We spent Memorial Day weekend in Virginia Beach. Though we ALWAYS have work to do, the 4 days we spent there was the perfect balance of work and relaxation, namely in the form of visiting with J’s extended family. In our travels around the country, the easy option is to sleep in our Sprinter Van.…
You guys have probably figured out we do a lot of driving with our new gig with BP … we have logged 6,500 miles in the first month!! This whole tour came together quickly and there were a few details that were unknown until the last minute, including what vehicle we would be traversing the…
10 days since my last post, but it feels more like 20 days because of everything we packed in! Sorry folks, I can’t just blog about one thing anymore, it’s going to be a package deal for awhile. Who would have thought being a professional backpacker was this busy?? We have now given our 3rd…
We are now 2 presentations in with 6,000+ miles driven across 16 states, all in 2 weeks. To say it’s been busy is an understatement! But we are happy. I have lots of updates, but a few take precedence over others. As we mentioned, we are going to see a lot of friends as we…
We gave our very first Gear & Go presentation for BP in Minneapolis and it was a success! We had about 25 people there, which was a perfect-sized crowd for our first event. People laughed at our jokes and stories and came up to us afterwards to thank us for the information. And, of course,…
We are busier than a one-armed juggler these days. Even J, who never stresses about anything, felt a little overwhelmed these past few weeks. Here’s a snapshot has been going on: 1) Today we drove away from the castle in the woods on our way to our new adventure working for Backpacker Magazine. The transition…
Deal is really living up to his trail name these days. What started as a joke on the AT for him showing off all his deeply discounted and free gear has now become his life. We are receiving gear in droves these days. Every day is like Christmas with a new package full of goodies.…
We’ve been to a lot of baptisms. Three godchildren each, plus a few others just to attend. We’re such experts, we could teach a class on it. But this is the first baptism where poop was involved. It’s every parent’s nightmare when it comes to the baptism. The child, all dressed in white, picks the…
We are going to miss a lot of things about BD when we hit the road, but probably the one that tugs at our heart strings the most are our foster cats. We got involved with the Humane Society of Loudon County almost immediately after we moved to BD and after we realized that my…
Steps 1-3: Dream big, live your passions and don’t ever stop believing. I am here to report that the wanderinglavignes will be wandering once again. We are leaving BD and have a new adventure awaiting, an adventure we could only dream about until recently. And I swear I am not trying to play an early…
We’ve had a very busy week here with back-to-back-to-back personal visitors (3 sets to be exact), mixed in with some spring break hikers. These days, the one common theme with visitors is introducing them to our game of choice, Bohnanza, or the Bean Game where you get to impersonate a bean farmer. Our friends introduced…
One of our favorite things about living in NH was the SNOW!!! Our first year living there, we had record amounts of snow (somewhere around 120 inches). NoVa may not have the cumulative amount of snow all winter long like NH, but it has surprised us with its random snow events! Like today, when we…
You probably don’t remember this, but in 2008, Deal & I set a goal to watch all the Academy Award Best Picture winners over 80+ years. As of April 2010, we had finished and blogged about 1958 through present. See here for 1981-2009 and here for 1958-1980. Please note, we rate on a scale of…
The point of this post is to tell you some exciting news … at the beginning of January, I started a new job as a medical writer/researcher for a small nonprofit … but before I get to that, let’s entertain a little stream of consciousness, shall we? Yawn. It’s been almost a year since we…
I know y’all enjoyed my “What have we been up to?” post from a few weeks ago, so I decided to write a part two. Okay, the truth is, none of these things warrant their very own blog post, so I am lumping them together. First of all, while Deal and I DO NOT celebrate…
We ventured up to the Philly area for a quick overnight trip with 3 purposes. 1) Meet my college roommates’ 2 new babies. Here is my public apology to my 2 other friends in the Philly area who also have newish babies, but didn’t make the visit list. It was a short visit! 2) Attend…
It feels like it’s been forever since I blogged, but it’s only been 10 days. Still, let me tell you what we’ve been up to! BD hosted a hiker ruck last weekend. We had no idea what a ruck was, but when we looked it up, it said this: the undistinguished crowd or ordinary run…
Turns out BD is just as awesome of a place to visit in the winter as it is in the summer. The GAF (Great American Family) from Danville visited this past weekend. And although I still believe they are the GAF, I am disappointed to report they upgraded from dial-up to high-speed Internet. They, however,…
We have been called again. And we accepted the chosen path again. Julie/SILMeow and Russ/Napolean Dynamite asked us to be the godparents of lil E! We are thrilled and honored! Just so y’all know, we have put our godparent status on ebay. In case you’re looking … Deal went to Chi-town for a few days…
I mentioned that Deal & I are doing the Insanity (NOW) workout to get in shape for Mount Rainier. We are only on day 12 and I cannot believe we have 48 more days of this insanity. But we are feeling good about our progress and I definitely think we can make it to base…