About Us...
Kristen is a US Pacific Northwesterner through and through. She is from Seattle, WA and will tell you that it really doesn’t rain that much in Seattle. The outdoors are her passion. Kristen loves hiking and backpacking anywhere and everywhere. In lieu of purses she hordes backpacks. She is prepared for any and every travel situation and has been known to repack 10 times per trip, ‘just in case’. Kristen comes from a family of international travelers who have enjoyed family trips to China, New Zealand, and endless gymnastics meets. Her second passion is food of all varieties–Kristen is never very far from her next snack. She loves to bake and can usually be found invading the host’s kitchen asking about a recipe (or, maybe, attempting to get an early taste of dinner), many of which can be found in the Dumpling Corner. Kristen has always loved fish and the ocean and her job experiences include counting dead salmon on isolated lakes in Alaska, counting live salmon in the Olympic Peninsula, and performing snorkel surveys in the Indian Ocean while living with a local family in the Comoros Islands. Currently, she is finishing up her Ph.D. in mathematical biology and fisheries science at the College of William and Mary.
Dan is an old curmudgeon at heart. He is from New Hampshire (Live Free or Die!) and is just a touch envious of his home state’s most famous recluse, J.D. Salinger. Dan grew up commercial fishing with his dad, which taught him the fine art of balancing narcolepsy and hard work. His passions include: books, back country, and booze (usually not mutually exclusive). Slowly swaying in a hammock between two evergreens, surrounded by craggy peaks, while reading a Fitzgerald novel and sipping on a flask of whisky is the pure bliss he is endlessly seeking. His love of travel stems equally from his parents and grandma. As a kid he visited Russia soon after the fall of the Soviet Union leading to a lifelong fascination with the former soviet states, while in 5th grade he visited Hawaii with his grandmother which created a lifelong obsession with Magnum, P.I. Dan is always pushing to go to the remotest places he can (or cannot) find on google maps. Among his favorite destinations so far are: Abkhazia, the Bolivian Andes, the Libyan Sahara, and any eastern European mountain town that makes rakija. He loves fiction and one day hopes to have a small library and one of those old timey globes that opens up into a liquor cart. When you look at the bookshelf of your next home stay and wonder who left that disintegrating Thomas Hardy book that no one would ever read, you know who to thank. Dan has a Ph.D. in mathematical biology and fisheries science.
Contributors
Of course, this site would not be possible without all the friends, family, and fellow travelers that have accompanied us on our trips and inspired our adventures. Hopefully, we will be recruiting some of you to help contribute your own tales to the site. Until then, thanks for putting up with us!
