Sunday Summary #136

The Goals of 2025

Hi there,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 136th Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written in the Florida Panhandle.

This Year.

After seven long months of building our van, we’re excited to announce our next goals:

visiting all 50 States and all 63 US National Parks. But first, let me take you back and explain why Jen and I are thrilled.

Back to the Beginning

As many of you know, the Scho and Jo origin story came from a desire to travel and break out of the corporate ladder. We took a gap year where we backpacked internationally, visiting eleven countries and three continents, and it opened our eyes. We knew we couldn’t go back to our lives in Atlanta and instead had to see if we could make it a business where we inspire others to travel.

Our Pivot to traveling the US on our trawler wasn’t in the 5-year plan but it impacted the rest of our lives. The boating and Loop culture, the adventure with a goal, and slow life aka “trawler speed” with our family was a joy.

This travel around Eastern North America, through two countries and eighteen states inspired us to see more.

The 2025 Goals

Starting in Florida, we will be traveling up to Alaska this summer. Some might say that Alaska is a bit ambitious for your first year in your self-converted sprinter van without any RV experience, but I guess that’s just par for the course for Scho and Jo considering we hadn’t travelled much before backpacking and never boated before starting the Loop... We plan to visit many states along the way, national and state parks, and beautiful small towns - taking it “trawler speed” just like our last adventure.

Like with the Loop, there are so many anchorages, or towns off the beaten path so if you have any suggestions for places we should visit, restaurants to try, or fun activities, we’d love to hear them! We created this Google Form for any recommendations!

Naming Our Van.

The story of our Great Loop was “Pivot”. Learning to move with the changes in life and accepting the pivots instead of pushing against them. Embracing the Pivot will always be one of our mottos.

While our Sprinter Van is a Pivot, it’s more a direction. We know we like traveling with Ollie and the comforts of home, like a full kitchen and bed. Building our van without a lot of prior experience was challenging. We knew we wanted to incorporate the feeling of doing hard things, reaching for what sometimes seems impossible, and our van is a reminder that challenges make us stronger.

If you watched our Great Loop Documentary, you may remember the quote from Brianna Wiest at the end of the video, “One day, the mountain that is in front of you will be so far behind you, it will barely be visible in the distance. But the person you become in learning to get over it? That will stay with you forever. And that is the point of the mountain.”

We have huge aspirations, and our van will be the home that takes us there. So without further ado, we share “Summit” as the name of our van. Let’s climb the mountains in life together!

What’s Next

Stay tuned for our next Sunday Summary, and we’ll share our first National Park and official destination in the van, The Everglades National Park!

Videos.

In case you missed it, here are all the vlogs we’ve released since our last Sunday. Summary:

 From the Eyes of Ollie. 

2025 is going to be a great year. I will smell so many new places and read so many more “p”-mails. I can’t wait!

 Gratitudes.

After a stationary year, we’re grateful for the environment we had building Summit. With both our families near, we were able to experience a part of life we miss out on in our travels.

Peace and love,

Jen + Elliot

 P.S.

If you are new to our Sunday Summary, you can take a look at previous issues here.