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Before visiting the USA, I had some fears and trepidations about the trip. Fears are a normal part of life, and will magnify with the greater risks and adventures you take.
Fear of traveling is called hodophobia, or some will call it trip-o-phobia, and is usually more associated with modes of transport such as a fear of flying, but it can also be used to describe a fear of visiting a new place.
No country has instilled hodophobia in me more than the USA, and while none of those fears were really large, nor were they going to get in the way of my travels, I still felt anguish even though I had been to 50+ countries by then.
I wanted to share my fears about traveling in the USA with you, to show you that you’re not alone.
I believe in the power of diminishing your fears by acknowledging they are there. When you put on a false sense of courage by pretending they don’t exist, they pop their head up in ugly ways. Usually in subconscious self-sabotaging ways and by pointing the finger at how fearful and stupid others are.
Once you’ve shone the light on your fears, you know how to create a plan to overcome them and make your dream happen.
Here’s what I found scary about visiting America…
Fears I Felt Before Traveling in America
1. Fear of planning
This may seem like a strange one, but it’s interesting to see how something like having too much choice or not knowing where to begin the planning can be somewhat of a fear and lead you to procrastination.
Planning a road trip around Australia is pretty easy. You travel around the outside and dip into the middle once or twice. You head up the top during the winter and down the bottom during the summer. DONE.
America not so much. You’re going in, out, up, down, and across. The entire top of the USA is out of the question during the winter (when you’re road tripping) unless you want to deal with snow and unpassable roads.
Not knowing where to start has been quite debilitating to us. There are too many scenarios, too many pathways, too many seasons, festivals to juggle. Sometimes when you don’t know what to choose, you choose nothing.
Fearing that I couldn’t work it out and wouldn’t be able to see and do everything I wanted, I decided to do nothing and avoid the challenge. The disappointment and the fear of getting it wrong made planning too overwhelming!
To overcome this, I sat down with a map of the USA and colour-coded each state as the best season to visit. I researched each state and coded it as either winter, summer, spring or fall – some overlapped.
Having that visual was a game changer! Now, I could see how to make it work.
2. Visa issues
We love America, that’s why we chose it as our forever home. We wanted to spend a good two years at least promoting what we love about it and why it’s a great destination – we do this from our hearts, and share our authentic travel journey.
However, it’s a challenge to get a visa to come over to the US for longer than six months. We’re frightened we won’t get a long-term visa. You really need more than 6 months to see it all, so we had to find another way as the standard ESTA wasn’t going to work for us.
There was not much we could do, except fill out the best application we could, and hope the powers that be saw us as a valuable addition to the country.
We did end up getting a three year business visa. If you’re interested, here’s the process for getting an O1 visa. We finally got a green card and can now call it home.
3. Gun control
We lived in the States for four years and I never worried about guns, even with our monthly lockdown drills at the school I taught at, which completely freaked the sh*t out of me. God knows what it did to those poor children we were terrorizing!
However, the incidents seem to be growing too much each year, which I find unsettling in today’s world where cases of instability, anger, frustration and disconnection are on the rise.
Once I got there and started traveling, this fear subsided. However, I did have this niggling, fleeting fear before I got there.
I’d feel better if you couldn’t just walk into Wal-Mart and buy a gun.
4. I’m going to pile on weight and have gluten issues
No one serves a plate of food like America – huge, fried and sugary. One of our missions with our USA road trip was to share the hidden food gems of the USA and food that’s not artery clogging, fast and full of high fructose corn syrup and Monsanto rubbish.
Many of the world’s current health food trends, that I love (a.k.a. kale) actually come from the USA, most notably California. I love wholesome eating and am so excited to explore more of this side of the US.
Health and good eating is important to me, and if you follow us you know I’m a little obsessed with my daily green smoothie and healthy cake baking with the girls.
I was concerned about travelling through other areas of the USA, especially when it comes time to finding healthy, gluten-free food. While I can tolerate small levels of gluten every now and then, it can make me quite sick if I have too much.
At least, there was always Whole Foods to help me. I LOVE Whole Foods and Trader Joes! Like, BIG LOVE.
5. Long-term friendships for the girls
Making friends is the only thing that concerns me about long-term travel with kids. It wasn’t so much for Savannah, as she was still a little young at the time and had great social skills, but I worried for Kalyra.
Parenting is hard. You have a wider perspective than a child, so you make decisions based upon that, which may not seem the best through the child’s eyes.
I felt like the quality family time spent with us would eventually give her a stronger foundation and more of an opportunity to express and live her unique talents and interests.
She has an independent, creative spirit and I notice an impact upon this in a formal education environment.
I see in her a deep desire to fit in and, as a result, withholding her true spirit to do so. I hate seeing that.
At the same time, it’s her thing to figure out and friendships are important to her. I feared the impact of traveling to the USA long-term may have an impact on her socially in the future.
The good news is she had emphatically stated that she wanted to do this trip and she was excited about the places we planned to go.
Our intention on this trip was to give our children the opportunity to be as social as possible. We know the RV lifestyle is so awesome for this, and it meant we could find other travelling families to connect with.
6. Family travel 24/7
I do think I’m verging slightly on the edge of insanity for wanting to travel indefinitely with my kids 24/7.
They drive me crazy, but I’d rather a life lived travelling with them than one going through the motions at home.
I found that parenting life is slightly easier when we travel, and I adore experiencing life with them. It just doesn’t cut through the chaos enough when we’re doing the daily grind.
Also, I didn’t realise what a breeze Kalyra was until Savannah arrived. We love her to bits, and she has the most adorable and sweet personality, and I know her spirit is destined to rock this world with a huge spark, but she’s hard work.
I was worried how the travel may affect her sleep patterns. A constant source of worry for me is her diet. She’s the fussiest eater I’ve ever come across.
I knew that at the end of the day, I’d be wiped out!!! But our Australia road trip was sooooo good for her physically, mentally and emotionally. She thrives when she’s with us all the time and I do love sharing this life with her. She gives us a lot of laughs!!
7. Home-schooling
Jeez, I didn’t think I’d be returning to this point so soon. I knew I would have six months of the US road trip to enjoy before Savannah joined my classroom too, and then there were two kids to homeschool.
At least we knew how to make it work on our USA road trip, and Kalyra was a little more mature and independent. So even though it was a fear, I knew we had this one licked.
Kalyra was telling us how bored she was with school and how excited she was for me to be her teacher again, so that made all the fears worth it.
Here’s our ultimate guide to roadschooling in the USA and all our homeschooling posts.
8. Leaving family
It’s never easy to leave family behind. It’s been our reality for many years now and we know how to cope and make it work.
What worried me about visiting the USA is that my parents were getting older, in particular, my Dad, and he’d had a couple of health scares.
He’s as stubborn and strong as they come, though. He would not be happy knowing that I was letting these fears get in the way of following my dreams.
9. Running out of money
I’ve never travelled yet without this fear (after 20 years of doing it) and I’ve never once not recovered from running out of money.
The trick is to work along the way, which we do, but to also ensure you have strategies and backup plans in place.
We’d been working hard behind the scenes before leaving for the USA to ensure we had systems set up for consistent passive income.
We do work a lot with Australian tourism boards and brands, so we were sacrificing a chunk of our income by travelling through the USA. It was a huge risk and brought up a lot of fear.
I was concerned about the cost of travel in the US had increased since we last lived there and we’d get a rude shock.
I was also worried about travelling on the Aussie dollar. There’s nothing worse than seeing a quarter of your money disappear crossing a border.
One thing I held onto was my belief in our ability to find a way and create the income we need, when we need it.
Sometimes I don’t know the how, but I know if I’ve done it once, I can do it again.
10. The work consuming us
Before we left, we wanted to have streams of income to help support us. The downside to that is the fear we wouldn’t have it done in time, as well as the fear of there being too much work and not being able to enjoy ourselves.
We also knew we wanted to work with brands, and I was worried that the level of output required from us may interfere with our ability to enjoy this road trip fully.
We were travelling slowly to soak it all in, and fortunately we had some amazing team members who took care of a lot of things for us.
We had to lower our expectations and place less pressure on ourselves to be everything to everyone. We had very clear priorities in place in regards to content production, administration and social media.
Final Thoughts
There’s bound to be a few more fears that pop up each time you travel, and I’m sure your fears are different to mine!
I hope this post showed you that it’s ok to have fears about travel and to plan ahead to overcome them.
The two biggest fears that strike me are difficulty managing travel plans, and I also toss and turn a little too much over things like finances.
You know what? That’s ok. Fear is good for you. It’s fear that keeps you grounded, constantly in check, and well-prepared for anything that comes your way.
What scares you about traveling to America? Let us know in the comments.
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