About Us
Hey there! We’re Jenny and John, your bona fide globetrotting gurus.
Our bucket list? Well, it’s less of a list and more of an atlas. We’ve got an incurable case of wanderlust, and the only prescription is more travel.
Our aim? To high-five every corner of this beautiful planet before our passports expire… or at least give it a darn good try!
About Jenny
- At just 13, I kicked off my globe-trotting career with a jaunt down to Australia and New Zealand. It was all kangaroos and kiwis from there. The next year, me and my Granny—yep, Granny, made a whirlwind tour of a dozen European countries.
- I’ve gallivanted around 6 of the 7 continents—with the penguins of Antarctica giving me the cold shoulder.
- South Africa is my numero uno country, hands down. Nothing beats the thrill of wildlife photography there—Africa’s the Oscars of the animal kingdom.
- As for credentials, I’ve got two college degrees under my belt—one in “Counting Beans” (also known as Accounting) and another one in “Freezing Time,” AKA Photography. I might have undergone a mini identity crisis when I swapped my CPA badge for a camera.
- Oh, and just so you know, I’m a hopeless Type-A obsessed with order, planning, and scheduling. Our planned itinerary is my bible when I’m on the road!
About John
- Growing up, my family was more “camp in the woods” than “camp in the living room.” This fostered in me a love of adventuring across the nooks and crannies of Uncle Sam’s backyard.
- I’ve racked up my fair share of passport stamps, having gallivanted across a whopping 5 out of 7 continents. (Antarctica and Australia, you’re next on my hit list!).
- The crown jewel of my travels? Scotland, hands down. We toured the stunning countryside in a camper van – like rockstars, but with more sheep and less groupies.
- On the career front, I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in the IT world. My certification in Network Engineering has seen me dabbling in everything from troubleshooting your grandma’s computer to ensuring your fast-food drive-thru order doesn’t end up being a game of Chinese whispers. If it beeps, I can fix it.
- Personality-wise, I’m as type-B as they come, preferring the thrills of spontaneous exploration over regimented itineraries when I travel. So it’s always a give and take when the wife and I travel together!
Places We’ve Traveled In The USA
This list is always changing as we are constantly visiting new places.
States
- Alabama
- Arizona (practically our home state)
- Arkansas
- Colorado
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Kansas (our home state)
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- New Hampshire
- New Mexico
- New York
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
- Washington D.C.
National Parks
- Grand Canyon (AZ)
- Saguaro (AZ)
- Mesa Verde (CO)
- Everglades (FL)
- Isle Royale (MI)
- Voyageurs (MN)
- Badlands (SD)
- Great Smoky Mountains (TN)
- Big Bend (TX)
- Arches (UT)
- Bryce Canyon (UT)
- Zion (UT)
- Shenandoah (VA)
- Olympic (WA)
- Mount Rainier (WA)
- Grand Teton (WY)
- Yellowstone (WY)
Places We’ve Visited In Canada
This list of Canadian places we have visited is always changing as we are constantly traveling to new locations.
Provinces
- Alberta
- New Brunswick
- Nova Scotia
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
National Parks
- Jasper (Alberta)
- Banff (Alberta)
- Cape Breton Highlands
- Fundy (New Brunswick)
- Kejimkujik (Nova Scotia)
- Prince Edward Island (PEI)
- Rouge Urban (Ontario)
Some Of Our Favorite Adventures From Outside North America
📍 Strutting like a boss while walking alongside a rhino in the wilds of South Africa 🦏
📍 Partying like it’s 1999 at Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee shindig in London
📍 Playing hide and seek with pink dolphins (aka spot the dolphin) along the riverbank in the Amazon Rainforest
📍 Being wannabe detectives on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland, with Nessie as our elusive ‘whodunit’ 🐉
📍 Turning into amateur zoologists while spotting our first wild dogs and a serval in the Okavango Delta (on our 4th African safari, no biggie)
Our Story
Once upon a time, in the grand year of 2001, a pair of wide-eyed lovebirds (that’s us, Jenny and John) decided to do the “adult” thing – we got hitched and joined the big, bad workforce. Talk about a party killer, right?
Suddenly, our globe-trotting ambitions were squished into a measly 2-3 weeks of vacation per year. But did we let that stop us? Heck no!
For over a decade and a half, we squeezed every drop of adventure out of those vacation days and holiday weekends. Who needs sleep when there’s a whole world to explore?
We’ve been everywhere from Thailand, where we celebrated the King’s birthday with the locals (can you say, “Happy birthday, Mr. King?” with a pad Thai in hand?), to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in London (we even brought her a gift, too bad she didn’t invite us in for tea).
We’ve smooched the Blarney Stone (don’t worry, we used antibacterial wipes first) and stood awestruck before the towering Christ the Redeemer in Brazil.
Heck, we even managed to squeeze in some good old-fashioned American road-tripping to some amazing National Parks in the U.S.
And just when you thought our travel tales couldn’t get any wilder, they do because, you see, we’ve got a soft spot for the wild things!
The kind you spot when feeding watermelon to monkeys in the Amazon jungle or on safaris in South Africa. Where the only traffic jams are caused by a herd of elephants and rush hour means ‘run, it’s a lion!’
We’ve locked eyes with moose in Canada, and we’re pretty sure they were just as stunned by us.
Fancy a swim? We sure did – with sharks in the Bahamas. Shivers and thrills guaranteed, life insurance not included!
But after a gazillion years of playing the corporate hamster—clocking in, clocking out, with barely enough leave time to take a catnap, we realized, “Hold on! Isn’t there more to life than this?”
2020 and moving forward
Well, slap us sideways and call us Shirley! 2020 sure was a whirlwind, wasn’t it?
Some faceless virus decided to play party pooper and put us all on house arrest. And boy, did it turn our lives into an episode of Twilight Zone!
The whole kerfuffle made us realize how fleeting life is.
And for us, we had another epiphany that year as well. We hit the big 4-0! (Yup, that happened).
That milestone made us look at our lives and consider if we were just existing or actually living.
So late into 2020, as the world started to peek out from behind the curtains, we decided enough was enough. We ditched the humdrum 9-5 grind and decided to replace office banter with birdsong.
Why settle for 2-3 weeks of vacation when we could make our lives one big vacation, right?
Who needs retirement when you can live the dream right now? What if ‘later’ never comes?
So, we kicked off our endless summer by borrowing Jenny’s parents’ RV (thanks, guys!) and set a course for sunny Arizona.
We wanted to be closer to John’s mom, and guess what? We lived it up in Tombstone for four glorious months! Come spring, we bid adieu to the desert and returned to the Midwest.
But the adventure didn’t stop there, oh no! We hopped on a plane to the exotic Botswana and then crisscrossed the good ol’ USA.
We loved the RV life so much, that we got our own! (welcome home, rolling beast!).
We now spend our days exploring but always make time to return to the Midwest for several months a year to hang with family and friends.
As for the future? Who knows!
The rat race? Been there, done that.
Our new mantra is: Fund the next adventure, live that adventure, rinse and repeat. Talk about a life upgrade, huh?
Traveling In Focus blog
This grand idea has been brewing in our minds for eons while we were shackled to our 9-5 jobs. But alas! Something always came up, and we never quite found the time to get it off the ground.
Now, as we have busted out of the employment chains and decided to travel till we drop, this blog has shot up to the top of our to-do list.
Our mission?
To dish out tantalizing tips on stellar photography spots, serve you handy itineraries for those short-and-sweet weekend getaways (in case you still have a “real job”), and spark that wanderlust in you to add incredible places in the U.S. and Canada to your ‘must-visit’ list.
But why, out of all the places in the world, did we choose to explore and write about just the U.S. and Canada (because we have certainly been to a ton of incredible places, right?!)?
Well, to be brutally honest, we just got tired of all those in-flight meals and jet lag.
Plus, we realized we had been gallivanting all over the globe, often overlooking the jaw-dropping, selfie-worthy spots right in our own backyard! The irony, right?
And the national parks! Don’t get us even started on those.
National parks are like nature’s HBO series – full of drama, suspense, and jaw-dropping visuals that make you feel so small and insignificant (in a good way, of course).
And guess what? The U.S. and Canada are absolutely brimming with these natural marvels. From the moose in Jasper National Park to the sprawling wetlands of the Everglades, there’s a whole treasure trove right here waiting to be explored.
And so, friends, our new chapter of adventure has begun, and we are putting our new RV through the ropes as we explore right here on our own stomping grounds.
Because let’s face it, who needs an airplane meal when you can have a picnic under a giant sequoia?
Our Other Passion
If you don’t know, John is a huge craft beer fan. We have a second website solely dedicated to beer and breweries around the world. If that interests you, we would love you to visit Beer Decoded.
Other Places to Find Us
Visit us at our socials! Get more up-to-date content about our current locations as we travel through the U.S. and Canada in our RV.