The first time Ben and I ever met was on a trip to the Highland Scenic Highway in the Monongohela National Forest . You could say this trip was the birth of DirtRoadTrip.
Since we’re coming up on the 1 year anniversary of DirtRoadTrip, a story of where it all began seems to be in order (don’t worry no 9 seasons of How I Met Your Mother nonsense here). The pictures are light, but this is before either one of us really cared about photography, and we never thought we’d end up needing them.
Like all great friendships, ours began on the internet. We both chimed in on a thread on Expedition Portal back in January of 2012 for a group that was planning on getting together to check out the Highland Scenic Highway in the Monongahela National Forest. A lot of us were new to the whole concept of Overlanding, and our goal was to explore the area together, meet some new people, and hopefully find a little snow.
Our group all linked up the night before in Summersville, WV and we hit the road at first light. Immediately we could see that the area had seen a fair amount of snow fall recently, but fortunately for us all of the roads were well plowed and we were able to get around with relative ease.
We found some time to take a break and finally got to kick some tires and get to know each other. At the time I still had my stock L322 Range Rover, and Ben had his 4Runner with suspension setup version 1. I got to spend some time talking to Ben and Becca (totally knew they would get married) and was also introduced to the famous Huckleberry.
After a meal at this great local diner that I can’t remember the name of, we parted ways and I gave Ben my road map so he could find a way home (I never got it back by the way). We didn’t link up again until VOT 2013, but with a mutual love of Overlanding, we started kicking around the idea of our own blog in casual conversation, next thing you know I’m writing every week.
I find myself writing about this because now 2 years later the thread over at Expo has been revived and there are talks of another trip this winter. Never would I have thought we would be running this website and have gone on so many awesome trips, but without all of the great guys I met on the first go around it would never have happened.
So now that you know the story, keep an eye out for the DirtRoadTrip 1 Year Anniversary, we have something kick ass planned and we hope to see as many of you as possible.
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