Hi there and welcome to our site!

I'm John, better known in the Pensacola, Florida area as "Devyn's dad". I've grown up traveling beginning with vacations as a child, camping with the scouts, and through a tour in the Marine Corps in the early sixties. If you are doing the math that would make me on the wrong side of sixty-seven but I'm not ready to get old yet. I have five children, four boys and a favorite daughter. I always wanted to take them on vacations but due to a lot of circumstances beyond my control I wasn't able to. I was like most people today, busy with career, always going and just not taking time to smell the roses.

This was true for my first family which consisted of three boys and my favorite daughter. After a divorce in late '82 I began the job of raising the three youngest on my own. This has no bearing on mother as she allowed the kids to live with whomever they wanted too. In 1984 I gave up drinking after what could have been a horrendous three hour ride on Saturday evening with the kids to see mom. It was now that things were extremely busy with work and raising children by myself. In 1987 I gave up non-filtered Camels after 27 years. I had always joked that when they reached a buck a pack I was done and it just happened that they were nine dollars a carton when I quit. In 1990 I moved to Florida with my daughter and attended what was then Florida Baptist Theological College to study Church Music. That was how I ended up in Florida.

In 1994 I met Devyn's mother and an event took place in 1995 that changed my life forever. Around this time my interest in the outdoors was renewed with the purchase of a canoe. Oh how I loved to just get away from the world for a three day weekend solo trip on a river somewhere. Before the special event took place I made a promise to this unborn child that I would show him this great country of ours. I continued working and backpacking became a renewed interest in 2005. This was something we could do together and did until shortly after my retirement from the workforce in 2007. It seems the old age syndrome called arthritis invaded my left hip. We planned to hike the Florida Trail over the winter of 2009 but during preparation my left hip informed me to make other plans. There was only one thing left to do; show Devyn America as I had promised fifteen years earlier.

On November 30, 2009, we headed west across the southwestern states armed with courage, a tent and sleeping bags. Returning to Florida a few months later we took a break while purchasing a travel trailer and setting up this website for those who wished to follow along. We welcome you along on our journey and will do our best to keep you informed as to where we have been, where we are headed, and how we are doing. Our wish is for you to enjoy our journey as much as we are to the best of our ability. We would also like to take this opportunity to ask you to sign our guest book.

Thanks and happy trails,

Devyn's Dad aka John Brown