Bonus Episode! Meet Your Hosts

V right now. Yes, this special episode is recorded in this very beautiful r V. Yes we have this, but we turned the little dining table into a Makeshifts studio. Yeah, and you know what, we'll throw up a photo of that just so you can see kind of how we record on the road, because it's kind of fun to see. Yeah, we're still getting used to it. We're gonna first start off with Matt, and where did you grow up then, so to give a little background or a lot of

background condensed into a few minutes. Um, I grew up in southern New Hampshire in a town called Candya, which is a few minutes outside of Manchester, the state's biggest city. But I'm still I'm not sure if most people are aware that don't even exists. It's about an hour north of Boston, so very like a peaceful, semi rural area in New Hampshire. And I grew up with brother and sister.

I was the oldest, right, I'm the oldest, and we had a lovely childhood um playing soccer in the local sports league where my brother and I were always in the same team, and we're always like the star athletes

of the soccer team were always very very good. And can we just note real quick, I'm sorry I have to throw this in there, but you might be the oldest, but sometimes you treated like the youngest where like your sister and good, yeah, here's the youngest and then you do Yeah that was I'm sorry, I have to bring up embarrassing moments as well. That was the thing. But yeah, that definitely happened. So I am got back out of the star, right, let's get back on track with my

soccer stardom. So yeah, I remember like that was one of my favorite memories was the local soccer league. And this guy who lived on the street from us was our coach for years and we're on the team with his son and I feel like he always still preferred Brian and I had to be like the starting soccer players because we were really good. Yeah, so that was really great. And then also all of us were really

into the outdoors. Nothing too hardcore intense. We wouldn't We weren't into like intense hiking or like backcountry stuff or anything. But when I say outdoors, I mean like we would explore the woods around our house because there's lots of those, and all year around, whether it was winter and we're like build forts or go sledding straight into the woods like perilously, or in the summer especially just venturing off into the hills and the woods and along the brooks.

And then that was that was so wonderful. And there was like three My favorite thing there was. There was three hills in the in the woods. Um and my brother and my sister and I all kind of claimed one and named one. And Brian's quote unquote mountain was slide mountain, which kind of is a misnomer because you can't slide off. It's like a sheer rock face, so

you just plummet if you go off of it. And Emily's my sister, she had this kind of like tree saturated mountain thing, and she called it Queen Mountain, which is you know, fine, and then right, yeah, okay, and then mine was on the other side of hers, and early signs of narcissism here, I called mine mountain me and that's just that's probably something to I could spend

a whole episode evaluating that from my psychological perspective. But yeah, so this was like our domain, and we would do all sorts of games here as we became teenagers, were paintball back here with cousins and my uncle and yeah, just all kinds of adventure. And in addition to that kind of adventure where we would do lots of family vacations and trips, and a lot of that was at the time like stuff I wasn't super interested in. I was just boring Brady kid, and I'm sure like my

brother and sister were the same. And especially during summer vacations, we just wanted to like hang out in New Hampshire and probably go to the mall, which is so stupid, but we would do all these adventurous travels, like one time we took a train a sleeper car from Boston to Seattle and that took a few days probably, and what an epic adventure that was, and that's something I would love to do today, but at the time I

was just like whiny and like over it. And another trip which was I think very formative and had long lasting like memories even at the time that I didn't realize it was. We flew to Las Vegas and then rented a r V and drove around to like place like the Grand Canyon and Zion and I think Bryce as well, and that was not only like an amazing and fun thing to do as a family and an RV, but like I think that was the first and only

time that we've visited national parks as the family. So fortuitous. Again, yeah, very fortuitous. So I basically did what we're doing now, but as a kid, and for like a week and for like a week, yeah not like where are you're in? Yeah right, that's crazy. It's just crazy. So yeah, that was a snippet of like my upbringing. And then for college I moved. That's when I moved to Chicago after horrible high school. Um just you know, high school sucks, but I wanted she get away and do my own

thing and kind of start completely fresh. So I moved to Chicago to go to culinary school at Robin Morris University and had a wonderful time. That was a blast, even though I didn't I don't cook professionally now or really ever, but you learned all the techniques. Yeah. So I got into food writing. I kind of stumbled into and start of writing for the college newspaper, and that was a wonderful experience and again very fortuitous, and I just discovered like, oh, I like food writing more than

I like cooking. So I just applied what I learned in a different direction. And all these years later after culinary school, have basically completely forgotten every skill I've learned because I don't cook really at all anymore, so those

lessons are are long gone. But I have the great memories, and it's what helped me established myself in Chicago as a writer, and then did that for years and years, and then transitioned into more travel writing and then after that into more like nature national park writing and all that, and that started this path that ultimately let us here. And I met you in Chicago obviously, yes, yeah, while I was living in Ukrainian village. Remember driving up that

first date and you were in front of our loft. Yeah, you had Huck and Finn your I know, so I had had them both for a few years at that point. Yeah, when you drove in from your You're living in the suburbs at the time, and you drove in, parked your car and you saw I was just like outside taking them for a little walk. So that's when I first fell in love with you. Yeah, and that's but that that lefted its hold still to this day some of

our most special members because it's where we literally met. Um. It was the first property we bought together. You know, we rented it for years and then we bought it. Very meaningful and and yeah, I know it. Uh. I really missed that loft, all of it, the neighborhood, the building. It was just a really wonderful place to be and spend a few years and invest in two and then

you know, yeah, home is where mad is though. So well park Landia would turned soon after this short break, and then we will talk more about my life and growing up. I am Matt and I'm Brad. This is park Landia. So now we're gonna learn more about Brad and his upbringing and where he came from. I didn't wanted to say hello, hey, Finn, Hi, yeah, come here. Oh yeah. So I'm saying that's built in Detroit, driven

in Chicago or around the US nowadays. But um, I actually have to tell you I didn't grow up in Detroit. I grew up a mile north of Detroit and East Point, which used to be named East Detroit. Um. And for years, my high school is East detrit High School, and just recently they rebranded it to East Point, which is the actual city's name, because they finally decided to catch up with the times. I remember there's times like we were at we're at games, are like, oh my gosh, you

guys have weapons because you're from Detroit. You're just Detroit. I'm like, jeez, oki, But it's kind of funny. But honestly, my my childhood, we uh grew up on the on Steven's Dry I've been the smallest house on our block and I loved it. Um, there's so many great memories

there that I had. And um, you know, we had a huge backyard and that's the most important piece because in this backyard my dad had built a fort a play for it, and it was it wasn't anything too crazy, but it was just like a little room, four walls and a tented roof. I was able to climb on the roof, which led me jumping off onto it, into a trampoline, into a pool, you know, all those kind

of fun things. But and then at one year, I think he made an extension where he put a a tire swing in and I remember like spinning in that tire swing, but it was too close to the support beam and the actual play for it, and I smashed my head right into the side of it because I got pushed too hard in these circles because you're on a tire swing, so you have to go to the max because that's just life. But um, and it was great.

You know. There's just so many childhood memories in that backyard, but one of my favorite is in the back corner there was two poles that were like splits where like kids could get in between and it would lead into our dead end street and the house right behind usum belonged to my childhood best friends Christina and Leah, and they to me, they were like the little house on the Prairie style of family, and I personally was like the bad boy. My nickname was Badly Bradley. So um.

But it was a really like romantic childhood in that aspect of like adventure. And while our family didn't go on a lot of trips, I'll tell you that I explored every corner of East Point, all the houses and everything. I was in mayor's houses like with their kids, and and uh I was also in the not so best neighborhoods with other kids. And but it was one of those things that it it uh it allowed me to start understanding people. And then I remember on that dead

end street there was Nancy and Santy. They had a tomato garden in their backyard and there was like all different kinds of tomatoes and they would like grow them. So it was like actually like my first like lessons in gardening, and um, we would just get those tomatoes, cut them up and then put salt over them and just see them. And that would be like the midnight they stacked versus a um, you know bag of chips

or something like that. And uh yeah, I mean there was times where I ran away from home and like they would know I was at their house because I would just look in their fridge and like take their food, and Nancy would call my mom be like, hey, your son's over here, some worries. I'm gonna feed them. Yeah, Man, memories your childhood sounds like t Killa mocking Bird or something. It really is, like it was a magical childhood. And then of course there's like dramatic changes. You know, when

I turned thirteen. You know, I come from a split family. You know, my mom and dad got divorced. My dad left, um I did his thing, but my mom in that same year and my sister went into the army, and my mom worked her rear off two support me and to be there for me as much as she could while she was going throwing things. And we have come up on a mutual agreement that we grew up together and that was so important to me because she she's

helped me build my character. And uh, we also have another joke where it's you know, she might not have been able to pay for college because I also went into the Marines, but she definitely paid for the School of hard knocks because every time I fell, she had taken me back up and you know, take care of me beautiful. Also in thirteen, you Knowle and Christina moved to Fraser, Michigan, and UM, you know, so I kind of lost my support system, but that was no one's fault.

We were growing up and so, UM, it's one of those things that, uh, I had to I had to grow up quick and learn how to take care of myself. So, you know, I got my first job at sixteen at a hardware store, joined the Marines at seventeen with my parent signatures on the dodge lines. I did four years in the Marines, and UH, when I got out, I really got into activism because I served during Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I was out it, so it really wasn't something that I wanted to happened to other people.

So when I moved to Illinois, before meeting matt Um, I was going through UM like counseling and also working the activism route for marriage equality in Illinois. And during that time it was a really interesting time because I would be the president of our college at Page Pride Alliance and Sociology Club, and I would work with the

students that were younger than myself. I would tell them who I am, my story, and we would work to get better systems in place at the college and in the state level, and it was just a really amazing and interesting time because by the end of the marriage equality route, I mean knocking on seven thousand doors talking to representatives. We ended up winning by two votes, but I was exhausted with marriage. I'm like, I'm never getting married,

ever getting married. And uh, all of a sudden, one of my friends told me to download the app Tinder, and I said, no, I don't want to. I don't want to date, don't want to do do anything. He goes, just do it, and so I said, okay. So I swiped right on this really handsome gentleman in a banana sweatshirt. I mean it has bananas everywhere. And if you go to Matts, I'm saying, you'll see that picture and while cut out of that picture and um and that's Matt

Kersey dot com. Yeah. So it's actually kind of fun though, because uh so we connected and you know, the rest is uh sweet history, as they would say, um and through Matt, I actually decided to go to Robert Morris, which I was part of the Eye Center and Live Broadcasting scholarships there, and I had a really great time learning about how to be technically savvy with no equipment from recording to like broadcasting too audio and it actually

kind of helped me set up for this. Now, enough about each of us, but together, we don't have a let's say, story about like engagement Like. I mean, it was cute, it was fun, but I think our real story was when we were shot thing for engagement rings. So it was late fall, probably November, and we were downtown Chicago. I don't know what we're doing. We were just going out for the night or something. And while we're downtown, at some point you're like, I think you

suggested like we should look for engagement rings. So I was like sure. And then instead of going into some specific store because we had nothing in mind specifically or I didn't, um, you came up with this idea, this game or something called fate. Yeah, you came up with this idea called fate, and you suggested, like we kind of walk, just walk around downtown Chicago, and then at each crosswalk, if it was the walking symbol, you would cross it. If there was a flashing like saying like

stuff or something, you turn right or whatever. And then if it's completely opps then you turn left and you'd look to see if the other Man's walking man was there. Yeah, so basically, you never move backwards. You can only move forward because I'm really cheesy, So if you haven't figured that out yet, I love being cheesy, and you know

it's you can never move backwards. Yeah. Anyways, so we were doing that and letting that dictate our direction, and I was getting worried because like it seems like it was taking us towards Navy Pier and I'm like no, yeah, and it's crazy because we're like we were right next to Jeweler's row. I'm like, that's easy. But there's at one point where we walked around the building like two or three times, like it was like so silly. And that's when I think you were like starting to like

boil over. Well I was just like, yeah, I'm getting probably called and like hungry, I'm sure, and we wind up on Michigan Avenue at Sacks fifth Avenue. I think, yeah, well yeah, but it happened. Was like we were I saw the walking symbol and I'm like, we need to run. So we started to run because I knew that there was and I just knew that we had to run, and so we we dashed to make sure that we

made that walking man symbol. And then we get there. Yes, so we get there and then we go in and go up to the men's department start looking at the rings and they have a good selection, and then we both see this ring that has black diamonds on it, and we sell it together because we were looking by ourselves and nothing. And then we get together and we start looking in. The first ring that we see is this ring with black which is I mean, just beautiful

in and of itself as a ring. But like I thought it was extra fortuitous because the first song I ever played for Brad back when we first met was this song called black Diamond by air A y e R. And it's just a beautiful, lovely, upbeat romantic song black. You know about black diamonds being like this rare gem and finding it and yes, and I usually expressed that with music. I guess let someone else be cheesy for me,

but um so it was really special and exciting. I was like, Wow, what are the chances that this is even here at all, this black diamond ring? And I just loved it. And it's also just like different, not your usual diamond and gorgeous, So Brad like kind of half sneak, like I tried to be sneaky. I know, I'm pretty sure I knew what you're doing, so I like can pretended to go continue and look around while you bought it. Sometimes I think I'm so slick. I'm

not so. Yeah, So that's how that happened. And then it was probably a few weeks after that that you actually proposed with that ring. Yeah, and I had that matching ring without black diamond. Yeah, because I'm not extra I mean what I mean, I don't deny it. We are so thankful for all of you who listened to Parklandia the podcast, and we just wanted to introduce ourselves and a little bit about our lives and who we are, how we met, and you know, to give you some background.

Stay tuned because we're going to have more special episodes. We're going to have more lots more fun stuff, fun fun things. We're gonna introduce more RV topics, more reviews about different products within the RV industry, and things in the future seasons and you know there's gonna be many surprises ahead. And keep on listening and enjoying this travel together. Yes, and we love any ideas and feedback you guys have. You've been sending some great ideas, so continue to do

so on our Parklandia Rangers group on Facebook. We're also on Instagram at parkla India Pod and Twitter at Parkley India Pods, so we're pretty easy to find and reach, so please continue to do so. We we love it. You've been listening to the Parklandia Podcast, a show about national parks by I Heart Radio, created by Matt Krouac, Brad Carouac, and Christopher Hassiotas, produced and edited by Mike

John's executive produced by Christopher Hasiotas. Special thanks to Gabrielle Collins, Crystal Waters and the rest of the Parklandia crew and Hey listeners. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a review on Apple podcast. It helps other people like you find our show. You can keep up with us on social media. Check out photos from our travels on Instagram at Parklandia Pod, and join in the conversation in our Facebook group Parklandia Rangers. Thank you so much for listening.