Adventure in Profile

Martie McNabb, Personal Historian, Legacy Artist, Nomad

A few years ago, Martie McNabb sold her apartment in Brooklyn, purchased a Winnebago Travato RV, and hit the road.

She was 59 at the time. And she’s been on the road ever since.

Martie, now 62, promptly named her Winnebago “Brooklyn,” in homage to her beloved city of 24 years. These days, she spends part of the year in Vermont, where her mother lives in warm seasons, and another part in Albuquerque, where her partner, Judy, has lived for most of her life.

The rest of the time, Martie lives in Brooklyn (again, the Winnebago, not the city), freely traversing the highways and taking in the sights across the United States, staying in campgrounds, RV parks and the occasional Cracker Barrel parking lot.

“I feel like, at this point, this is indefinite,” she says of her nomadic way of life. “Until I’m not able to do it anymore physically.”

Business Adventures

Martie has always had an adventurous spirit, she says, noting that her current cross-country travels are not her first. “I used to cross-country travel back in my youth, then in my Toyota Camry and car camping.”

When she got a job as a high school biology teacher, she settled down in Brooklyn (the city this time) and bought an apartment, where she lived for more than two decades.

“But the cost of living started getting ridiculous” in and around New York City, she said. “I couldn’t even afford to hire a coach.” That, combined with the negative effects of gentrification in her neighborhood, nudged her to sell her apartment and leave her job. “”That was the first decision I made,” she says. “It was just this perfect storm of everything happening at the same time.”

Meanwhile, Martie had started a business, Memories Out of the Box, through which she assists people in organizing and archiving personal memorabilia and visual memories to provide them with access to their past lives and the lives of their loved ones.

“I feel like it’s healing work,” she says of Memories Out of the Box, “to help my clients reconnect with family and friends.”

Martie followed that business with another startup a few years ago, Show & Tales, a business marketing and community-building service in which the host and participants share stories of the things they keep as a way to generate word-of-mouth buzz for their business endeavors. By doing so, they are also able to make deep connections with their own and each other’s personal histories.

As a proprietor of two online businesses, Martie has the freedom to nourish her adventure spirit on the road while generating income.

30 Years in the Making

One fortuitous connection – or reconnection, that is, after 30 years – that resulted, in part, from Martie’s nomadic lifestyle is her relationship with Judy.

Martie and Judy had dated briefly when they were in their early 30s, but mutually drifted apart as their lives moved on, Judy remaining in her hometown of Albuquerque as Martie moved to the East coast. Then, about three years ago, Martie was scheduled to be in Alburquerque for a conference with The Photo Managers, and looked Judy up.

“It had been about 25 years since we’d seen each other,” she says. They got together, “and we started talking, then dating, and then we admitted our feelings for each other.”

Martie and Judy have continued their relationship over two years since of living together part of the time, and remaining together while separated by more than 2,200 miles the rest of the year.

Not Perfect

For Martie, her life on the road feels like a natural fit. The highlights of her lifestyle are the freedom and the people she meets.

“I like people, I like when I’m with people, and people watching,” she says. “I need time to myself, but I do like seeing people, seeing the way they live, everyone lives their lives differently.”

She loves exploring different parts of the country and seeing the different ways people and cultures are shaped and defined by their environment. “It’s fascinating, people dealing with challenges of different areas, and how people are different depending on where they live. I just find it fascinating.”

As free and interesting as life is on the road, it’s not always easy, Martie emphasizes.

Prices are inflated, for one thing, and paying for hiked gasoline rates makes a noticeable impact. “It really is not that inexpensive to live this life,” she says. There’s the high up-front cost of buying a vehicle suitable for living. And paying for park residence plus electricity at a camp site add to the daily expense.

And every day has its small inconveniences. Martie loves to cook, for example. But cooking in an RV isn’t ideal. “Everything smells like whatever you’re cooking,” she notes. “That’s a little challenge.” Also, it can be hard to get around once you’re parked and hooked up for electricity. You can’t hop in your car and run into town. “In order to go any place, you have to plan around that,” she says.

Finally, just getting in and out of Brooklyn, and for that matter climbing in and out of her elevated bed inside Brooklyn, require physical agility. “Some of these things I probably won’t be able to do anymore at my mother’s age.”

Adventure Dream Life

Still, for now, Martie points out, she wouldn’t trade it. She gets to live freely on the road, and spend extended time with people she loves who live far apart.

She meets a huge spectrum of interesting people and operates two businesses from an office on four wheels. The road is endless and always full of possibilities, and she’s planning an open-ended road trip out to the West coast this year.

Altogether, Martie is living an adventurer’s dream life, and she appreciates the opportunity.

“I have felt like I’m very lucky,” she says.