(these guys didn’t pay us to say that nor do we get a discount for their services, they are just that awesome!)
