The Adventure Begins
“Oh, the places you’ll go!”
“I’d like to take a 6 week trip to the National Parks of the Southwest.”
Sure seemed like a simple request at the time.
But it turned out to be complicated.
Really complicated.
Let me back up a moment.
The year was 2020. We were in the early days of the pandemic. Like virtually everyone else on the planet, we (Scott and Lisa Lengel) realized that our international travel plans were going to be severely curtailed. It was time to go to Plan B.
But we didn’t have a Plan B. So, we made one up.
With a newfound realization that for the next couple of years, we’d likely be focusing most of our travel within the continental US … we bought an RV! And so it began.
Acquiring an RV was the easy part. Figuring out how and where to use it turned out to be much more complicated.
This would be easy, we thought. Let’s go to our favorite search engine and perform the simple search:
I’d like to take a 6 week trip to the National Parks of the Southwest
What I expected to see was a neatly organized set of National Parks to visit, things to do, recommendations on how long to visit, the order to visit and – for bonus points – places to stay overnight in the RV. In short, I simply wanted some help in answering the questions of what to do … how to get there … and where to stay.
What I got was a set of disconnected blogs, some photography websites, a few tour companies and even a random link to Amtrak. In short, a whole bunch of links that required me to do a lot more research on my own.
Surely, there must be a tool or a website or a system that could help an RVer simply do a great job at planning their adventures on the road. But what we soon came to learn is …
while RVing is great fun, planning an extended adventure in an RV just plain sucks
For the next two years, we took some great RV Adventures.
We stood on the edge of the rim in Badlands.
We encountered a herd of bison at Yellowstone.
We patiently waited for the perfect “purple mountains majesty” sunrise at the Grand Tetons.
We captured an other-worldly sunrise at Arches National Park in Moab.
And, before descending for an incredible hike, we captured a majestic view deep into Bryce Canyon during the magical morning Golden Hour.
We even created a blog, LengelsOnTheRoad.com, which has documented our RV travels over the past couple of years.
Lisa somehow found time to get proposed to by The King …
… and bulk up at the Big Texan in Amarillo, Texas.
And with all of that great travel over the past two years, we found that virtually every time we sought out a new adventure, the planning process remained extremely painful. From figuring out what we wanted to do to where we wanted to go to how long we should be staying to what route we should take to where we should stay … it was simply a major chore.
We discovered that creating a great RV journey (or, really, any road trip) requires navigating through a dozen browser windows, 7 or 8 phone apps and countless hours of time. All using turn of the century style applications. It became increasingly evident that there had to be a better way.
And there is.
Welcome to the future of Adventure Travel Planning.
Welcome to AdventureGenie.
We set out with a mission, which is …
to deliver the most immersive, innovative and intelligent adventure planning solution on the planet.
Less than a year ago, we cofounded this company with two of our friends and fellow RVers, David and Rebecca, along with four computer scientists who recently graduated from George Washington University. You’ll get to meet them all in future blog posts.
You’ll also see how things like natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence will be used to provide you with an application that is destined to disrupt.
As we prepare to go to public beta in the next few weeks, LengelsOnTheRoad have decided to become GeniesOnTheRoad.
Over the course of the next year, Lisa and I (and Chloe) will be traveling the country in our RV. Not quite full-time, but most of the time.
We’ll return periodically to our home in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, but you’ll see us out across the many regions of the US. You’ll see us at Trade Shows. You’ll see us at Rallies. You’ll see us in the mountains and at the shore.
Want to learn more about AdventureGenie? Check out our landing page at AdventureGenie.com.
Want to join our Beta Program? Simply leave us your email at AdventureGenie.com.
By the way – if you’d like to “take a six week trip of the National Parks of the Southwest” take a peek at one of our first GenieTrips: Meandering the Mighty Five.
Until next time …
Shameless plug, all images courtesy of Scott Lengel Photography.
