About Miles of Yellow Lines
Hello and welcome! My name is Mandy. My husband, Justin, and I love to travel. We both work full time in Missouri, and we make it a point to travel when we can work it out with our schedules. On our travels (and when we’re close to home), we like to get outside. We run, hike, bike, kayak, and paddle board.
Several years ago, we set a goal to visit all the U.S. National Parks. We took our first National Park trip in 2014, when we visited Colorado. We only made it to one National Park on this trip, but it was a big one: Rocky Mountain National Park. Other highlights on this trip included Pike’s Peak, Garden of the Gods, horseback riding, and white-water rafting. We had such a great time that we returned next year, but we added a new state (Utah) and some new national parks: Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Arches, and Canyonlands. In 2016, we went back again and added Great Dunes National Park. Read more about our trips in the Our Adventures section.
On our National Park trip in 2014, we tent camped for one night. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was my first time camping, so this was a big milestone for me. Each year, we grew more and more comfortable tent camping (and also enjoyed the money-saving aspect), so we’d add a few nights here or there. The majority of our nights were still in hotels. The more we camped, the more we dealt with the elements: heat, humidity, cold, rain, wind etc. We’d rushed to set up our tent before incoming rain. We’d packed up wet tents in the morning. We’d huddled in the middle of the tent during a 3AM thunderstorm trying to stay dry. After a while, we started discussing buying a travel trailer (towable RV). In 2020, we bought one and it’s been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
Now that we have a camper, we make it a point to take it out as often as we can. Sometimes it’s in the form of a two-week vacation. Sometimes it’s a one-night camping trip less than an hour from home. It’s great to get away and explore both near and far from home.
The trips we take often take us off the beaten path. We’ll often spend days without driving on an interstate highway. “Miles of Yellow Lines” is in reference to the state highways and county roads that take us to these incredible destinations.