Greetings! Welcome to our blog.

To give you a brief introduction to who we are and why we are doing this we need to go back a while. Christy and Ben met in Algonquin Park in the late 1990's while working as canoe tripping guides at a summer camp. The love of the outdoors and adventure brought us together and has taken us across Canada. In 2008 we settled in Guelph, Ontario, with great plans to travel further. We have two kids, Con (9) and Kai (5) who have come to shape our new reality of adventure. After some "hiccups," we are planning our trip to circumnavigate the planet beginning August, 2020!

History

In the winter of 2015 we received the worst news a parent can - your son has cancer. Our baby Kai was not even a year old when he was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer. The weeks and months that followed were a whirlwind. We all fought with him through the surgeries and chemotherapy, and struggled to keep some degree of normalcy for Con. Kai's fight lasted for 4 years, through a relapse into his lungs, loads of chemo, multiple surgeries, countless hospital visits, scans and tests.

Through all of this we have been tied to home. It was “too risky” to travel 2 hours from a hospital. It was impossible to go on a canoe trip in the backcountry of Ontario like we had done annually before this stupid tumour. We focused on kicking this cancer out of Kai’s body, on getting everyone healthy and building our family free from medical interruptions.

Dreams Come True

We started to save for a time when we were free to go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted, and however we wanted. We dreamed of being in the places we love, that feel like a part of us at the cellular level. We dreamed of visiting the best people we know who have moved far away, and we dreamed of visiting worlds we have only seen in pictures. We dreamed of walking beside people with whom we have never walked.

Kai dreams of walking along the Great Wall of China and imagining what it felt like for the Mongolians when they came across it in their travels thousands of years ago. Con dreams of playing soccer with kids in every country, running on a beach, and teaching them how to play his beloved sport of hockey. He scrolls through street view on Google maps and can actually imagine that he will be walking down those streets, those forest trails.

In the summer of 2019 we were given the news we had been waiting for - Kai had beaten cancer. We are all healthy now. We have been given the high five go ahead from our son’s medical professionals.

Plans

So here we are, ready to find our place in the world; ready to learn about our differences, our similarities, our impacts and contributions; ready to break the mold of the North American nuclear family and find community around the world. Together, we will be able to put the world in context. We will understand the value of learning new languages and communicating when you can’t rely on words.

Now we plan to shout from deep in the forests, along the beaches, through the deserts, and high on the mountain tops, “Let’s go away!”