A short history on why we are the way we are.

Aug 11

Aug 11 A short history on why we are the way we are.

G had traveled for work ever since the day we met in February 2005. He was building his own business and so singularly focused on it's growth that our growing relationship didn't always come first. (Don't feel bad for us. We planned it this way.) He traveled so much that when we got married and moved from Las Vegas to San Diego he spent 6 out of 7 days on the road. While this racked up many airline miles and hotel points, we had a hard time using them because he was always so busy. We made it work and I often flew to meet him so we could spend some quality time together. In June 2013 we decided to move to Portland, Oregon in an effort to spend more time together. His company had an office there so at least he could come home at night for a home cooked meal and snuggles with the dogs! This was good for a while but we still needed more time together. In October 2015 G decided to quit his job, and in December 2015 I followed suit. While both were extremely tough decisions, we had saved some money and had some income from an investment property. We were ready to really live our lives, explore our beautiful country (and others), and spend true quality time together as a couple.

In January 2016 at the tail end of an epic family cruise vacation, we went to visit my cousin in Odessa, Texas (who coincidentally introduced G and I and was G's business partner for 5 years). We asked him what he and his wife wanted to do while we were and they suggested Carlsbad Caverns National Park which was a 3 hour drive away. Sounds like fun! Let's go. We bought a National Park pass while there and were able to get my cousin and his wife in on our pass. We toured the caverns which are unbelievably beautiful, but the elevators were broken and we had to hike all the way back out. We loved it, but it's definitely not advisable for the exhausted! (Side Note: President Obama and his family went to Yosemite and Carlsbad Caverns this summer to help celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the National Park Service and the elevators were miraculously fixed before their visit! We were a little jelly to say the least!) All kidding aside, this is where the idea of our National Park Tour came from. We now had the National Park pass and the time to travel. Now to figure out the logistics.

Let's be real folks. Hotels are expensive. We can't shell out $100-150 a night for a hotel when you are planning on living away from home for 6 plus months. On the low end, that's $18K dollars. That's crazy talk! I wasn't super into the travel trailer idea at first, but the reality is that I wanted to see our country in a way that not a lot of people get to. So we needed to be able to be mobile and not tied to finding hotels or keeping hotel reservations. As I write this I'm chuckling a bit because little did I know that finding camp sites can be infinitely more frustrating! Hahahaha! But hey, who knew?!?!

And so that's our short history on why we are the way we are, why we decided to quit our jobs, and why we decided to go on this trip.