I’m Carter, the travel blogger behind Atypical Vagabond. I live in Coimbra, Portugal, where I write about slow travel, digital nomad life, expat life, Portugal travel, and walking the Camino de Santiago. This page shares how I went from growing up near Kansas City to building a technology business in Kentuckiana, then creating a life abroad in search of something that felt more like home.

A Traveler in Search of a Home

Long before Portugal, the Camino, or Atypical Vagabond, I was a kid on farmland near Kansas City watching ravens and hawks cut across the sky.

They made the world feel bigger than the roads I knew.

I did not have the language for it yet, but I think that is where the search began.

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My Travel Story: From Kansas City to Portugal

Where I Came From: Building a Life in the USA

Looking Toward the Sky

I grew up on farmland near Kansas City, where the horizon had a way of making the world feel both wide open and just out of reach.

As a kid, I watched ravens and hawks move across the sky like they knew something I did not. I dreamed about flying planes, seeing the world from above, and discovering whatever existed beyond the familiar roads, fields, and routines of home.

Travel found me early.

My family took trips to places like Kentucky, Virginia, and Florida, and I loved seeing how different one place could feel from another. Beach time in Florida felt almost unreal compared with life in Kansas. The air was different. The light was different. Even the rhythm of the day felt different.

Those trips taught me that the world was not one thing.

It was many things.

And I wanted to see more of it.

First Time Traveling Internationally

When I was eight years old, I traveled internationally for the first time, visiting Ireland, France, and Germany. I was too young to understand exactly how much that experience would shape me, but something about it stayed with me. The world became bigger after that.

Not every lesson from my childhood came from travel.

Some came from football.

I am a die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fan, which means I learned loyalty the hard way. Before the championships, there were years of mediocrity, disappointment, false hope, and the eternal Midwestern belief that maybe next season would finally be the one.

That kind of fandom does things to a person.

It teaches patience.

It teaches commitment.

It teaches you to show up even when the scoreboard looks like it was designed by a committee of emotional vandals. Those years reinforced values that were already being carved into me: integrity, hard work, loyalty, and the belief that worthwhile things rarely arrive without persistence.

I did not know it then, but those values would follow me across the country, across oceans, and eventually across Spain on foot.

Leaving Kansas City

At eighteen, I left Kansas City.

Not because I hated it. Because I knew there was more.

I could not explain exactly what I was chasing. I just knew the life I wanted was somewhere beyond what I had already seen. It was part adventure, part dissatisfaction, part independence, and part that strange internal restlessness that whispers, “Keep going.”

My first stops were California and Oregon.

I was young, uncertain, and probably less prepared than I thought I was. Classic young traveler behavior. A backpack full of ambition and absolutely no clue where the emotional turbulence button was located.

But leaving mattered. It taught me that life could be changed.

Not all at once.

Not perfectly.

But step by step.

Eventually, my path led me to the Kentuckiana region, where I began building a more stable life.

Building a Life in Kentuckiana

In Kentucky, I earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology along with Associate of Science degrees in Bioinformatics and Chemistry.

Biology made sense to me because I loved the environment. I wanted to understand ecosystems, living things, and the natural world that had fascinated me since childhood. Bioinformatics connected that curiosity with another part of my life: technology.

Science helped me understand the planet. Technology helped me build a career.

Over time, I founded and grew my own hardware deployment business in the Kentuckiana region. I built something real. I worked hard. I solved problems. I learned what it meant to carry responsibility, make decisions, serve clients, and keep moving even when the easy option was to quit.

From the outside, it looked like success, and in many ways, it was. But success does not always answer the deeper questions.

Sometimes it simply gives you enough breathing room to finally hear them.

The same question that had followed me since I was eighteen started getting louder again.

What else is out there?

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Where I Explored: Becoming a Slow Traveler

The World Became My Classroom

Travel has always taught me differently than books, classrooms, or business ever could.

A biology field trip took me to Jordan, where the landscape, culture, and history stretched my perspective in ways I did not expect. Mexico added another layer. So did the places I explored later across Latin America and Europe.

Every destination challenged something. Some challenged my assumptions. Some challenged my patience. Some challenged my comfort zone.

The best ones challenged my certainty.

That is one of the reasons I believe travel can change people for the better. Not because buying a plane ticket magically turns anyone into a wiser human. If only it were that easy. Airports would be full of enlightened people instead of delayed passengers guarding electrical outlets like territorial raccoons.

Travel changes us when we stay open. When we listen. When we meet people with different beliefs and do not immediately build a wall between their life and ours.

The more I traveled, the more I realized that people who seem different on the surface often carry familiar hopes, fears, responsibilities, and dreams. Travel helped me understand the challenges of others because it forced me to step outside the smallness of my own assumptions.

That became one of the quiet foundations of Atypical Vagabond.

The point was never just to see places.

The point was to understand them.

Learning to Slow Down

Eventually, I stopped wanting to race through destinations.

I became less interested in collecting places and more interested in experiencing them. That shift changed everything.

I started caring more about ordinary streets than famous viewpoints. I wanted slow mornings, local markets, neighborhood cafés, conversations, mistakes, and the tiny details that reveal what daily life actually feels like somewhere else.

Slow travel became more than a style of travel. It became a philosophy.

Stay longer.

Look closer.

Listen more.

Let a place complicate your assumptions. That is also when I began to question words like “best” and “perfect.” The best city. The perfect country. The ultimate itinerary. I do not really believe in those ideas anymore.

They are illusions that can distract us from finding peace. They make travel feel like a competition, as if life is one giant leaderboard and the winner is whoever finds the most photogenic espresso.

I am not searching for perfect. I am searching for meaningful. There is a big difference.

That lesson has shaped every article, every video, and every adventure I share.

Biography

1. Kansas City: Grew up on farmland, dreaming about the world beyond the horizon
2. Kentuckiana: Earned degrees in Biology, Bioinformatics, and Chemistry while building a hardware deployment business
3. Location independence: Sold the business and began exploring life abroad
4. Latin America: Studied Spanish and experimented with living overseas
5. Europe: Explored possible homes across France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal
6. Portugal: Established a home base in Coimbra
7. Camino de Santiago: Walked multiple routes and discovered a slower way to travel
8. Atypical Vagabond: Built a travel blog and YouTube channel around honest, experience-driven travel
9. The future: More trails, overlooked destinations, and stories from life abroad

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Where I Am Now: Expat Life in Portugal

Portugal Chose Me

People often ask why I chose Portugal. The honest answer is that I am not entirely sure I did. Portugal seemed to choose me.

After exploring different countries and imagining different versions of life abroad, Portugal kept pulling me back. Safety was a major part of that. So were the pace of life, the history, the people, the walkability, the food, and the feeling that daily life here allowed me to breathe differently.

I eventually made Coimbra my home base. Not because Coimbra is perfect. It is not. No place is. But Coimbra felt possible and it felt human.

It had enough history to humble me, enough beauty to keep me curious, and enough ordinary daily life to make it feel real. It was not trying to perform for me. It simply existed with its hills, cafés, students, river, traditions, imperfections, and rhythm.

That mattered.

Portugal helped me understand that home might not be a trophy you find after choosing the “best” place.

Home might be something quieter. A sense of peace. A feeling of belonging.

A place where your nervous system stops acting like it is being chased by a bureaucratic goblin with a clipboard.

Living in Portugal has also given me the chance to write honestly about expat life and digital nomad life. Not the fantasy version where everything is sunshine, laptops, and suspiciously photogenic cappuccinos.

The real version.

The paperwork.

The language learning.

The cultural misunderstandings.

The small victories.

The days when everything feels magical. And the days when you just want one simple task to stop becoming a side quest. That is the version I want to share because real life abroad is more useful than polished fantasy.

Walking Through Grief

One of the most important chapters of my life began with grief. That grief eventually led me to the Camino de Santiago.

People often describe the Camino as a long walk. Technically, they are right. But the Camino is never only a walk. For me, it became a place to carry what I did not know how to put down.

Walking day after day stripped life down to something simple.

Wake up.

Pack.

Walk.

Eat.

Rest.

Repeat.

There is something powerful about that simplicity. When the noise of regular life falls away, you begin to hear what is underneath it. Sometimes that is peace. Sometimes it is pain. Often it is both.

The Camino did not erase my grief. It gave it room to move.

It taught me that healing does not always happen in dramatic breakthroughs. Sometimes it happens slowly, one step at a time, between a small village, a shared meal, a conversation with a stranger, and a sunrise you almost missed because your feet hurt.

Walking the Camino helped shape how I see travel today. It reminded me that movement can become reflection.

That strangers can become companions.

That discomfort can become a teacher.

That the destination is rarely the whole point.

Becoming Atypical Vagabond

Before Atypical Vagabond became a travel blog and YouTube channel, photography was my creative outlet.

I loved photography.

But eventually, it started getting too easy. So naturally, I chose something more difficult.

Video.

Brilliant decision. Truly. Nothing says inner peace like trying to fix audio problems while your camera battery dies and the sun disappears behind a building.

But that challenge is exactly why I kept going.

Video forced me to grow. It made storytelling more complicated, more vulnerable, and more alive. It pushed me beyond the comfort of still images and into the messier work of capturing movement, sound, place, and emotion.

Atypical Vagabond grew from that creative challenge.

It became the place where I could share Portugal travel guides, Camino de Santiago stories, slow travel reflections, digital nomad experiences, expat life realities, and the larger question that has followed me for most of my life:

What does it mean to search for home?

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Where I Am Going: The Future of Atypical Vagabond

Becoming an Authority on Portugal

My goal is to become one of the most trusted voices on Portugal travel. Not by pretending to know everything. Not by recycling the same tired list of attractions everyone has already seen seventeen times. But by exploring deeply, slowly, and honestly.

I want to help travelers understand Portugal beyond Lisbon and Porto, though both cities deserve their place. I want to write about Central Portugal, Northern Portugal, the Algarve, the Alentejo, villages, food traditions, walking routes, historic towns, local festivals, public transportation, cultural quirks, and the practical realities of traveling here.

I want Atypical Vagabond to be useful. But I also want it to feel human.

A place for travelers who care less about checking boxes and more about connecting with the places they visit.

Building a Community

I also want to build a community around this way of traveling. A community for travelers, adventurers, digital nomads, expats, Camino walkers, and curious humans who believe the world is better understood slowly.

Travel can make us more empathetic. It can help us understand people from different backgrounds, cultures, and beliefs.

It can remind us that the world is not as simple as our assumptions. But that only happens when we open ourselves up to the experience.

That is the kind of community I want to build.

One rooted in curiosity, respect, honor, and honesty. And the belief that meaningful travel can help us become better versions of ourselves.

What Home Means Now

For a long time, I thought home was a location. A city. A house. A final answer. I do not think that anymore.

Home is an emotional state. It changes as we travel and we grow as we change. It changes as we meet people who stretch our understanding of the world and ourselves.

That does not mean place does not matter. Of course it matters. The streets we walk, the languages we hear, the meals we share, and the communities we enter all shape us.

But home is not found by chasing perfection.

There is no perfect city.

No perfect country.

No perfect itinerary.

No perfect life waiting just beyond the next passport stamp.

There is only the ongoing work of finding peace, building connection, and staying open to the possibility that the next chapter may change us again. That is where I am now.

Still exploring.

Still learning.

Still walking.

Still a traveler in search of a home. And if you have ever looked toward the horizon and wondered whether there might be more waiting beyond the familiar…

Welcome to Atypical Vagabond. Let’s go find what everyone else is walking past.

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Meet Carter

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