About Our Own Route
Why we hike, why we travel without an itinerary, and why we'll tell you when the gear didn't work.
We're a couple that would rather walk somewhere than sit still. Some of that happens close to home — the remote corners of Quicksilver, the old bath house ruins and coastal batteries of San Francisco Some of it happens a lot farther out. Either way, the goal is the same: explore it, stay moving, and actually see the place instead of driving past it.
Backpacking used to be a regular thing for me, and I'm trying to get back into it. For the first time in many years I made an overnight trip into the Sierrs. Vung joined me on this trip making it her first ever backing trip -- and she loved it. So we need to get out there again on another trip. There's something about getting away from crowds and pavement that resets you. The quiet of a remote trail, the sheer scale of mountains, or honestly just a patch of unexpected nature tucked inside a city. We're not picky about which one it is. We just like to explore it.
We're also not planners — not in the itinerary sense, anyway. Give us a general direction and we'll figure out the rest as we go. We once spent two months traveling through France and Spain with almost no plan at all: fly into Paris, pick up a camper van, end up in Barcelona eventually, fly home out of Madrid. Everything in between got filled in based on how we felt and what was happening around us. We did the same thing in London and Scotland, and some of the best moments of that trip — festivals, events, detours we never would have planned for — only happened because we hadn't locked ourselves into someone else's schedule.
That's really where the name comes from. We don't love a rigid, pre-set path, so we make our own — Our Own Route.
Along the way, we like to share what actually happens: what worked, what didn't, and what we'd do differently next time. That goes for trails and destinations, and it goes for gear too. We test the equipment we use — and if something fails, we say so. You'll see that on the channel: a bear canister that let us down, a water filter that earned its spot in the pack. We'd rather tell you the truth than sell you something.
Our Own Route grew out of The Best Life Awaits, where we first started posting our trips. This channel is the home for the hiking, backpacking, and outdoor side of what we do — its own route, split off from the rest.
If that sounds like your kind of trip, subscribe on YouTube and come along.