How the Marvin Adventure Began

We love to travel. Because of our time in the US Air Force, we have been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things. On our own, we have traveled even further and had even more adventures. Most of those adventures are shared in my original blog - Making It - Seeing It - Sharing It - which I have not updated since our Amtrak trip to Seattle in 2018. Blogspot won't let me add new posts there so this is a new start.

In the last couple of years, a theme in our discussions about future travel adventures involved the idea that someday we would buy a vehicle that we can use to travel to remote places. A camper, a bus, a van we talked about a lot of options. We have the truck and trailer that we take camping at the lake, and though the combination is great for that use, FabHub doesn't want to drag it around the country.

So, we kept talking and thinking that someday we would be ready to retire and get a vehicle that was easier to drive. Something easy to navigate in cities, a vehicle to camp out of if necessary, and with room available for hauling things if we needed it for that. There are people to visit and Cornhole tournaments to hit all over this wonderful country. That was our plan for the future, maybe five years or so down the road.

Then in 2020, the pandemic happened. Travel plans to anywhere were pretty much put on hold. We hardly left the farm for more than groceries and animal supplies. The virus was everywhere and we worried that it would be even worse later in the year. That created a problem we needed to solve. 

We had been visiting family in Kansas at Christmas for the last few years. We did not want to risk not seeing them this year or have the trip canceled due to the virus. Who knew what the situation would be then and being teachers we were concerned about carrying the virus either out of our classrooms or back into it after the trip. Due to those concerns, we decided to make the trip in July instead of waiting for later in the year.

There are so many different things to do in Kansas in July than in December! We discussed some touristy things to go see and then realized that wasn't a good idea and besides, all of those places started shutting down. One thing stayed open, the State Parks! I suggested that we pull the trailer out there and camp at Lake Eldorado for a few days. We could bring the kayaks and all of our regular camp setup! As I mentioned above, FabHub was not so into the idea of pulling the trailer across the country.

Thus, began the search for a Ford Transit cargo van. Someday was about to become a day in June 2020!