In brief…

We quit our jobs February 1.  We sold and gave away the rest of our stuff by February 9.

We prepared our camper-van and left Grove City, Ohio on February 17.

After staying with friends and family in Ohio for a week, we left the state.  We traveled through West Virginia and just into Tennessee when calamity struck.

Our transmission went out on our van.  We took it into the dealer.

The dealer replaced the transmission for $2,500 and confirmed that the vehicle was in perfect working order.

We took off, and two hours down the road the engine blew.  Thus we deemed the van to be totaled, ditched the thing in Newport, Tennessee and rented a car to return to Columbus, Ohio.

Somehow our car had not yet sold and was still waiting for us in Columbus.  Without delay, we jumped in the 4-door Chevy Cavalier and headed off once again.

Two days later, on March 4, we were staring at the Gulf of Mexico as we fell asleep.

We went onto the Appalachicola National Forest in Florida where we were almost flooded out and killed by a tornado.

After that harrowing experience we headed west to see our friend David Cook in New Orleans.

We stayed there about a week, had a great time and then moved to a beautiful state park in Lousiana.  Louisiana was wonderful.  The highlight was our trip to the Abita Brewery, fittingly situated in Abita Springs.

From Louisiana we headed west to San Antonio, Texas.  We camped on the lawn at an RV park for a week, and hung out with this really cool guy named Matt.

On March 25, we went to Kingsville, Texas to help out around an international boarding school.  We were going to redesign the school’s website and tutor the kids in English at night.

After two weeks, we were still waiting on the school to get their ducks in order in regards to their web server.  With no end in sight we finally told them that we needed to get started on the thing or we needed to leave.

We left.

From Kingsville we headed across the desert to El Paso, Texas against all sound advice.

In El Paso we randomly stopped by a coffee shop and I asked if they had a website.  ‘No’ they said, but they wanted one.

That’s when we met Kinley.  Kinley was an awesome guy with people skills from God (literally).  He ran a great coffee house and we helped him get his website off the ground.

We stayed at a rundown motel most of the time, but Kinley had us stay at his house for a couple of nights too.

From El Paso we headed into New Mexico, the land of enchantment.  I’ve never seen anything like that before.  It was beautiful.

We stayed for a few days, then we heard about the Red Bull Air Race in San Diego, CA.  So we took off to Southern California.

Our friend Zac flew out to San Diego to watch the Air Race with us.  We had a grand time.

After a 6 day stay, Zac went home on May 8 and Melissa and I headed up the coast to Los Angeles.

Suffice it to say that we weren’t huge fans of the city of angels.  So we visited the sites (Hollywood, Chinatown, Venice Beach, etc.) and took off, charging towards Las Vegas.

Vegas was a big surprise for us.  We liked it a lot.  We managed to eat, sleep and have a good time for almost nothing (we made Rachel Ray look like a glutton).

So, with a couple of stops on the way, we’re now in Salt Lake City, situated on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.

For answers to common questions about what we’re doing and why, click here for our “short answers” section.