Hey! I’m Deonne Kahler, and I want to thank you for visiting my blog. I’m on a mission to make the world a better place with every blog post, photo, and adventure, little bit by little bit. (A girl can dream.)
Here’s a quick rundown of my life so far:
I was barely a year old when I took my first road trip, from Winner, South Dakota to Los Angeles. I let my parents do the driving for that one, and though I now wear something other than just a diaper when I travel – it was hot, okay? – the love of the road remains.
I’ve had a few different careers. The first was professional musician (singer/performer, band, CD, songs for film and television), then writer (features, profiles, columns, creative nonfiction) and teacher (entrepreneurship for women and creatives, as well as creative writing to undergrads).
I got into professional photography late in the game. Even though I’d been making photographs off and on since high school, I didn’t take it seriously until a friend convinced me to enter a travel photography contest with AAA Magazine in 2015. I was gobsmacked when I placed third, and then came some other photography awards, as well as participating in group shows from L.A. to New York.
On the writing front, I made another big shift late in the game and moved to New York for two years to get my MFA in creative writing. (That’s where I taught the undergrads.)
Road trip USA!
I graduated in 2010, and when I got back to Taos I decided it was time to fulfill a long-held dream: buy an RV and travel the country. I did the research and bought a Scamp, a 13’ wonder outfitted with a tiny bathroom and kitchen – perfectly sized for one traveler and her pup, Sam (see above). I brought my Scamp home and christened her Sadie.
As I spent more and more time on the road Sadie started feeling a bit small, so in 2016 I bought a slightly bigger trailer, a 20’ R-pod.
What the trailers have allowed me to do is pursue my obsession with visiting every single National Park, and since there are more than 400 of them I’ve got a ways to go. As I write this I’ve seen 173.
So, thank you for reading. If you want to stay in touch, please sign up for the email list or find me online (links are over on the left). I’d love to hear from you.
Lastly, that’s my motto up top. Those words have led me down a lot of fascinating roads, and I hope they do the same for you.