Help These Empty Nesters Choose Their Next Road Trip

Empty-nest travelers Allan and Silvana Clark are ready for their next big adventure, and they want you to help pick the destination.

After spending more than a year crisscrossing the country in a motor home handing out shoes to the needy, the Bellingham, Wash., couple is holding a contest to decide where to take their next philanthropic road trip. The winner will receive a $500 donation for a favorite charity.

"We're at that exciting point in our lives where we can basically do what we want," says Silvana. "We've raised our daughters, volunteered in Africa, Guatemala and Costa Rica, and even taken a 19-month RV tour across 45 states while working for a nonprofit. Now we're looking for our next adventure!"

In October, the Clarks -- Allan, 59, and Silvana, 58 -- completed a cross-country trek for Soles4Souls, a charity that donates new and used shoes to homeless shelters, abuse victims groups and other nonprofits. For now, the Clarks are house-sitting a relative's vacant retirement home in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. They could have moved back to Bellingham but didn't want to disturb the family renting their house. So, Silvana says, it's time to move on. "The sooner the better."

The Clarks are no strangers to being on the road or working for a cause. The first time they went "full time," how motor-home enthusiasts describe people whose RVs are their primary residences, was 2002. Over the years, they've worked for nonprofit groups all over the world. After their Soles4Souls tour ended, they spent three weeks filling in as managers of a German-American center in Bamberg, Germany.

With one daughter married and the other in college, the time's right to explore. Allan retired after 20 years training school bus drivers, and Silvana is a self-employed motivational speaker who works as much or little as she wants. "We're at a point where we don't need a lot of money," she says, "and it's like, what could we do that's exciting and different?"

The only drawback is that their college-age daughter teasingly claims to be homeless. But "she did an internship last summer, so it's not like she's around that much anyway," Silvana says. "Now wherever we are, she flies there."

Travel suggestions have trickled in since the couple announced their contest about three weeks ago. Someone suggested an opportunity working in Madagascar; another mentioned volunteer work in Vietnam. So far, the frontrunner is going to Shanghai to teach English in a preschool run by Disney.

The Clarks say they would consider just about anything "if it's reasonable. We just want to see what's out there in the world for two people who are healthy, energetic and can hit the road," Silvana says.

Got a travel idea for the couple? Leave a comment below or send it to Silvana Clark's Facebook page.