A name says a lot about a person or group. Sometimes it shares personalities, other times it depicts heritage, or origin.
Our name was birthed from the desire to have excitement. To share in an experience that was many times more than we could hope for. As we brainstormed about traveling coast to coast we began to realize we would be sharing one amazing adventure after another. That two families would be experiencing all that both countries had to offer for an entire year. That we would be visiting the ocean bordering both sides of our continent. From sea to sea. That's when the thought came. What if we had a name that shared our excitement, our longing for adventure and our goal of traveling from country to country or sea to sea. The idea began to take shape, morphing from a "sea" to a "C" and realizing the explosive connection of having four "C"s together. Thus C4 Adventures was born.
Of course we realized that we were thinking coast to coast, country to country, sea to sea and that we'd also be visiting the Arctic Ocean as well, adding yet another C, but we just couldn't get our heads around the mathematical equation that would be 7 C's (Arrr, that sounds like a piratey reference). Seven of them? We thought, "How would that fit in with a catchy name?", so we went with just the four.
We did realize that a name like C4 could be a bit explosive, but we thought hey, if we're going to get our name out there, we might as well do it with a bang!
As for the motorhome and a truck pulling a fifth wheel going over the edge, we tried to incorporate our two rigs into the logo and were thinking about how we took a wrong turn and got the motorhome stuck in the mud on our Geocaching adventure, but we couldn't think of how to show that easily in a logo so we thought, what if the truck was pulling the trailer right off the edge. It seemed to work so we went with it.

It all started August 2009 right after I was in a fatal 3 vehicle car accident. A young lady in her twenties was texting and driving when she failed to stop at a stop sign. She died shortly after the accident . My oldest daughter Kelda and I were in the truck at the time and it deeply affected both of us! I missed a bunch of work and had whiplash and post traumatic stress.
 In the midst of all that our good friends invited us to come to Haines to get away from it all for the August long weekend. After much persuading we agreed to go. Since our truck was being repaired we borrowed my in-laws truck and camper.  

That trip was a great time . We fished crabbed and shrimped and put aside the difficulties of the car accident for a while. After that weekend we decided to make a tradition out of it. We go every year if we can on the August long weekend.

One morning I decided to try the fifth-wheel oven since I have not really tried it that much. I proceeded to make Cinnamon buns, however, since its a propane oven, I cooked them a little close to the burner and burnt the bottoms to a crisp. One of our friends said, "I am going to have to cut the bottom of off these to eat them." Kaysa quickly replied, "I'll eat the bottoms!" We all looked at the pickiest eater in the room and asked if she liked burnt food? She replied by saying, "We are going to live in here for a year, I might as well get used to it!" We all laughed as she proceeded to eat two burnt bottoms!

One of the things we did while we were in Haines was Geocaching. We got 9 out of 11 Geocaches there. We are participating in the 7 souvenirs of August to see if we can get all 7 caches that are available! If we do, we will earn the achievement award! Since we do not have a letterhead cache in the Yukon we needed to get it in Haines. 

In the evenings we sat by the fire and made Smore´s and such. One evening we even made cones with marshmallows, bananas and chocolate chips that we grilled on the fire. Of corse we had Norwegian waffles for breakfast one morning as that has become tradition as well.
Both on the way in and out to Haines we stopped at Frosty's for ice cream as we all love our ice cream.

A couple years ago we talked about a 6 month road trip going across southern Canada and the northern States. We had a route mapped out, an approximate cost and ideas of what we wanted to see. Then we started to look at the cost, the time off needed, how much driving we would be doing compared to non-driving time, and the age of our kids. We decided that it was all too much right now. We put the idea on the back burner. We said that "someday" when the kids were older, or when we had more time, or when we had more money, we would look at it again and go. We still wanted to do it. We enjoy traveling together but a six month road trip was just a little too intimidating. 

Then, a year ago, our life came to a halt. My husband's parents and his Grandmother were all killed in what can only be called an incredible and unbelievable tragedy. It turned our lives upside down and shocked us to our core. We put our lives in Whitehorse on pause and went to Colorado with our kids to deal with all the stuff that needs taking care of during a time like this. 

While we were cleaning out my in-laws house I found something that reminded me about the only real dream I remember my mother-in-law talking about. Since she was a young teenager she had had a dream to backpack around Europe. She wanted to go with her husband or her kids and travel all over, staying in B&B's and experiencing all the Europe could offer. Her trip was always postponed because of time, money, kids, life. The last time I talked to her she said “someday” I’ll go and maybe my kids and their families will go with me. She never went. Her “someday” never came. 

The other upset came about 6 months after my in-laws death. I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called dermatomyositis. The diagnoses came 8 years after I first started to go to doctors about sudden weakness in my muscles. I was glad that I was not completely crazy and there was something going on but it was, and still is, also scary for me. I'm not the only one in our group with an autoimmune disorder either. Sunniva was diagnosed awhile ago with multiple sclerosis. 

All this together has caused us to rethink our road trip plans. I did not want this dream of ours to never come to pass. I don’t want to wait until everything lines up perfectly for us to go, because that never happens. It’s never the right time. "Someday" never comes, we only have today. 

We want to make this a reality and we want our kids to be a part of it. We want them to experience all the cultural and geographical differences these two amazing countries have to offer. We want them to do it while they are young enough to enjoy traveling with their families and old enough to remember what they experience. We want what they would learn in school to come to life in real situations: using real life math by figuring out gas mileage, reading maps, using a compass, not just reading about historic places, but visiting them. 

I understand that logistically we can’t take off today or tomorrow and hope everything works itself out. But we are actively planning this trip. Our projected date to leave is June 29th, 2016. We have a route, a cost list, RV’s, the beginnings of a packing list and the start of the funds needed saved. 

You always hear or read sayings like: "learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow", "don't put off tomorrow what you can do today", "seize the day", "live in the moment". That's what we are trying and hoping to do. This last year has reinforced for us the importance of family and spending time valuing one another. We are going on this road trip to do just that. Be with each other. Value each other. 


~Rachel