There are times when things line up a little too perfectly for there not to be something bigger at play. I’m not advocating the existence of God or a higher power or anything like that, but there are times on this adventure where it seems like fate might be a very real thing.

Back in 2015, during our first trip west, we met another couple from New York in the mountains of Wyoming. It was just after labor day weekend and most campsites were full or, according to my sources, closed for the season. We’d been driving all day and thought we’d found a campsite at the peak of this mountain, but when we got out of Sandwich it was like time stood still. All activity around us stopped and we felt like someone was going to shoot us. Rather than spending the night convinced we were going to die, we loaded back into our RV and started heading down the other side of the mountain. We drove past a campsite that I had seen listed as closed for the season, but very obviously had people in it, so we pulled over to discuss our options. As Kyle was telling me how hard it would be to turn around on this steep mountain road and I was worrying about how soon it would be getting dark a park ranger came over to check on us.

“Are you guys okay?”

“Yeah, we’re just trying to figure out where we’re staying tonight.”

“Well, I think there are still some sites left at the campground you just passed, why don’t you turn around?”

We did our first loop of the campground and were flagged down by a guy who told us that the site next to his was already paid for but that his friends bailed, so it was ours if we wanted it. We got to talking to him and his wife and learned that before moving to Big Sky Country they’d been living in Washington Heights. We learned he used to be a bartender too and I asked him where he’d worked.

“A little place in the West Village. You’ve never heard of it.”

“I grew up in the West Village! Where was it?”

“Hudson and 11th.”

“Did you work at Hudson Corner Cafe, The White Horse, or Philip Marie?”

As it turned out he worked at Philip Marie, a place I frequented because my childhood best friend worked there. He knew her. He knew the only bartender I knew there by name. It was incredibly likely that he had been my bartender on more than one occasion. Because the world is tiny and strange.

Last summer, during our exploration of New England we ended up in Portland, Maine. We’d been told about a little seafood shack outside of town and planned on having an early lunch there. Instead of our original plan we got distracted by how adorable the city of Portland was, wandered around, got into a bit of a fight and realized it was well after lunch time. Kyle drove us the ten miles to this shack and found that they absolutely did not have adequate parking for Sandwich. I resigned my desire for fried seafood and said we should just head back to Portland. Kyle looked at me like I had sixteen heads and found some parking on a residential street about a half a mile away.

We walked ten minutes back to the restaurant and Kyle marched up the stairs and directly into the exit. There were clearly marked doors and he walked straight into the wrong one. He turned around, obviously embarrassed, when a woman tapped him on the arm. It was his old coworker, a friend for years who now lives in New Mexico and just happened to be leaving the restaurant as Kyle was walking in. Had we not fought, had we been able to find parking at the actual restaurant, had he walked into the right door – had any number of other little details been different they never would have seen each other.

Last week we ticked our 44th state off by entering the barrenness of North Dakota. Did you know that the entire state has less than 1/3 of the population of Brooklyn? It’s insane. There are less than a million people. In the entire state! As a native New Yorker facts like these make my head spin.

We arrived in Fargo and had been parked at the Walmart for a little while when I started hearing explosions. Kyle said we must be near a military base, but I thought they sounded like fireworks. While walking to dinner later that evening, as the booms continued, we saw this sign outside of the local Denny’s:

I felt proud of myself for knowing the difference between a military explosion and a firework, but something completely different dawned on Kyle.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if Tommy was here?”

Tommy is my father’s first cousin, my first cousin once removed, and he spends a lot of time with fireworks. He set off his first professional display way back in 1966 and hasn’t really stopped since. I texted him first, but when he didn’t answer I texted his eldest daughter, my cousin Sarah.

She mentions we might be stalking him because this is the fourth state we’ve seen him in. He watched Sandwich for us while we scooted to Designer Con last year, we saw him at my Grandmother’s 90th birthday party in Maryland, watched some crazy fireworks he helped put on in Lake Havasu, and now North Dakota.

The reason for his being in Fargo was the annual Pyrotechnics Guild International convention – an event you should plan on being near if you have any love for fireworks at all. We saw the biggest, loudest, craziest displays we’ve ever seen. Some of them are experimental! A lot of them are homemade! Some are made by children! But they’re all wonderful and fill the sky for about a week.

After nights of spectacular fireworks we were able to catch up with Tommy and have lunch thanks to an impending storm that cancelled his afternoon pyrotechnic appointments. We had a quick lunch and then it was time for us to leave Fargo and continue on West and directly into that storm.

The wind was severe, the rain was heavy. We had to get off the highway because Kyle was convinced we were going to tip over. He started driving on a back road, adding 50 miles to our journey, when we realized we couldn’t keep driving. We turned around and pulled into the parking lot of a long closed down bar with a truck and a number of RVs also taking shelter. The wind continued to push us around, even while stationary. Most of the traffic on the road had simply pulled to the side of the road to wait it out. It was intense. We opened accuweather to how long the storm would last and got horrible news. Hail was coming.

Hail is an RVer’s worst nightmare. Our homes are made out of plywood and hope – they will not stand up to ice chunks hurtling from the sky. A friend of ours had her roof completely destroyed in a hailstorm in April and we were in no rush to experience what she had. We discussed going under an underpass, we discussed trying to outrun the storm that we were incapable of navigating in and we ultimately did nothing.

We are very very lucky that the hail never materialized in the little town of North Dakota we pulled off in. Maybe that’s happenstance too. The world is a funny, magical place.

If you haven’t seen it yet Kyle released a surprise custom Dunny and it’s spectacular!

Grab it here!

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