Long before YOLA became our home on wheels, we were learning from people who had already taken the leap and discovered what life on the road could really be.
One of those people was Dan Grec.
Through his The Road Chose Me adventures, Dan opened our eyes to an entirely different way of seeing the world.
Dan drove approximately 40,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina in a Jeep Wrangler and later spent three years traveling more than 54,000 miles through 35 countries in Africa.
Those numbers alone are extraordinary. But strangely enough, the size of his adventures wasn’t what inspired us most.
It was their simplicity.
Dan helped show us that traveling the world overland didn’t require a six-figure expedition vehicle or every expensive piece of equipment imaginable.
You needed a capable vehicle. You needed to prepare. You needed to be willing to learn and adapt. And at some point, you simply needed the courage to go.
Kristi and I bought and read both volumes of *The Road Chose Me*, and those books became part of our own education before setting out.
Dan wrote openly about the things we really wanted to understand — costs, border crossings, remote camping, mechanical challenges, preparation and the everyday realities of living for months and years on the road.
There was adventure in his stories, of course. But there was also honesty. And that mattered to us.
His experiences helped remove some of the mystery surrounding long-term international overlanding. Instead of looking at people traveling around the world and thinking, How could we ever do that?, we began asking a very different question: Why couldn’t we?
We didn’t need to recreate Dan’s journey or build the same vehicle. We needed to take what we could learn from travelers like him and create a journey that belonged to us.
Eventually, that meant a 2008 Toyota 4Runner named YOLA and a decision to see just how far she might take us.
Dan, thank you. Thank you for sharing not only the spectacular parts of your adventures, but also the practical realities behind them.
You don’t have to have everything figured out before you begin. But eventually, you do have to begin.
And for us, that lesson helped turn an idea into a journey around the world.
FOLLOW DAN’S JOURNEY
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YOU ONLY LIVE ADVENTURE
