Our Story (from Kristen's perspective) by Kristen

# "San Francisco smells like bacon..." You never know what seemingly small thing is going to change your life. In 2016 I went to Yosemite National Park for the first time with a coworker to do some hiking. Unfortunately, she got sick and we ended up heading back to San Francisco a little earlier than expected. I was scrolling through my phone on the way back, and found this post on Facebook from an old friend: “San Francisco smells like bacon and ocean.” Well - to be fair, it was not just any old friend. Kenny and I FIRST met at a baseball stadium in middle school when the cool thing to do was walk laps around the stadium with your girlfriends and giggle at the boys. (Kenny earned some free chicken tenders for getting up the guts to talk to my friend and I that night). After that we ran into each other again a year or two later and became good friends for the rest of high school. We always made each other laugh and loved to get into random adventures together. We would do silly things - like go to the dollar store and buy balloon animal kits and leave balloon animals on everyone's car outside - or go on a nearby hike and pretend we could fly. I mainly just remember being happy and laughing A LOT when I was with him.  So when I saw the post that Kenny was in San Francisco, I was really excited! That post led to dinner and ice cream in San Francisco - the first time we had seen each other in 4+ years. I was on a hikers high from Yosemite and we spent a lot of the time talking about adventure and what made us excited about life. It was refreshing to talk to someone else with the same passion to go, see, and explore. Kenny had been dreaming of a trip to Glacier National Park in Montana and before I knew it we were making plans. Totally normal - you don't see someone for years and then you just dive in with a multi-day adventure where you have to sleep, eat, survive, and hike with them for 20+ miles a day. In a world where many people talk about big ideas but are often too busy to follow through, there was a lot of "I'm really serious about this. I need to know if you're actually in." – and - "I'm actually going to book tickets, not joking here." And so happened our first trip to Glacier.  I think we both knew from the beginning, that it could be bigger than friendship, but I was living in Wisconsin at the time and Kenny was in North Carolina. We spent some time getting to know each other again as friends before we decided to give dating a try a few months later. Since then it has been a crazy whirlwind of as many adventures as we can fit in while still trying to keep our jobs, spend time with family, and stick to a reasonable budget. And that's where we're at now. We're just two people who are passionate about travel and finding ways to live life to the absolute fullest every week. This blog is many different things to us. It's our: * Memory book * A fun thing that we do together * An excuse for Kenny to learn more about web design (he codes the whole thing himself… no standard blog templates…) * A forum to share what we learn while traveling # But most importantly - we hope it inspires other couples and adventure lovers to see that there are ways to travel despite busy schedules, hectic jobs, family obligations, or whatever other reason is keeping you from going. Happy adventuring everyone! 

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