Our Story
The marriage, the highway, and the miles that made us.
We met in Chicago in the year 2001. Niko from the Chicago suburbs. Jenna from the Detroit suburbs.
Five years later, we got engaged. In March of 2006, we packed everything we owned into a 24-foot Budget moving truck and drove Route 66 to Los Angeles. No jobs, no family in California, no safety net.
We landed in an apartment that didn't quite fit and started figuring it out.
That August, we flew back east to get married on Lake Michigan, at The Perry Hotel in Petoskey, the place Jenna had dreamed of since she was a kid spending summers there.
Twenty years later, we're still here. Same city. Same marriage. A much better apartment. And our 14-year-old rescue American Bulldog named Melvin, who made us a family.
This fall, we're driving Route 66 in reverse. Retracing our steps back to where it all began to reflect on our life together. Santa Monica Pier to Navy Pier, then north to Petoskey.
Same road, opposite direction, twenty years later.
Follow the journey.
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