A couple travels 25 states and more than 60,000 miles with their PET GOAT named Frankie in an Airstream

A North Carolina couple has traveled tens of thousands of miles across the country in an RV, bringing their goat Frankie along for the ride.

“Frankie is a great travel buddy,” artist Cate Battles, who travels with her husband Chad, recently told CNN Travel.

She expanded on this in an episode of the Discovery+ miniseries The Bond, which focused on the traveling gang, adding: “She’s incredibly smart and very curious. She is simply one of the most affectionate animals I have ever met.

“She’s our ride or die. She’s our adventure buddy!’

Cate admits she has ‘always been fascinated by goats’ and was given Frankie, a pygmy-Nigerian dwarf mix, as a gift from a friend in 2014.

‘Before Cate came along, I was actually ambivalent about goats. Hadn’t even thought about it!’ Chad confessed on the show, adding that he wasn’t even aware of the plan to add Frankie to the family.

“When Cate first brought Frankie home, I said, ‘No goats in bed.’ That didn’t last long!” he continued.

“Maybe one day?” Cate joined in laughing.

The couple, who have been married for 10 years, first hit the road in 2016, shortly after Chad sold his bar in Asheville, NC, when his children went to college.

“We were thinking about what the next chapter of our lives would look like, since we were empty nesters,” Cate told CNN Travel.

“So we decided we would pick a new city and state and travel around a bit.”

For their cross-country trip, the couple purchased a nearly half-century-old 1976 Argosy model Airstream and renovated it from the inside out.

The exterior of the Airstream also now features a wraparound mural by Cate, inspired by the group’s travels and Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land.

Cate and Chad left Frankie behind on their first trip on the Airstream, with that expedition lasting six months and culminating in the duo’s decision to move from Asheville to Grants Pass, Oregon, in 2017.

Although they were initially nervous about how the goat would fare along the way, Frankie turned out to be a natural explorer.

‘She’s very easy to travel with. Since she was a little kid, we had her potty trained pretty well. So that’s always good too,” Cate said.

With that, they stop every few hours to let Frankie snack on greenery and stretch her legs – opening up even more opportunities for daily discoveries in America’s wilds.

The couple estimated they had traveled more than 60,000 miles so far.

“Part of living this lifestyle is that we are so hungry for learning new things, experiencing new things, new places, new people, new food, new landscapes, new flora,” Cate told The Bond.

‘It’s not just natural places that we like to visit. We also like to visit quirky roadside attractions: the world’s largest yo-yo, or Salvation Mountain, or the world’s largest donkey.’

For the first few years of their road tripping, the group was also accompanied by their older cocker spaniel, Maggie.

Sadly, the beloved pooch passed away in the spring of 2019, shortly after Frankie and Maggie appeared on The Dodo’s Odd Couples series.

However, a few weeks ago the family welcomed a new rescue dog named Corndog to the family.

“Welcome home Corndog!” the Instagram caption read, revealing the adoption.

Lately, the multispecies family’s annual routine has involved spending most of the year at their home base in Grants Pass, while setting aside at least a few months for travel.

Since the beginning of their adventures, Cate has been too keeping a blog named Argosy Odyssey after the Airstream model.

The blog has moved to Instagram account @argosyodyssey, which now has more than 21,000 followers, many of whom are avowed fans of Frankie.

As Chad joked about the dynamic, “Frankie doesn’t live in our world, we live in Frankie’s world.”