I have had a trying year. There were incredible ups and very low lows and it has breezed by in a swirling haze of laughing and crying…sometimes at the same time. Seeing Camp Cocktail off the ground and jumping into the unknown of being a business owner was quite unnerving and I couldn’t have done it without the amazing support and positive vibes from everyone along the way. She has drawn me to some great creative people and helped filter the rubbish out of my life
. Camp Cocktail, the mobile bar, my own weirdly unique love child that encompasses all that I am…I like to think it shines through.
Camp Cocktail was born from a desire to move; a love for all things shared amongst friends with drink in hand; conjured up from within a vintage airstream that I have called home often. However my true love lies dormant in the trees; in the long waiting shadows of a waning fall; in the partnership with a dog. I crave the outdoors and it’s solace, my restless 
mind only at peace when traveling and learning a new world around me. I want to give back what Mother Earth has so graciously given. With 2016 I hope to raise money with each event to donate to our Public Lands and National Parks. So with each clink of a camp mug, I hope to cheers what has influenced a greater part of my life.
I remember the first park that stuck out among many…the first in my great love story of the Americas….Everglades National Park. Florida, one of the stranger states, found my heart in miles. Driving so many from the Wal-Mart parking lot of Jacksonville to the the astro turf of Nettles RV Park, and escaping west into the thick of the mangroves. A straight road my good friend Nick and I traveled with a storm on the horizon and no real destination, pulling our 1959 Airstream. The Spanish moss thick and the air shifting with the storm, words and pictures cannot harness the sensation the wild creates.
From the Everglades to White Sands and Petrified Forest to Grand Canyon, we moved with little planning day to day, up and down the countries back roads, spending long nights staring into blackness. We rode horses in Death Valley, cooked breakfast in the back country of Arches, wrote haikus from vistas in North Cascades and carved our names in Pinnacles bridge. I have been to 20 National Parks and countless state parks in the last five years. They all hold 
weight in different nooks of my heart. The big horn sheep we saw in Rocky Mountain, fly fishing in Olympic, stumbling upon Lassen Volcano during a day trip. I will never forget these places and times, even though owning not a single picture. They may be lost on a defunct hard drive but they are singed into my person. Besides family, nothing retains more value than these times spent with friends. Thank you Nick, for opening my eyes to the beauty of the country I live in…and cheers to all I have shared and will share more time with in nature.
I am excited for 2016, I will move more assuredly and do my small part as a business owner. If the road worn patches of parks visited on my jacket don’t reflect my passion, my business will. As I watch her grow and morph over the next year I will proudly bring on more like minded souls and carry out dreams of branding and starting a small camping wares line with artist. We will focus on the ideals and hopefully help give back, one drink at a time!
