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Sailing, BVI

What do you do when your life partner asks/insists you go on a trip that is completely dependent upon being surround by one of your biggest fears? Attempt to convince him how great this trip could be without you? Yeah, me too. Clearly my persuasion skills are lacking. Because guess what? I ended up on a sailboat in the ocean of the British Virgin Islands. In my defense, those who know Jake should completely understand how I ‘lost’ in my attempts to forgo this trip. And also, I love Jake. He’s the calm to my anxious. And I would go…

Tortola, BVI

A week on a tropical island with 4 of your very best friends and your life partner?! Yeah, I signed up for that – no questions asked. And although we had planned our BVI trip long before the engine of our beloved lug of a home on wheels decided to be a butt, ditching Dyna while she was undergoing an engine revamp was a nice reprieve. For me. It caused Jake a bit of extra worry. Jake is very hands on, and being 1800 miles away from Dyna while she was being torn apart was a bit tough on him.…

Newark Valley, NY

We limped into my mom’s driveway early afternoon on May 15th happy to be able to put our oil coated levelers down somewhere familiar. Because: oil. It’s still everywhere. I (Liz) grew up a few towns over from where my mom now resides in a lovely old house on the main street of a tiny town in the Southern Tier of NY. I was pretty stoked to see that the lilacs were blooming when we pulled in. It’s been a few years since I’ve smelled lilacs. We spent a few weeks poking around in Dyna’s innards. Well, realistically, Jake &…

Mt. Pleasant, PA

Well, shit.   “Uh, Jake – SHIT – we have an oil problem. As in, Dyna’s ass is covered in it. And also, the Jeep’s face is covered too” – me, probably, yelling across the parking lot at a rest stop to Jake So, about those oil splatters we have been mostly ignoring on and off since Florida. They have turned from ‘light dusting’ to ‘torrential’. Shit. Luckily, we noted this new level of oil situation at 3:45pm on a Friday afternoon somewhere on some highway between Columbus and Pittsburgh. So, finding a knowledgable any diesel engine dude/woman was super easy damned…

Oregonia, OH

A quick 150 mile pop over from Louisville to Oregonia, OH, and upon arrival something magical happened. We found no evidence of the oil spewing monster that has been plaguing us since Florida. Woohoo! I don’t know where he went, but I’m glad he’s not hanging out with us anymore. Before leaving Louisville Jake pinned a State Park campground on our map, and we hit ‘navigate’. A few miles from that destination, however, we passed a sign for a campground called ‘Olive Branch‘, got curious, and turned Dyna’s big butt around. It was a good choice; a nice, well kept,…

Kentucky Derby – Louisville, KY

My childhood memories of Spring are a jumble of things like fresh, Lilac scented air blowing in through open windows. Frolicking around the yard as my mom toiled for hours planting the plethora of flower type plants that she picked out from the local greenhouse earlier in the day. The smell of swing set on my hands.  Reminders from my father that I would go blind from standing 3 inches from the TV to watch Kentucky Derby coverage from noon til the last horse crossed the finish line. (Told you I wouldn’t go blind, dad!) Brushing my own shaggy pony for hours,…

Nashville, TN (Round 3)

421mi of pavement lay between Atlanta and Louisville. Conveniently, so does Jake’s ‘cousin’ and her fiancee – Kara & Dave. They live in Nashville (because they’re hip like that). We had planned to meet up with them when we returned to Nashville to pick up Dyna after Christmas, but a plague knocked those plans off our calendar. So, we decided to take a break in Nashville again. And this time, the rendezvous went down. We parked our big butts out at Seven Points COE, which is a beautiful facility. We slept one night. We worked one day. We met up…

Atlanta, GA

We’re on a ‘mission’ to get to Louisville, TN for the 143 Kentucky Derby. We have found that our recent travel style is to pick an event and then drive towards said event, pitstopping in various locations along the way to test out the local food, culture, and auto-parts stores. Ok, ok. We haven’t needed to stop at as many auto-parts stores recently (I’m over hear knocking on every hardwood surface within reach), but I have noted Jake’s PTSD type habit of verbally announcing every auto-part store that we pass as we’re entering our current destination. He does this with a…

Hahira, GA

We hid out in small town Georgia to try and cure our Disney induced hang-overs. And that’s pretty much all we did for 3 days in Hahira, GA. Disney hang-overs are hard. The RV park we stayed at was really cute though. They had lots of rules about not partying and some ducks that did a duck parade by the rig 3-4 times a day. We liked it. Pretty much the only time we left Dyna was to eat some shitty Mexican style food in Hahira (which is a wicked cute town). Otherwise, we worked to catch up on the work/crap…

Disney World, FL

Disney World. The mecca of magic. A hub of happiness. A locale for shrieking children. A venue to observe parents wrangling 50lb bundles of human with looks of shell-shock in their eyes. Who wouldn’t want to be there? We’ve been heading towards Disney for the past 6 months. Slowly, with a plethora of pit-stops for exploration on the way. Our niece and nephew are both 6, and we figured that now was the time to drag their tiny butts down to the house of mouse and force them to experience every man or woman in a furry suit that we…