We’re fairly adventurous folks over here. How about you?
Let’s start with how we met. We met on an old school chat room through a mutual friend. I’m talking Unix, not Windows. ICB, to be specific. Our mutual friend wanted to set us up and neither of us was interested, so we compromised and exchanged screen names through this friend and promised to strike up conversation if we saw each other. A week later….well, here we are 21 years later.
My family lived in one state and his in another, so we decided a destination wedding was in order…Las Vegas here we come! We didn’t elope, we planned a real wedding at a Las Vegas hotel and had about 60 guests. It was perfect in every way. Unconventional? Well, guess we should’ve seen it coming. But wait, there’s more!
We’re in college, living on the cheap and we love the outdoors, so a road trip honeymoon is in order. We ultimately spent a week car camping on Vancouver Island, BC. Our first night, we met a group of older, retired gentlemen that were on their annual camping trip. That first night we ate a fish fillet, whole fish and a Dungeness crab for dinner, all provided by our new friends. We had picked up some libations on the duty free boat, so we brought that to the campfire and all enjoyed. Later, during the week I learned how to fly fish!
When we finished college and decided it was time for a change in scenery. Hubby looked for grad school options….Syracuse? Denver? Austin? Winston Salem? Well, North Carolina won and we packed up a U-Haul with all our belongings (including two cats) and drove across the country to our new, temporary home. We didn’t have a place to live, we didn’t have jobs, we had never even visited before hand. Just packed and went. An adventure of a lifetime that I’d recommend of any young person, but I don’t plan to do it again….or do we? Our plan was 3-5 years, its been 14+ years now.
After our first little one was born, or maybe more like 18 months later, we were ready for a vacation. So, we decided to take a road trip, part camping and part hoteling. I suggested Niagara Falls, Matt didn’t think our little one could make it. We decided we’d meander around Ohio Amish country instead. But, no real plans.
So we drove north and then decided we needed to stop at Cabela’s in West Virginia. Then after dinner I said, we’re not far from Pittsburgh, how but we drive out there? So we did. Then we got turned around as we were trying to make it up to the great lakes and every hotel was booked. Eventually we got up to Erie to check out a campground we saw on the map…..no go. It was super crowded and the sites were on top of each other. So we headed into New York, Brocton area and found a gorgeous state park, Lake Erie State Park….highly recommend it.
After a couple days we headed back towards Ohio…or at least, we intende
d to, but we ended up on a toll road going towards, non other…Niagara Falls. It was fate!!! After a day there, we meandered south through the middle of NY and Pennsylvania, stopped in Hershey along the way.
All of these trips were pre cell phones and pre GPS….good old fashion map reading, which often means you have to have patience and a level of comfort making U-turns. These events in our lives are some of the most memorable, partly because they were the more spontaneous ones. Life is short, embrace it, love it, live it! What you need is pretty minimal in the long run.
Domestic Rambler 