What happens when two twenty-somethings with ants in their pants start to feel extra itchy? They start to dream. And scheme. And then make things happen.
In the beginning….
Jake and I met in 2012. I was going through a quarter life crisis. He hung around. We adventured through the streets of Rochester, N.Y. We loved it. We started dreaming bigger. Did a little traveling. Realized that we had little to tie us to any singular place at this time in our lives; no home ownership, no kids, no big debts. We both had big dreams of bigger adventures. In April of 2014 we decided to start making those dreams happen. Planning, saving, researching. Jake flew down to AZ in April 0f 2015 under the wing of our RV guru, Bob. He met a big beast of an RV named Dyna. We bought Dyna. I gave my notice at work for the middle of June. We threw away years of crap. We packed what we could fit in my Rav-4 (RedRammer). On June 20th, we turned the ignition on the RedRammer and left our city.
Rochester to Virginia…
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We headed for Virginia Saturday morning; Jake had an ‘all-hands’ week at work the following week. Met up with my G (Meggy) and friends to watch the D.C. Nationals play some ball (they won in a no hitter near perfect game, which I am told is very exciting). Spent the rest of the week working and playing with Jake’s company. This involved things like Asian-American 5ks, cabins and miles of trails at Algonkian State Park, bald eagles, egg-tosses, and shrimp boils. Oh, and Jake had to go to work. It was a good week.
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Virginia to Arizona…
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June 26th saw us pulling out of Algonkian State Park headed towards Nashville, TN. Nashville is pretty sweet. We ate ‘boarding house style’ where we met some Yu-Gi-Oh masters and then saw some drive-thru liquor stores. We were feeling funky fresh (because we did not utilize the drive-thrus), so we hauled on for another few hundred miles for Memphis for the night. From Memphis we headed to Oklahoma City and then to Albuquerque on I-40 all the way. Took a few pit stops to check out some of what the ‘mother road’ had to offer including the Cadillac Ranch, a ‘horse motel’ (sweet, I can bring a horse with us next time), and some real life tourist trap gas stations/shops. Woke up in Albuquerque on Monday morning to hot air balloons floating above the mountains and the realization that we would finally be formally meeting Dyna the next day.
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Meeting Dyna…
Dyna is a big girl.
A big, beautiful, 2001 Monaco Dynasty with a lot of wheels and a bra. (The bra improves her classiness exponentially). We spent the day Tuesday learning her inner workings, her quirks, and how to make her go places. Edward was a patient, insightful, thorough teacher (Edward is awesome). By the end of the day Jake and I were on our own driving her up to Mesa, AZ where we spent a week getting her all gussied up for our adventure. In a 55+ RV resort. It was hot and there weren’t too many of any type people around, even old people (bummer).
We’ve already grown pretty fond of our girl. We had to fly out to South Dakota (fun fact: if you spend one night in SD you can become a resident, just like us!) for 2 days and we worried about her pretty hard. I keep catching myself feeling like we’re in a dream. A dream where I have 10+ bruises caused by attempting to do things like put air in Dyna’s tires, where I have the task of emptying a ‘black tank’ too frequently, and also limitless possibilities of adventure. Awesome.
