From Matt: Early in life I learned to be outdoorsy and created an adventurous spirit through: camping, hunting, fishing, sports, surfing, snowboarding, hiking etc. Eventually in college, I was able to expand this and went to study abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico which flung the international doors wide open and kindled a passion to travel. Then I went on trips to explore and see places like DC, NYC, Boston, and Chicago. Finally, when I finished college in 2009, I planned a trip through Central America (all the countries south of Mexico and north of Colombia) with my good friend, John Lee. As it turned out, John had to return early for work, so after 3 weeks with him I then continued on my own for the rest of my 3 month journey. Although I finished solo, teaming up with John and flying down to Belize ultimately changed my life forever. Within the first few days of our travels, my eyes were opened to an abundance of people from around the world that set out to travel: 6 weeks, 6 months, 1 year, and some even longer (shout out to Ray!). After talking to quite a few people, some of whom became my close friends, and carrying on to have a trip of a lifetime in Central America, I was determined to set out and travel the world for an extended period of time once I returned and worked a few years first. Eventually, my biggest task was to convince a girl named Kristin to join me and experience this trip together.
From Kristin: Growing up, my parents were dedicated to making sure that our family of six went on a vacation every summer no matter what. Whether it was camping in Garner State Park or road tripping to Washington D.C. with all of us piled in our van (to add to it- the air conditioning went out on the way home in the middle of the summer ;-) ), our family experienced some amazing trips together including visiting numerous state parks and national monuments, taking train trips, going to amusement parks, and camping all while getting to see most of the lower 48. This family tradition instilled in me the desire to travel and see new places with the ones I love. I've always enjoyed traveling around the U.S., but I figured traveling outside the U.S. would be much harder and mostly out of my reach. After Matt and I started dating, he began dropping hints about his idea to travel the world one day. I laughed at this crazy idea and thought it was just that. That is until Matt introduced me to the blog, "Where in the world are Jon and Jenn". From reading their blog and talking a LOT with Matt about this "crazy idea" I slowly started to realize that maybe we could do it.
From both: Thanks to our mutual enjoyment for traveling we've conducted our own research to places such as Chicago, Banff National Park, Santa Barbara, and the Grand Canyon to ensure that we are suitable travel companions. Conclusion: we are. Thus, we were able to put our heads together and come up with a rough plan for how we would take off to travel the world. It was something we definitely wanted to do, it was just a matter of when the right time would be. As it turns out, there really is no "right" time. "If it is important to you, you will find a way. If it's not, you will find an excuse." - Anon. As we talked about our future over the holidays, we knew we were going to be in a transition of one of us either moving to Abilene or Dallas. That's when we realized we hadn't quite set roots anywhere, so, now is as good a time as any. Now we're about to leave in a month to follow what was just a dream for us a year or two ago and is now our reality!
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| Grand Canyon May 2011 |
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| Banff August 2010 |
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