A little About us
Our Story – How It Started
I wish I could say something exciting about how we quit our boring-life-sucking-jobs to travel the world but that’s not our story. We met way back in the late 80’s in a gigantic nightclub.
No, it wasn’t like that. We both worked there and it was one of the best times of our lives. 3000 people a night, loud music, and no responsibilities. Until, we found ourselves preparing for our first child. That changes everything!
All of a sudden we found ourselves thinking about things like car seats and health insurance. Our fun-carefree-days were over. What to do next?? Well, Ron decided to join the military. And with that we were not just traveling the world but moving to different countries (Japan and Italy). The best part…we didn’t have to pay for it!
Our Travel Style
We like comfort, but also love to save money. It’s a balance. Staying in a fancy hotel is great but we’re also just fine with camping in a tent. Audra is all about saving money where she can and using that money to go on more trips!
It might be surprising to know that we’re actually homebodies. We love being home, watching movies and our shows, and working on our hobbies and side projects. Again, it’s a balance. It’s always exciting to head to a new destination but it always feels good to be heading home.
Why you should travel
Travel is some of the BEST education you can get. You learn so much about cultures, history, art, and just connecting with different people you may have never had the chance to meet. In return, those trips will teach you about yourself.
You’ll find that you learn things about yourself that you didn’t know. Whether it’s finding out you’re more adventurous than you thought (or not) or maybe you’ll discover a passion for ancient history you didn’t know you had. Traveling will open your eyes and heart to things you never knew existed.
About Audra
My name is Audra and I’ve taken my addiction for travel and my love of photography and combined them here. I’ve been traveling my entire life, moving three times by the time I was just two years old. I moved from the US to the Netherlands at the age of four. That move to Europe is what started my lifelong passion for travel.
I’ve loved the medium of photography and for over twenty years now it’s been my profession. I owned a portrait studio for many years photographing families and babies, proms, military events, and a few weddings. I also spent three years photographing hotels before choosing to focus more on travel photography.
About Ron
I’m Ron and I served in the Air Force for 20 years before my first retirement, worked another 11 years as an IT Leader, and then retired for good in 2021. Would you believe I never left the state of Texas until I was 25 years old? It’s true. I don’t share the same sort of DNA based travel obsession that drives my wife, but I do enjoy traveling and have a deep respect for history, sociology, and culture. As a photographer, she must simply experience “the shot”. I’m good finding the exact same picture on Google.
Audra is an optimist. I’m a fatalist. She always plays the perfect movie envisioning the happy path of the trip while I play everything out in its worst-case scenario. I figure if I do that then I can only ever be impressed by a better outcome or satisfied that “I was right”. In the end, it usually falls somewhere in between. You can always count on me to level out the bliss!
Interesting Facts About Us
Everyone has something interesting about themselves. These are a few of ours.
That time we won a Jeep Wrangler
We once won a jeep Wrangler from a Dr Pepper can purchased from a soda machine. We were just 3 months from military life and didn’t need the jeep so we took the cash instead. $10,000. Yes, back in 1990 you could buy a brand new jeep for just 10K!
Twins
We wanted 3 kids but our 3rd pregnancy resulted in identical twins. As if that weren’t enough, it ended up being a rare pregnancy condition called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). Short explanation is there’s an uneven exchange of blood between the twins with one having too little and the other receiving too much.
This was all back in 1992 and all but one (out of 7) of my OB/GYN doctors had never even heard of this problem. This resulted in them being born at just 28 weeks and the chance of them surviving was less than 10%. Thankfully we beat the odds and all survived!
Winning the Twin Trifecta
Have you ever been horse racing? Our first military assignment was in Albuquerque NM and horse racing was a big thing. We had never been and really didn’t have the money to go but we wanted to see what it was all about.
In horse racing they have different ways to make bets including what is known as the Twin Trifecta. This is a bet placed on the 4th race of the day and you have to pick the first, second, and third finishers in their exact order. If you do that, then you get a chance to bet on the first, second, and third finishers of race number 5.
If you get that one, you win this big pot of money. If nobody wins, the pot of money rolls over until the following weekend. Usually, the pot is huge (like $100,000+) before anyone actually wins and maybe 1-2 people will win.
So, we place our bet on the 4th race and actually win. We place our bet on the 2nd race and…OMG we won! We were so poor back then with 2 kids, 2 on the way and military pay sucks so we only made around $850 a month.
Of course, someone won it the week before so the pot was just over $10,000. Okay, we still would have been thrilled with that! Wouldn’t you know it, 10 people won that thing! So we got $1150. No complaints since that was more than we made in 1 month and we had baby supplies x2 to buy.