Derek and I met in 2001 and have since enjoyed many adventures together.  We have driven in the Australian outback, kayaked in the Canadian arctic, driven from Nairobi, Kenya to Cape Town, South Africa, trekked to Everest Base Camp, were finishers in the Yukon River Quest (the world’s longest annual canoe/kayak race), backpacked for 22 days through the Canadian Rocky Mountains, as well as numerous holidays both international and closer to home.  We love to downhill ski, hike, backpack, experience different cultures and spend time in nature with our dog Piper.

But we particularly love road trips.  We love waking up every morning with the freedom to decide whether to stay another day or move on.  We love being able to detour from our planned route to see something unexpected.  We love seeing and experiencing the places in between the tourist hot spots that help to give you the true feel for a country and it’s people.

Derek has dreamed of epic road trips since he was a boy.  As for me, I have a distinct memory of sitting with Derek at his parents’ dinner table and hearing about a couple who drove a VW Bug from Alaska to Argentina in the 1950’s.  “You can do that?”, I thought….interesting.  Years later, we were selling a pickup truck, and the ad was not generating a lot of interest.  Derek said that the truck was solid, “If someone paid for the gasoline”, he said, “I wouldn’t hesitate to drive that truck to Argentina and back”.  Our eyes met and the old gears in the head started turning.

We did sell that truck, but the idea of driving to Argentina never went away.  I found a few really well written blogs about driving to Ushuaia Argentina, a town on the southern most tip of South America nicknamed the “End of the World”.  We started reading them for fun, then as an obsession.  We started fantasizing as to what vehicle we would take if we ever did such a trip and considered everything from a tiny SUV and cheap motel rooms, to roof top tents, to our current rig.  We started to seriously consider what it would take to do such a trip, and the commitment was made to try and drive to Ushuaia and back over a period of up to two years.

Derek will probably do the majority of the driving, and all of the truck maintenance, I will do the majority of the blogging, with input I am sure from Derek and most of the navigating.  We tend to share cooking and shopping chores, and I imagine there will be lots of evenings of reading travel guides and looking at maps about our next destination.

Stone Age digital lounge, Snowbird Pass, Mount Robson Provincial Park, Sept 2016

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, after spanish school in early 2017.

Piper, our dog, is now 5 years old (when did that happen!), and is looking forward to eating fish tacos throughout Mexico (hold the hot sauce, por favor).  We discussed the pros and cons of taking her, but in the end we just couldn’t imagine leaving her behind.  Her role in this trip is to be the ice-breaker in meeting strangers, the inspiration for long walks in the morning, and we will see if she can stop wagging her tail long enough to look like a security dog.

Piper striking a pose in the snow.