How We Started

Tawny and I ended up at Pacific Lutheran University together long long ago. We both attended for four years and almost never met. It wasn’t until I got the call that the J-Term for Tanzania was going to be cancelled unless the could get one more student to jump onboard. J-Terms were the fancy sudo-semesters that PLU hosted where for the month of January you could take an intense course, usually aboard, and it would count for a whole semester. They were honestly the best. In 2008 I was scheduled to take the J- Term abroad to Antarctica but fate conspired to get up to Tanzania and up Kilimanjaro instead.

They first time Tawny and I met was at the last minute orientation for our Tanzania trip, just months before we graduated, and we didn’t like each other. From across the room each of us was put off by the other and didn’t speak at all until we were setting up camp on the Ngorongoro crater…

To be continued.

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Explore by Destination

Where I Am Now – ASIA

How We Started

Tawny and I ended up at Pacific Lutheran University together long long ago. We both attended for four years and almost never met. It wasn’t until I got the call that the J-Term for Tanzania was going to be cancelled unless the could get one more student to jump onboard. J-Terms were the fancy sudo-semesters that PLU hosted where for the month of January you could take an intense course, usually aboard, and it would count for a whole semester. They were honestly the best. In 2008 I was scheduled to take the J- Term abroad to Antarctica but fate conspired to get up to Tanzania and up Kilimanjaro instead.

They first time Tawny and I met was at the last minute orientation for our Tanzania trip, just months before we graduated, and we didn’t like each other. From across the room each of us was put off by the other and didn’t speak at all until we were setting up camp on the Ngorongoro crater…

To be continued.

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Sailing Croatia

I don’t think that it is a secret at this point that Croatia is one of our favorite places in the world. Tawny and I found ourselves in Croatia back in 2013 for the first time and we instantly fell in love with it. So much so that often when we have the opportunity to go to Europe we always […]

Palm Springs getaway with two toddlers

I was getting itchy feet. It had been exactly two weeks since our last trip (a brief visit to Tennessee for a friend’s wedding) and I was ready to hit the road. I knew that I wanted our next trip to be somewhere warm (but not nearly as humid as Tennessee was) and that the kiddos would be accompanying us. […]

Win the vacation of your dreams with Expedia!

Thanks to social media (looking at you, Instagram!), the bar for taking photos has been set ridiculously high. What would once be a normal meal at a low key dinner can quickly turn into balancing on chairs, your phone hovering precariously over your banana pancakes as your friends scramble to arrange coffees and napkins for the perfect shot. We’ve all […]

How to survive an international flight with a toddler

Let’s just jump right into it. Ever since we welcomed our first born into our lives, people have been asking us what is the best age to travel with a baby. And if we’re honest, most of the time those people (and their babies) have already passed the mark. We felt that the easiest time to travel with a baby […]

Introducing Henley Courage and her birth story

Okay, so I sucked at my New Year’s resolution to blog more. To be fair, since January, we’ve moved across the state TWICE, accumulated clients for new line of work, introduced a half dozen new tours to our tour company, Pretty Gritty, OH- and had a baby. This baby, to be exact. I’d like to introduce you to our new […]

Crashing a honeymoon in Scotland

If we’re going to be friends, there’s one thing you should know: If you invite us to travel with you, you better mean it. There’s a strong chance that we’ll accept your invitation and then there’s no turning back. Our friends Jackie and Paul had to learn that the hard way when they invited us to crash their Scotland honeymoon. […]

Traveling to Hawaii with a baby

Hawaii. Our happy place. Holden is only nineteen months old and he’s been to Hawaii four times. That’s more than most people visit the islands in a lifetime. And the crazy part is that he has no idea just how lucky he is. The first time we took Holden to Hawaii he was only six months old. It was our […]

It’s 2018 and we’re back in action!

It’s no secret that things have been eerily quiet around here. It’s not for lack of travel, advice or content to share. We’ve probably been the busiest that we’ve ever been but both Chris and I have had a hard time prioritizing and managing life with a toddler. Our little explorer is 19-months old and I’m only now just feeling […]

Dashing through the snow for holiday travel

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Shell, in which I was compensated. The opinions and text are all mine. Our idea for the holiday theme is a good ol’ traditional family road trip. For us, road tripping and the holidays go hand-in-hand. We have always done Thanksgiving at my parents’ house and Christmas with Chris’ […]

Our Year in Review – 2017

Dear Tawny, It seems unreal, but here we are nearing the end of the year. As always, I know that you start to forget everything that we did since January and I consider it my duty to remind you of all (or at least a great deal of) what we’ve accomplished. We had a lot of apprehension about this year […]