About Mark & Gail

History

RPI Class of ’75

We met at our 25th College Reunion, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, NY, in June, 2000. We met at the Class Parade, had lunch together (with Mark’s RSE Brother Tommy and “Good Things Happen When Bill’s Around” friend Bill-C), and then spent the afternoon with Bill, in downtown Troy. We hit it off, and discovered we had something in common, so became “Divorce Buddies“. Make that “Bi-Coastal Divorce Buddies“, as Mark lived on the Jersey Shore and Gail lived outside Seattle.

Divorce Buddies –> Couple

A year+ later, on Mark’s first visit to Seattle, we realized we weren’t going to be just friends. The rest is history…

• A decade as a “Bi-Coastal Couple“…
  • A growing mutual interest in visiting National Parks, Civil War Sites, MLB Stadiums, Lighthouses, WWII Submarines…
  • A mutual love of Road Trips
• Transition away from being “Bi-Coastal”
  • Gail’s Retirement in October 2011 and “part-time” move to NJ
  • Mark’s Retirement the end of 2013 and more time to travel
  • Mark’s selling of the Jersey Shore house in August 2018 and “official” move to Washington (via a X-Country Airstream Trip)

National Park Sites

Looking back, we realize that we visited our 1st 4 National Park Sites, the 1st few times we got together!

• September 2000 – Meet me in St. Louis, before we had dinner together on business trips there, we walked under The Arch (Gateway Arch National Park).
• April 2001 – Gail visited Mark for a long weekend on Manasquan Beach. On a day trip to NYC we stopped at Ellis Island (National Parks of New York).
• July 2001 – Mark visited Gail for a week vacation in the NW. We visited the Klondike Museum in Seattle, and camped at Kalaloch in Olympic National Park (Olympic National Park).

Taking Trips –> Life on the Road

• The dream of Life on the Road started with
  • LOVING our many Road Trips: 5 X-Country Trips in Gail’s Prius; lots of Civil War Trips to Virginia, Tennessee & Mississippi; East Coast; West Coast; and more.
  • Not liking schlepping suitcases in-an-out of hotels and not being able to Cook on the Road.
• The Dream Took Flight, with
  • HOURS/YEARS spent at Colonial Airstream in NJ: sitting in different models, measuring, planning, and finally buying Lizzy…Thank You Patrick!
  • Other hours with Mark poring over Chevrolet Truck Specs, comparing them to Airstream Towing requirements and finally buying The Beast.
  • In 2017 We Did It! …that’s when we did the actual procurement of The Beast and Lizzy and took our first Airstream Trip.
  • And don’t forget the Spreadsheets! with that growing list of places to visit…National Parks, Lighthouses, MLB Baseball Stadiums, State Capitol Tours, WWII Submarines…
• September 2019 we transitioned from Trips with Lizzy to Life on the Road with Lizzy…until Covid-19, mid-March 2020. After isolating in Arizona, we hightailed it home the end of April.
• From May 2020 to December 2022, we were mostly home (with Gail’s daughter Alyson), taking occasional local trips mostly to the Oregon Coast, Columbia River, and Olympic Peninsula. Frequency and length increased, until we took a 2 month trip through the High Plains & Rockies, to our 49th State (Colorado) and back. Then…
• January 2023, we got back to Life on the Road with Lizzy, with the intent to keep it up for at least a couple more years! And we got married at the end of the year.

“Mission”

Our “mission” is to explore the country, traveling in The Beast, living in Lizzy, aiming to:

• Visit every National Park Site
• Tour every State Capitol
• See a game at every MLB Stadium
• etc.

The list of “places to visit” suggests the routes we take and places we stay, but does not limit where we go.

Trivia

We have a few “weird” things in common

• We’re both the oldest of 5, in families with 1 girl & 4 boys (and we’re only 4 months apart in age)
• Both sets of parents married in the fall of 1952, and stayed married ~60 years, till Death Did They Part (and both are together again.)
• Both our High School colors were Orange & Black (but different mascots…Donora Dragons and Prouty Panthers).
  (And, strangely enough, those are also the colors of Mark’s Fraternity, Rensselaer Society of Engineers (RSE)!!!)
• We both chose to attend RPI, when we went on our campus visit and it just felt right, even though, before that, we each thought we were going somewhere else.

We also have a few other odd things in Parallel