It feels as though these last nine months have only been a story I’ve been reading from a book. I know all of these experiences happened - I have the memories locked away in my head after all - but for reasons beyond me it doesn’t seem to feel like reality. In a sense, this [...]
Much to the surprise of your average working class, Monday's are actually our easy days here at Lakewood Lodge. This is usually the day before a group of campers arrive, so we spend the morning making sure everything is in place for our guests, i.e. checking all the beds are made, restrooms/showers are cleaned, making [...]
There was one activity I didn’t mention in our previous Lakewood Lodge post. The most rugged and intense activity, as well as my personal favorite activity, is Survival Adventure. Survival Adventure (or “Survival” for short) begins right away in the morning with a debrief from the Survival Instructor about what to pack in their packs [...]
They say you don’t know how good you’ve got it until it’s gone. To prevent ourselves from looking back in the rear view mirror wondering how it all went so fast, we plan to spend our last month at Lakewood Lodge reflecting on how lucky we have been rather than hopelessly wishing our time here [...]
We were often told making friends as a couple would be more difficult for us than for our solo traveling counterparts. Naturally, when traveling with a companion you don’t need to lean on serendipitous relationships to ensure you enjoy each moment to the fullest. As a result, Dana and I often found ourselves “wasting away” [...]
Mitsi is a 1996 Mitsubishi L300 with approximately 269,000 kilometers on the dash. In her former life, she was driven by an English couple touring New Zealand on holiday. Her life before that was spent traveling from movie set to movie set transporting camera equipment and various other film production supplies. She came into our [...]
Captivating. That’s the word Dana and I couldn’t stop using as we walked out of the theater. Earlier that morning, I was wide awake in my hostel bed still adapting to the time change and found a site listing the events taking place during the 2018 Matariki Festival. That list showed a haka performance happening [...]
We arrived in the City of Sails at 10:00pm on the night of Thursday the 12th. After some minor complications trying to hail an Uber using spotty airport WiFi, we made it to the first bed of our year long adventure. Our Airbnb host, Jay, doubled as our driver and we will continue to stay [...]
It's almost that time! We've told our bosses and coworkers, sold or donated most of our stuff, and are now within a month of our departure date at the time I'm writing this. To call this journey a rollercoaster of emotions would be an understatement. When Dana was informing her bosses of her leaving, they [...]
The hike out was proper payment for the landscapes we had seen over the last three days. 10 miles and over 2000ft of climbing, most of which came all at once in the last mile. The 30lb packs piled on our backs didn't seem so difficult on the gradual hike down to camp on Day [...]
The Vagablonders 