The best adventures are the ones you didn't expect

by Nabila Ola Endress (Australia)

I didn't expect to find USA

We have been travelling in a 24ft trailer across the west coast of America for the past 7 months as we decided to escape a life that we were born into and conditioned to live. A 9-5 didn’t make sense to us when travelling the world had much more seductiveness & appeal. Fed up with our lives and a desire for the unknown, we went into this blindly and quickly, “What else do we have to lose?” we asked ourselves. This sparked a rush inside us not knowing what we were getting ourselves into, leaving comfort and stability behind us. There was no plan but just to escape the predictable and to escape now. Our family as we know it, would now come down to just the two of us. It’s all we had living a life on the open road while pictures of our friends and family hung from a fishing line secured by flimsy pegs on a wall as we had no plan nor desire to return home. Our new abode showed us some of the most diverse terrains we have ever seen. Shades of lilac, indigo and violet as we drove through endless fields of lavender which I always dreamed of seeing remembering in that very moment how I was pushing this very dream aside to the common phrase of “one day” and how I now can see all this unimaginable colour of burnt fiery orange hues nestled into some of the highest mountain terrains in America. Driving through the most unbelievable winding roads on top of a glacier in Montana, giving us incredible scenic views we have ever witnessed, swearing in that moment we had been teleported to the coastline of Italy, yet we were in the United States. It was only 7 months in, living in a very small space the size of a standard bedroom if not smaller, adapting to our new life and adapting to being around your partner in crime, months in and months out without trying to suffocate each other. We have learnt more about life and ourselves than what we had learnt in all those years going to school. How is this possible? I learnt about the wild and the wilderness first hand and not from the books we read. How these big scary bears that we were warned about or should never come across were just happy to roam the road right beside us only 2ft away. To learning how much strength we didn’t know we had until we had to move our arms for 6 hours straight, steering with a paddle, navigating through rough and unsteady waters below us in our canoe. Learning to think quick in emergency situations, improvising what to do when our car brakes stopped working coming down a steep hill down the rockies to applying first aid on the lake of Mt hood to a severe injury with no hospital in sight. Not having been taught any of these life skills in all of our years - travelling in such a short space of time has given us the confidence to conquer any battle both mentally and physically that would appear on the horizons ahead. As we continue to travel on the open road we look at life with a whole new perspective with fresh eyes on how we now view the world. A new lease on life as if we have been reborn into it. Blessed to discover places that people would only dream of, saving these dreams for their “one day”. Discovering a utopia of majestic waterfalls, bathing under all of them so freely, having it all to ourselves, surprised that no one else has posted about it anywhere, then realizing how far into forests we have ventured into. How lucky we are to have found them. I am grateful to have gone against the grain, trusted my instinct to venture into complete mystery and uncertainty with no plans in this short life with our only goal to feel alive. The best adventures in life are the ones you didn’t expect to find, the ones you didn’t expect to go on and the ones you didn’t expect would change your life forever.