Where to begin ? I can only say that the travel bug hit us both early in our lives. Lois grew up in Canada’s Yukon and B.C. and spent summers travelling in the family tuck camper- she had travelled extensively prior to us meeting in 1983 and our shared love of travel was one thing that brought us together ( I was backpacking Canada at the time ). While her family camper in the 70’s was cozy for 5, a newer, ‘toilet equipped’ version passed the comfort and space test for our planned ‘couple-only’ adventures that lay ahead. An Alaska trip up the Dalton Highway in 2011 with a roof top tent confirmed to us absolutely that it was not an option we’d consider for the bigger trip.
My own travel bug probably started 45 years ago – in early high school a couple of adventurous young Aussies were invited to our school to show a video they had shot of their overland adventures in an old station wagon in Southern Africa – I was hooked from that moment on. I loved road travel, always found flights boring and figured ‘getting there’ was more than half the fun. Our own honeymoon in 1985 was spent travelling Europe, North Africa and Scandinavia in a VW Kombi camper for 6 months, so in a sense the whole overlanding piece is not really new to either of us – it’s simply always been the plan once we retired.
Throughout our own random travels over the past 35 years we have met personally dozens of folks on major overland trips, hosted three couples we had been following ( Tom and Janet of Adventurouspirits.com, Norman and Maggie of AdventuresInYellow.com, and Marcus & Julie Tuck of Tuckstruck.net ) and followed ( and liaised with ) many dozens more on blogs that we had come across over the years – simply too many to mention.
To all who have served as inspiration to us, thank you – I hope we can eventually ‘pay it forward’ and inspire others !
