In life, my two biggest passions are travel and dogs. 🌍🐕
My friends joke that while traveling I often meet more canine-friends than human-friends, annnd they’re not entirely wrong 🤷♀️.
One day my dream is to start a doggy-daycare and rescue shelter, but until then I am just a normal girl chugging away at my 8-5 job (does anyone actually work from 9-5?!), and traveling whenever I can get vacation time.
Our adventure pups, Hunter (left) and Rylie (right) at the top of Rylie’s first mountain!
Growing up, I loved the outdoors
Born and raised in rural Western New York, the outdoors has always been a big part of my life.
Some of my most fond childhood memories were those made on family camping trips, snowboarding with friends, bridge jumping, and just getting covered in mud doing stupid things.
While I always knew I’d go to college, the prospect of moving far away from home was pretty intimidating. My parents are high school sweethearts, which means that both sides of our family live locally…so why would I want to leave?
My parents would tell you that I talked the big talk about moving to Hawaii to be “as far away from you as possible!” (…oh, the teenage years), but in reality that scared the shit out of me. 😬
Luckily I found a great college where I could study engineering AND compete in track and field (my two requirements), all while only being just over an hour away from home.
My school: Alfred University.
Hairpin turn – A view from campus, popular among students, overlooking the sweeping fields of Alfred, NY
Attending school in the middle of nowhere has it drawbacks…like the fact that we only had 2 bars, 1 convenience store, and a few “mehh” places to eat.
But beyond Main Street, this tiny little area truly had so much to offer…
Foster Lake – A campus-owned lake that you could sneak away to between classes for a quick swim, or sometimes find an unlocked kayak to “borrow”
Between both my Bachelors and Masters degrees I spent a total of six years in Alfred (2010-2016). But little did I know, of all things, an impromptu Applebee’s date in 2014 would literally change my life…
Half-price apps
Two friends, who I actually barely knew at the time, Krishna and Higgs, were planning to backpack through Ecuador and Peru the following summer. And for reasons unbeknownst to me, they were determined to convince me to come.
So, they invited me to Applebee’s for half-price apps at Happy Hour (who can pass that up?!)… and well, after a few drinks and seeing pictures of what they’d be doing, I made a quick call to my parents:
“Hey Mom and Dad, sooooo I think I’m gonna go backpack through South America this summer…okay?”
Alright, it wasn’t that easy, but they handled it surprisingly well!
And as I hinted, that trip was a huge turning point for me.
Crossing the Salkantay Pass (15,200′) along our 45 mile hike to Machu Picchu.
We backpacked hundreds of miles through Ecuador and Peru over the course of 5 weeks – seeing landscapes that blew my mind, eating foods I’d never even heard of, and doing things I never thought I was brave enough to do!
I was HOOKED!
Prior to this trip, the extent of my travel had been Canada and a couple Caribbean islands. I’d NEVER done anything like this! And honestly, I never even had the desire…
(THANK. GOD. FOR APPLEBEES HAPPY HOUR! 😋🙌)
Since then….
You could say the travel bug has taken hold of me!
Any chance I get I try to venture off to somewhere I’ve never been, often with my boyfriend (and fellow adventure-lover), Davis.
When we’re not traveling somewhere, I’m planning the next trip while we cram in as many mini weekend adventures as possible.
Our little family at the peak of Prospect Mountain in Lake George, NY
Currently, I live in Albany, NY with Davis and our two dogs and work as a Development Engineer at a small precision ceramics company.
While I eventually hope to one day lead a life where I am my own boss and I have the flexibility to travel and explore more, I currently work a normal job like everyone else: 8am-5pm Monday thru Friday. Every. Damn. Week.
But, it’s just a stepping stone for me, and also helps to unbury myself from the heaping pile of student debt that plagues so many of us “kids” nowadays.
While Albany itself isn’t an adventurer’s dream come true, it’s actually the perfect location to access a lot of great regions in NY – the Adirondacks, Lake George, the Catskills, the Finger Lakes, – oh, and NYC if you’re into that kind of thing 😉.
Overlooking Lake Placid from the peak of Whiteface Mountain
Albany definitely isn’t our permanent home, but the mountains and lakes of New York State will keep us and our adventure pups busy until we have the opportunity to make the dream move out west. Or somewhere completely different! …I guess we will see where life takes us!
Adventure, explore, and wander. Always.
