Slow Baja - Mali Mish An Overlanding Family

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Dan and Marlene are the adventurous parents of a full-time traveling family of five, living, working, and exploring the world in their home-on-wheels. They’ve driven to 53 countries across 5 continents and were named Overlanders of the Year by Expedition Portal in 2023.They share their travels on Instagram and YouTube under the handle Mali Mish—Croatian for “Little Mouse,” a name bestowed on Marlene by her grandmother. Widely known as the “Mali Mish Family,” they’ve been living on the road since 2008. When they started this adventure, there were no shortcuts: no YouTube tutorials, no e-books, just a handful of other family blogs. They jumped into the fray and started sharing their story.Their journey has taken them through a series of rigs: a teardrop trailer, an Airstream, a Ford F250 with a Grandby Four Wheel Pop-up Camper, a 4x4 Sprinter Van, and their current home—the ultimate Overlanding rig, a Ford F-350 4WD with a Bowen Customs Flatbed paired with a Four Wheel Pop Up Grandby Flatbed Camper.Follow their travels:Website: www.malimish.comYouTube:    / @malimish  Instagram:   / mali.mish  Expedition Portal: https://expeditionportal.com/2023-ove...Mentioned in this episode:Slow Baja Winter Expeditionhttps://www.slowbaja.com/adventures/2...Benchmark Maps Baja Road and Recreation Atlashttps://www.slowbaja.com/shop/p/7avpv...Support the Slow Baja Podcasthttps://www.slowbaja.com/supportBuy Baja Bound Insurancehttps://www.bajabound.com/quote/?r=fl...

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Well, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know I'm an absolute minimalist when it comes to Baja travel. But the one thing I never leave home without is a good old paper map. And my favorite is the beautiful, and I mean beautiful, Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by benchmark maps.

It's an oversized 72-page book, jam-packed with details, and now you can get it from me at slowbaha.com. That's right. You can get it in the Slow Baja shop, and in fact, you better get two, one for your trip planning at home, and one for your Baja rig. And if you love maps and you can't get enough of them like me, let me tell you, about two sites I am absolutely obsessed with. Eastview MapLink and Longitude Maps.com. Whatever you're looking for in Maps, it's there. From the entire benchmark collection to Baja Wall Maps to custom maps,

you'll find it all at longitudemaps.com or EVmaplink.com. You know I've long said it, ask your doctor if Baja's right for you. Well, if you've been hankering to get down to slow Baja with me, you got to check out the Adventures tab at slowbaha.com. All my trips are there from my famed fall vintage extravaganza to my winter and summer expeditions, which are open to trucks of any age. You know, on a Slow Baja expedition,

your meals are always included, which really does take the sting out of camping. And when we get off the trail, let me tell you, we have the happiest of happy hours. If good dirt roads, private campsites, ranch stays, great food and great people sounds like you're kind of fun. Well, you've got to check out the Adventures tab at slowbaha.com. But don't delay.

These trips are small. They're highly immersive, and they will sell out. And folks, just so you know, I am always here for you for your Baja trip planning questions. One question, 100 questions, the easy way to get me is Slowbaha.com slash contact. And if you'd like to go to Baja and you don't want to go by yourself, you don't have a vintage vehicle, my winter trip doesn't work out for you. I am happy to talk to you about organizing and leading a private guided tour. I've done it.

I've loved it. The pictures are over there at slowbaha.com slash adventures. And you can check them out. And if you've got some questions, let's talk. From the Shield Man recording booth at Slow Baja Studios, thanks for tuning in to today's Slow Baja podcast. My heaping dose of gratitude goes out to Sam Hurley for producing this show. He's been in that seat before and he's gone on to greener pastures and I was delighted to be able to get him back to help me get some shows out. I had a hard time getting the shows out last year.

That is on me. And I've got Sam in the producer's chair getting this one out in the next few. And I really appreciate you, Sam. So thanks for that. All right. Well, today's show, first show of 2026. That's right. first show of 2026. Thanks for listening, Chuck Fleger. I hope you're sharing this show with your wife

up there in Red Lodge, Montana. A 1% listener, folks. Chuck is in the 1% of Slow Baja listeners. If you are in the 1% of Slow Baja listeners, if Spotify sent you that information, you better reach out to me, direct message me, and I will send you a little gift, and you will enjoy it. I promise you that. All right. Today's show, first show of 2026, it's with Dan and Marlene. They are amazing travelers. 53 countries. They've been on the road for 17 years. They've created a family of three kids that they keep in the truck with them and they've gone all over their place. The first child, their eldest, Ava, has just gone off to college. When I saw them, that was just about to happened. They didn't know how that was going to go. And I am delighted to report that the first

semester went well and they were all together for the holidays. But Dan and Marlene, they are known on the Grams as Molly Mish. And they are amazing, low-key, wonderful world travelers. And I was just delighted to bring there this conversation to you. We were at Overland Expo together. I was looking after them with a little tequila in the evening. And they were looking after me with a little coffee in the morning. You know, I don't travel with a coffee set up, so I'm always trading tequila for coffee, and they just couldn't have been nicer

and just watching their family move together to see Dan and Marlene snatch a kiss in the morning. It's really a lovely, lovely thing. And without further ado, here they are today. On the first Slow Baja of 2026, the first of my sixth year bringing you the Slow Baja podcast. Dan and Marlene, Molly Mish. Hey, at Slow Baja, we just wrapped up the Mountain West Overland Expo in Loveland, Colorado. I am here with my wonderful neighbors, Dan and Marlene, and we're just going to get to talking about their 15 years on the road. Is that right?

17. 17 years. And we're just going to. Hey, so Dan and Marlene say hello and Tell us what the heck it's like raising a family, having a family and raising a family on the road. We've only pretty much raised children on the road, so I guess it feels normal for us. It's all you know. And normal for the kids to live in a home with wheels and explore our own country and 53 other countries. 52 other. 52 other countries plus the U.S. Wow.

So 2007, we had our first baby. And before she was a year old, we decided sending our kids to daycare. Well, just one kid at that point. But we knew eventually we wanted to have more. By sending them to daycare was not something how we wanted to raise our kids. To be at work all day, for them to go to somebody else's place, and for us to pretty much put all, if not most, of one of our income just to support that. So when our first was about 10, 11 months old, we decided, let's spend time together.

And it wasn't something that we plan on doing to do it for this long. We just thought, let's just see how it goes. And if we like it, we'll keep going. Now, you two met in college. We did. We met at UC Santa Barbara, I think our second year there. At a Halloween party in Isla Vista. Probably.

Did you have any background? in camping either one of you growing up? Was that part of your DNA? Not early on. Like, I come from an immigrant family, so my parents... They're not camping. No, they're immigrating. They're trying to survive, moving to L.A. from Croatia.

So that's where their focus was, and there wasn't much camping, no. If anything, we go visit old country. And Dan, immigrants as well, yeah? Immigrant. I'm an actual immigrant. I was born overseas. in Taiwan and I moved to the U.S. when I was 12 years old. But I was into, as far as I can remember, I liked cars that allow me to lay down inside

somewhere. Wow. So I thought the Subaru Brat was really cool. I thought the El Camino was really cool. Eventually, I got myself a Jeep Wrangler, so I was a Jeep guy. And I didn't sleep in it, but we did go off into the car. Sierra's we did you know off-road trails with friends we camped in the snow with my brother good friend of mine actually had a FJ 40 that we always had you know

competitions on whose four by four was tougher but you know I didn't know that much of our cars back in back in the day but I just knew that that's what I like to do but when we started college and you know met Marlene and all that stuff we were actually very career-oriented people. We wanted to get jobs. We wanted to have kids get married. Get a house. Get a house.

Maybe get a bigger house at some point. But it wasn't until after we had the kid, which I've already mentioned that. We thought our priorities changed. Yeah, something shifted in us. $20,000 a year preschool and you said, you know what? We could do something else. Exactly. Yeah.

So we decided that buying a little camper to try out and see if this is something that we liked. and one thing led to another, we realized, because I was already working from home, I had worked in the software industry or in the software as a service industry as a web developer since I was two years out of college. And I did that for about four years before I went to freelancing. So I was doing the same thing but on my own. and at that point we decided to have a kid and this whole thing happened and we realized well we didn't have to be stuck in one place we can just kind of do this from wherever so we got a tear-drop trailer because that was something small and we can afford and we weren't going to live in it full time and we took this faraway trip to the next state of Arizona from

California crossed the border into Arizona and it was and it was an amazing trip until until our, she was close to one, one year old kid had trouble breathing. And we realized she caught the RSV virus and she got two ambulance rides to Tucson Children's Hospital. And her blood oxygen levels were super low and she was emitted. And for eight days, I slept next to her in a bed. And Dan, Dan, Dan. I slept in our little teardroped nipper in the parking lot of the high. hospital because there wasn't another bed for she was sleeping in the chair that kind of pulls out

to a bed I was in there like you know going in there every all day during the day and coming back to sleep in the camper at night and for most parents they would have thought wow this was a disaster this is not for us never camping again we're not doing this ever again because our kid is like you know ill but some for some reason the opposite happened we were like I was sitting in the parking lot of the of the hospital, I'm like, wow, this is, this is free camping. You know? This works. And I go to any hospital and just sleep in their parking lot because I was thinking

in the back of my mind, why aren't they kicking me out? And then I realized, well, they must let people do this. Yeah, they have to be there. Yeah. And that kind of really solidified the feeling of we need to spend more time together. It's like life is short. Anything could have happened in that moment. So we enjoy being.

together. If we can make it work, let's make it work. Yeah, we wanted to be there if something like that was going to happen. And we were there for her. You know, the last thing we want is a phone call from somebody else that says, hey, Ava's having trouble breathing. Yeah. You better come. Yeah, well, just being next to you here and seeing you previously on one of the other Overland Expos, your family seems to be exceptionally comfortable. I haven't witnessed any teen, you know, bickering. Oh, yeah, there's a Yeah, they're all teenagers. Yeah, but you've got three teenagers, and I just don't see any of that.

I mean, we had three kids under three and, you know, stuff happens and all that. And I just see like your pretty darn close family. I saw you guys catching a smooch earlier today. After you brought me a coffee, thank you. You're welcome. So tell me about the progression from the teardrop. Obviously, your daughter survived. She's going off to college soon.

She is. Amazing. Yeah, so we came back, well, let's go back to the teardrop. We went to go buy this teardrop or at least go check them out at the dealership. This is in 2008, and if you remember, that was during the financial crisis. Sure. And a lot of RV dealerships were going out of business, their campers were being repossessed. We went to go see this teardrop, and it was at the same dealership as Airstream trailers.

And we didn't know anything about Airstream trailers, but we drove up, and then we saw this sea of like silver and then we're like what are those yeah those are cool yeah those are cool but then we looked at the price stack like they we can't afford it not cool but then we went back we started looking and then we found okay there's a couple of dealerships that had their their entire inventory repossessed by a bank so we're able to land ourselves one of those at a really good price an airstream an airstream wow which is an is a trailer that we still own is stored away at a property that that our friend owns in Arizona. But we traveled in that.

We didn't know anything about them. We just know they looked cool. We traveled in it for eight years. And what we learned from traveling in an airstream is that even though we bought it because it looked cool, but it was really the community that kept us, you know, wanting to go out more. And it was the people that we met.

And it was the freedom that we had that made us just fall in love with this lifestyle. You know, we, we initially set out just to, well, first Arizona, but then we said in 2010, we went across the country to Florida. We're like, okay, let's do a cross-country trip. Once you come back, you know, we'll just settle back down. But that only made it worse.

Yeah, we couldn't get that wanderless out of our system. It was opposite happened. The opposite happened. So we kept going. And one of the things that people ask us a lot is, well, how did you tell your family? Like, what do they say when you said you wanted to do this? And because we didn't have this moment where we're like, we're going to sell everything we own and like, you know, go see the world and never come back. We always thought we were coming back.

They all thought we're just taking a little trip. They never thought that this will last this long. And it just kept going. So we actually never told our family that we're going to do this full time. So we didn't have any opinions our way saying. Nobody told us this is a bad idea. Nobody said that we shouldn't do it. You didn't have your mother saying that's not how we did it.

Croatia. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. This is not the American dream that they brought us here or they came here for. Yeah. And your parents, Dan, didn't say Dan. Daniel.

Daniel. You know what you're doing. Yeah. No, we, we actually, so that was kind of a blessing because it only until they realized on their own that, okay, maybe they're not coming back. But then they saw how happy we were and how happy the kids were. you know, they just understood on their own that this is something that it was good for them. It was good for us.

So for the next eight years, we just kind of circle around North America. We went to all the contiguous U.S. states. And then we went to Canada. We did a little bit of Mexico. And in 2015, we went to Alaska, which is our 49th state. And it was there when we realized, okay, this thing that we're driving, dragging around with us is just way too big. We needed to downsize.

How big was that airstream? It was 25 foot. Okay. It was fully loaded. It was over 8,000 pounds. And we started also getting very comfortable in it. Kind of felt like, oh, we were inside more than I wanted us to be. Gotcha.

You know? And so we needed to make a change at that moment. Because if we didn't do it, we were just way too comfortable. I felt like that moving to the airstream from a house felt the same as moving from the airstring to a smaller camper. We got a camper in 2015 after Alaska, similar to this one that's behind us, except it was a slide-in camper, not a flat-back camper, but we all fit in it. And that downsize allowed us to do international travel, which is what we wanted to do. And by saying we all, you have three children now. Now we have three at this point, right?

Because we had Ava in 2007, and then we have Mela in 2010. Or nine. 4009 and Luca in 2012. So, yeah, we have, now we have three kids. One's going to college, who's 18. Mila is going to be 16 in a couple of weeks, maybe one week. And then Luca just became a teenager, 13. So, yeah, we have three teenagers. So, yeah, they were little.

They grew up on the road. All they know is the road. And in fact, Luca doesn't even remember hardly any of the domestic travel that we did. For the longest time, all his memories are of us being in Mexico in 2016, because he was four years old. So some of his earliest memories is walking around mainland Mexico, hanging out at the beach. You know, sitting, there's a great picture of him, like sitting on the short wall at a campground right on the beach in the state of Sinaloa. And, you know, he would tell people. that I'm from Mexico.

There you go. That's where I thought he's from. There you go. There you go. Hey, well, if this is inspiring you to take a trip to Mexico, you're going to need some insurance. Baja Bound is the place you need to go for that. We'll be right back with Dan and Marlene, and we're going to pick up the story of Luca, their little Mexican son, on Slow Baja. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound insurance. websites fast and easy to use, check them out at Bajabound.com. That's Bajaubound.com, serving Mexico

travelers since 1994. Hey, big thanks to those of you who've contributed to our Baja Baseball Project. You know, we launched our gear deliveries on my winter expedition. Michael and Matthew from Barbers for Baja. We're along for the ride, and we got to deliver that critically needed baseball gear up and down the peninsula. It was really, truly amazing. All right, well, please, help us continue this vital work. Make your tax deductible donation at the Barbers for Baja. Click barbers for Baja.org. Click the Baseball in Baja link. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really do. It is so amazingly gratifying to be able to give these kids this chance to keep playing this sport. Keep them on the field. Keep them out of trouble. Please check it out. Baseball in Baja link

at barbers for Baja.org. Thank you. to tell you about these new rocky talky radios that I absolutely love. Heavy duty, beautifully made, easy to program, easy to use. We had 28 people, 15 trucks on the Slow Baja Winter Expedition. You can hand these radios to anybody from a 14-year-old kid to an 80-year-old and they'll know how to use it. They are that well designed. One charge lasted the entire week. We are never out of range. I happen to upgrade to the accessory whip antenna for my radio and for my sweeps radio, the Donovan brothers. We were never out of contact. I can't say it strongly enough. Rocky Talki radios. Rocky Talki.com. Check them out. Slow Baja approved.

Hey, we're back with Dan and Marlene. We're going to hear about their time in Mexico and their years on the road. How many years? 17 years. 17 years. 15 years. Yeah, October 2008. 53 countries on five continents. And we don't really know exactly the miles, but it's getting close to probably a quarter million in the years. So people always wonder, like, how do you afford that stuff right away? Like, how do you afford that? So, Dan, you're working while you're on the road.

Yeah, yeah. So I've always worked on the road in different styles of work. Full-time as an employee, full-time as a contractor, part-time as a contractor, you know, however we can kind of make ends me, sometimes that didn't work for stretches at a time. But I think it's kind of all depends on, you know, what we're planning on doing. Because going international made it a little bit more challenging. And also pre-COVID, walking remote wasn't quite as common as it is now.

So we have to find clients that were understandable. But one of the interesting thing is that in 2012, before we went international, we hadn't decided to homeschool the kids yet. So we actually thought that we were going to be done traveling after four years, which, you know, you think it's reasonable after four years. You've seen a lot. Do we want to keep going? And then the main reason for that is because Ava was going into kindergarten. And we were not educators.

We didn't think that we could do it. So we actually bought a house about a mile away from Marlene's parents' house in Southern California. And we were just going to move in. and go back to our old life. And that first night in that house had no furniture in it. We got the keys. We went in, four-bedroom house. We all slept in the same room.

All five of us. And we knew we made a mistake. Yeah. I don't think this is going to work. Yeah. It just felt really not us. We don't feel like us. Not us.

Not a on-brand for the family. No. We weren't meant to be a typical family. You know, something just felt, you know, just felt different. Just like that time in Ava in the hospital room or dropping off for daycare, it just felt off. Yeah, fortunately, fortunately for me, I had, during the whole time, too, as we're stopping, I was actually trying to get back into maybe getting a full-time job. And then I did get a full-time job with people that I used to work with back in the day.

And then they offered me a job. I was back in Santa Barbara, but we bought a house. in Southern California and LA. So they say, oh, you can just work remote, which is uncommon at the time. We don't understand what you do anyways, Dan. So you just work remote. So now I've been, yeah, exactly.

Maybe they don't want you in the office, Dan. Maybe they didn't. So fortunately, that let us rent the house out and just keep going. So, yeah, and just haven't really had a desire to stop since then. So, you know, in 2015 after Alaska, We downsize and then we decided we can circle the U.S. forever and keep seeing new things because there's so much to see. But we should experience other cultures. As the kids are getting older, we want them to see that there's a lot more out there.

There's a lot more different people, different culture, different languages, different food. And let's try to do that. So in 2016, pretty much just after New Year's Day, we've crossed a lot. border into Baja. And that was our, that was our first time, even though we've been to Baja a bunch in college for spring break and all that stopped being Southern California. That was our first time driving all the way down to the bottom in Baja and changed our lives. Completely open our eyes. Yeah. So you've said that, you know, Baja's the gateway. Let's talk about that. Unpacked that a little bit. What fears did you have as parents, if any? We didn't have any fears. Okay.

I mean, even though, you know, now the things that you hear on the news and things like that are actually not much different than the things that people have always said. You know, people have always had a fear of the unknown. So because that we were going down there so much as college students and even before that, we knew that, you know, it's not, it wasn't like a culture shock to us because we knew what we were getting ourselves into. It was more, before, it was more like, well, what's past San Felipe? Like, what's past Ensenada? You know, this seems like once you get past these two cities, there's long stretches of things where you just don't see. So that's what we didn't do with it.

It's the old map that's got the dragons out there and it's just flat. We don't know. But that's exactly the way it was when I was in college. Like, we'd gone to San Felipe. Yeah. But that spring break where I said, I think I'm done with San Felipe. We've got $28 between the three of us and let's just go until that money runs out. Yeah.

That was entering another realm. I had a AAA map and we folded it out and said, where do you think? Do you think we can get to there? We can get to Mulejah? Can we get to Beheed Concepcion? Yeah. And that was like, we were major adventurers. Major.

Doesn't feel like that now, but, you know, now it's like we just want to be there all the time. But, you know, when we were first starting to see each other, we would go down to surf on the Pacific side. Playa San Miguel, just outside of Ensenada. And there was a summer where we're out there camping on the beach, Plas de S Miguel, and we're just like, I have to work next week, but maybe I just ditch it and drive all the way down. All the way to Cabo. All the way to Cabo. Like, wouldn't that be amazing?

Yeah. But we chickened out. Yeah. We chickened out. We didn't do it until 2016. When we finally did it, we did all the things. We did the gray whales. We did the whale sharks.

We did the East Cape. We did the bottom. We went to the bottom of Cabo. You know, we saw places that we never seen before, like Baja de Los Angeles. We saw, you know, the seven sisters. We went to Guerrero Negro and got the best fish tacos in the world. Tony and El Mule. Tony, you know.

They may be the best fish tacos in the world. It is the best fish taco in Baja. And since fish tacos come from Baja, by default, it has to be the best in the world. Probably. I'm going to agree with it. That's my justification. I'm going to keep looking, but I'm going to agree with you. Yeah.

So that first trip, you've got the family, you're heading to Baja, to break it down as far as are you paying to camp in places? How are you getting around? How are you figuring out where you're going and when you're going and why you're going? Initially, our trip down there in our minds is that we'll just keep going south until we don't want to go further south. So in our minds, there was a possibility then in 2016. team that we would go all the way down just like you know the trip that we just finished and the one of the impetus for this was obviously our personal choice of going international but being in Alaska that summer before we also

met a bunch of people who had been overlanding internationally and we have some of our best friends that we met that that summer that had just came back from South America as well yeah they really opened our eyes and the places that we could go, things that we could do. So it also told us, you know, gave us some really useful tips on how to find campgrounds and, you know, where to go and like the, they gave us a list of their favorite places. So this is like the old-fashioned hippie trail. You're just, you're just getting word of mouth. Word of mouth. These people have done the Pan American Highway. You're on the northern part of that with being in Alaska. Yeah. And the light bulb goes on like, yep, let's go

stuff. Timeing was perfect because we had just gone to all the states. And what's stopping us, you know? There's nothing stopping us. We have the rig, we have remote jobs, we love being in the road, we can live in a small space. And we had just gotten a great SIM card that allowed us to have unlimited data in Mexico. Oh, yeah. So that kind of felt like all the pieces were coming together. So yeah, we crossed the border. We, you know, one of the things about Baja that we always tell people is like, you know, there's,

There's a lot of places to go, but you know, you want to respect to people that are there. So if you go to a place when there's a campground, there's no, like, people have a lot of pride about, like, not paying for camping here in North America when they're in the States. But down there, just pay for camping, support the local community, go to the restaurants, especially when it's that cheap. Yeah. You know, so that's what we did. We went to, and also let you meet a lot of people. Right. And let you talk to the locals, even though, like, our Spanish then was really broken.

And, you know, it's gotten a little bit better since. But, yeah, but it's like, only when you do that will you be able to actually see what the culture is like. So that's something that we still believe till this day. And that's something that I think really helped us into immerse ourselves into countries that we go to. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. You know, you want to save money, stay home. Yeah. You want to travel, get out and meet some people and spend a little money, eat the local culture, eat the local cuisine.

interact with the local culture. And it didn't hurt that we already love Mexican food. Yeah. And who doesn't? They invented it in Mexico, I tell people. It's pretty good. People ask us, what we miss most about not being in the U.S. We tell him Mexican food in Baja.

Yeah. Yeah, so tell me, so you got through Baja, did you put the truck on the ferry and La Pazan go to the mainland at that point? We did, we did. We were parked next to diesel trucks, and we didn't realize they ran them overnight. because we paid for the cheap ferry instead of the passenger ferry. So we got off on Mazatlan and none of us had a voice because we were breathing in fumes. But when we got to Mazalon, it is totally different than Baja.

You just smell it in the air and the birds are totally different. You go from a dry desert to with cacti to jungle. You jungle with alligators. It's a shock. Crocodiles. Yeah. Yeah. So we really open.

our eyes and you also go so go you also go from a place full of gringoes that are like you know spending the winter down there you go across it's like wow there's only locals here i mean there are others but you just don't see them right yeah because we got used to seeing a lot of campers in baha um and then yeah you get into mainland mexico we're really the only camper that we could see all day yeah and you're going to be sticking out with your family yeah yeah talk a little bit about that how did the kids adapt to you know being foreigners in foreign countries and over and over and over. The kids at this point were pretty young.

And since we're together as a family all the time, they really didn't have any fears of anything. Like, you know, as long as we were fearless, as long as we were confident, as long as they didn't see any fear in our eyes, they just kind of went for the ride. Yeah, and a lot of people wonder like, oh, there's no consistency in your everyday life living this way

on the road and go in different countries, but people don't realize we are their consistency. They see us every day. If there's a problem, a question, anything, we're just right here. Yeah. The inconsistencies are the place that we sleep, places that we go, friends that we meet, but what they don't realize, what they don't realize, like Marlene said, is that, well, we're not sending them off to a different place every day for them to experience things on their own and coming back. We're experiencing everything together as a family all the time. And they have their same bed every night. Yeah, and they're sleeping the same bed every night next to their siblings, not far away from their parents. So that was something that made our

family really close, which is, you know, something that you mentioned that you have observed. And that's absolutely true till this day. And that's why our kid going to college in three weeks, is something is going to be just as hard for us. Do we not talk about that? Are we allowed to cry on this podcast? Yes, you can. I've cried before on Slow Baja. It happens. Yeah, so I don't know what's in our DNA.

You know, we probably, I've been exploring caves in Baja, and you realize we all come from these little tiny places where we probably were on top of each other, sharing a skin and trying to stay close to the fire and all that stuff. And so you guys are kind of modern, you know, examples of that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, I think that was the year that we realized that, okay, this is one thing that I tell people a lot, there's a, there's a lot of uncertainty of going across the border into another country. That's the unknown.

But the closer you get to that border, the more doable this thing becomes less of an obstacle, it seems. You know, so when you get down to the bottom of mainland Mexico, you're in Oaxaca, Chiapas. So, well, Guatemala is right there. It's right there. Let's just go check that out. And once you get into Guatemala, you're like, wow, Guatemala is amazing. Well, you know, let's go to Belize. Well, Belize is a trip.

Everything your sensories are telling you that it's Latin America, but then they speak English. You know, instead of Cocos Frio's, it's like cold coconuts, but it's written in the same spray painted on a piece of plywood. So yeah, and then slowly and surely you can make yourself all the way down before you know you're in Panama. So

that's something that we wanted to do but unfortunately for that trip in 2016 we had some issues with the vehicle registration that made us come back which actually causes the pivot to do a slightly different trip so we came back to the

U.S. and decided to go do the rest of Canada that we haven't seen yet, which was Newfoundland, Labrador, Quebec, which was amazing, and I highly recommend that. But while we're doing that trip, we pivoted it and switch to a sprinter van because Marlene's family is from Croatia, and she has always wanted to take the kids to go see Croatia. And they have before we started traveling, but this was some, this was an opportunity for us to really get immersed and go spend a lot of time there. So we decided to build this switch from a truck camper to a van, a Mercedes Sprinter van, and ship it across to Europe. And this was our first time shipping a vehicle across. Or building out a vehicle.

We did it ourselves. Yeah. Wow. But that, this really opened our eyes. Once you can get a vehicle across an ocean, then you can go anywhere. You know, crossing the border in New Mexico was one thing. Shipping across the ocean. When that made Europe a possibility, Asia a possibility, Australia a possibility, a possibility. I made the whole world a possibility. So, you know, that, that ended up taking us to Europe for four years is how long we ended up staying there. It's supposed to be a year or two. I was going to say, me, tell me about that, Marlene. So the impetus is you're from there. You have family there. Right. So we'll go explore Croatia and all the countries in Europe. And it was just going to be Europe and it was just going to be for a year or two. But then on our first year,

it's just it's colder in Europe than you realize in the wintertime so we go south it's like okay let's go to Greece but just like Dan said this is the border and and here's turkey like why what's stopping us from going to Turkey okay now we're on the European side of Turkey why don't we go to the Asian side and that was amazing and then we went all the way up to the top of Norway and we visited Northcap as a family and back to Croatia Back to Croatia, Dan was getting his residency, and that's how we could stay a little bit longer and travel easier. We could have done it with our U.S. passports, but having dual citizenship made it a little easier. And then we take off from Croatia.

Dan has his temporary residency, and all of a sudden there's this virus. Yeah, this is... And it's in Italy. Yeah, this is like our... Italy got hit hard. ...their second or second going on third year in Europe. So we were just going to go, maybe go see Spain. But as we're going across the top of Italy going west from Croatia,

Europe gets his first case in northern Italy. So we're like, oh, wow, let's run away from this as fast as we can. Let's start driving down. So we drive across the south of France. We drive down the Mediterranean coast of Spain, getting to the bottom, and then we realize, well, we can just hop across the Gibraltar straight and go to Morocco. So it's only a 30-minute ferry. And then we'll be another continent.

We'll be safe from this virus. So we got there on Valentine's Day 2020. Wow. So then we spend, we're like, okay, let's not go to the coast now because it's going to warm up. So let's go inland first. Let's go see the Saharan Desert. Let's ride camels. Let's do all these, like, amazing things.

And that's what we did. And then once we got to the bottom of Morocco, we got the country got locked down. And so we had a choice to make. Do we stay in Morocco and wait this out? Or do we try to get back to Europe? And we chose to go back to Europe. So we drove as fast as we could from like Agadir, which is near the, you know, bottom on the coast. And we get to the little enclave of Spain where we're going to take a ferry back to mainland Spain.

And the border, it just shuts down. It took us like nine hours to get to the border. And the border, we had heard that the border was going to close. at midnight. But by the time we got there at 9 p.m., there were 500 campers trying to get out. So they just preemptively decided, that's it, we're shutting it down. So all 500 of us got moved to this parking lot near the port of Tangermed. And the amazing people of Morocco, this parking lot, they had just built to be able to park cars that are being used by people who were going to the port. Within two days, they came in. They lay down electricity. They,

brought in water. It brought in two containers that ended up being like one was a bakery and one was a little grocery store. And it hosted us there while we're waiting for a rescue fair to come. So we're there for two weeks. Wow. And the Moroccan government just hosted us. Yeah. So we weren't. We couldn't leave. Yeah. Because nobody knows what's going on at the time. But we stay there for two weeks. There was a fence around us. We couldn't leave. Yeah. So, you know, if we wanted to go to the ATM to get cash to buy bread or whatever, whatever, we had to like get in line. We had to, you know, give them our passport and do all the stuff

before we can even go to the ATM, get money, because, you know, we didn't have any cash. So the whole time they were telling us, well, you can't go back if you're American citizens because Europe is only letting European citizens and EU residents in. Are you sure you are EU residents? Because Marlene, before we went to Europe, I had gotten her citizenship through her parents,

through her bloodline citizenship, to become dual citizens. And she was also able to put the kids' names down. So they all became dual citizens. But I'm a resident, so I got my residency. And it was a long process to get, but had we not gotten it, we would have been stuck in Morocco like some people were. Yeah, it was such a pain.

We almost gave up on your residency. But that really made a big difference because we're driving a sprinter van with California plates. Wow. And that helped us to be able to get on that rescue ship to come back. And we drove across a really, for about four days, we drove across Europe back to Croatia, where our residency was, to be able to quarantine. And it was the strangest four days we've ever experienced, driving across empty roads in Europe.

Because Europe had harder lockdowns than, you know, anywhere in the U.S. And when we finally got there, we realized, well, we have to stay here for a while, which is actually turned out to be kind of a blessing in disguise. It did. didn't think that we would stay in Croatia for that long because we thought, well, this is our base. We can come back any time. We want to go explore other things. But we stayed in Croatia for a whole year. And our Marling's parents or Marlene's dad grew up on an island in the Adriatic in a small village in a stone house that her grandparents built by chiseling rocks that they found on the property. So we lived in that house for almost a year.

and got to know the people in the village and went on walks and found every little dirt trail that we could find and just like went on walks and just really got to know the place where her dad grew up more than we ever imagined. Yeah, because we were part of that village for a year. Like my parents or my dad has a bunch of olive trees and we got to pick them by hand and use a little rake and catch it on the ground, soak them in a barrel. turn it into olive oil and taste that olive oil fresh. I mean, no olive oil. Do you know it was bright green? It's bright green and you never see that from the store. It's not good. It's not good when it's first pressed.

You have to let us sit for a bit. And once you let us sit for six months to a year, there's the best olive oil you've ever tasted. Now it's hard to have a store-bought olive oil. We're spoiled. Yeah. And that's also where we ended up with the two cats that we travel with now. Yeah, because we stopped moving.

We stopped moving. and just all of a sudden these five kittens showed up. First it was this mama cat, and she was very timid, very shy. And there's like a little outdoor stone house that was like, where you cooked? That was the kitchen. There was no indoor kitchen. And, you know, you would like take wood and you find it on the property and just make a fire and cook. And I would try to feed this cat that would come by.

And soon we realized you just had babies. You had five babies that came. So we're like, well, you know, these babies, we have to get them healthy enough, old enough, so we can take them to the vet and get it fixed. Yeah, we were doing our own TBNR program in the village. But what ended up happening is three of the five kittens didn't survive. And the two that survived was starting to be winter, starting to get cold. And even on an island in the Adriatic Sea, it was cold in the winter.

So we made the decision to let him come inside the stone house with us. And then we were doomed from that moment. And that was the loss of them being stray cats. Yeah. Gotcha. And so family of five plus two cats is our story now. And you traveled through Europe. You got past COVID.

You had the year in Croatia. Yeah. borders were starting to open. We spent a lot of time thinking what's next. And we decided we wanted to drive through Central Asia. Asia. Because during that year when we were stuck, we went back and watched a lot of the travel documentaries. Owin McGregor.

We were stuck. We were watching the long way down, a long way around. We're watching all this stuff like, well, what do we want to do when we can finally leave? So we're, let's see a little bit more Europe and once we feel like we have enough, let's go east. Let's go across Central Asia. Let's go through Kazakhstan. Let's go through Mongolia.

Let's go through the road of bones and make our way all the way to Vladivostok. And then shipped a van from there, then we would have made it all over to all the way around back to North America via the Pacific. So that was our plan. That was our grand plan. We said once COVID lockdown, once borders are open again, we can go through Russia, let's do it. But as we all know in 2022, the Ukraine war happens.

So that made what seemed like a border that was about to open even harder to get through. And we just worked so, we were like, oh, maybe we should wait it out. And I was like, we were just kind of tired. waiting. We're not waiting. And it was in retrospect. It was a really good decision. And that's when we decided to drive back. Shipped a van back. So we shipped for a second time. Yeah. So we ship back to, I think we shipped into New York, drove cross country and we made a decision. Remember that time we went to Baja and we thought we were going to go all the way south when this is this is the moment that we can actually do that. You feel more comfortable crossing borders and we were ready.

Yeah, because we had built that other truck camper to do it. And then we switched the van to do Europe. But now we're back. We're ready. We don't have the truck camper, but let's do this anyways. So we came back in May of 22. We came to our first Overland Expo in Flagstaff, May of 22. And that November, we crossed the border back into Baja.

And the first time we went to Baja of our six-month visa that we had, so our six-month FMN that we had, we spent three of those months in Baja. Baja because we love this so much. Yeah. And then the other three in mainland. It was just proportionally. Yeah.

When we got to the bottom of Oaxaca, we're like, well, if we don't cross, we only have like four days to give back. Yeah. Yeah, we zoomed. So we had to zoom back. So this time we were going to like, we should spend less time.

Even though we love Baja, let's try to spend less time. And guess how many months we spent out of our six months? We spent four months in Baja this time. Well, that's, That's saying an awful lot because mainland Mexico is interesting. I have no idea what it's like to camp there. I've driven through it many times in a car race and other ways. We do mostly campgrounds.

Lived in Zacatecas, but, you know, mainland Mexico has a totally different charm. The colonial things, the scale of the architecture is totally different than Baja. Especially the middle part, basically from mazzan, all over across to, you know, the eastern part of like Puebla. Right. That middle part is really packed full of people. You know, especially when you have that the high plateau where Mexico City is. The weather is beautiful there, even though it's pretty far south. Yeah. You know, the weather's beautiful year round.

So in there, it's really difficult to find wild camping. You can find it, but, you know, we do want to be mindful of where we are because it's not like the U.S. where there's a lot of public lands. There's actually a lot of private lands. Right. We want to make sure that we're not just showing up at somebody's private land and disrespecting them. And it's hard to tell, like, what's private, what's public in a lot of countries. Again, with my travels in Baja, I've never been a stay in one place for a long time.

It's one night here, one night there, one night there. And boondocking has not been the primary driver of my travels. And I find that if you're paying to camp someplace, there's usually a grandma who's hand-padding some tortillas and there's some food available. And I don't travel with any of the cooking stuff. You guys are in a totally different league where you're self-sufficient, but I am, you know, in need of help when it comes to food and drink. So, you know, I'm usually paying a little bit, 10 bucks, whatever. And that's also part of my ethic of sprinkling the money up and down the peninsula. But some people are pretty hardcore about I don't want to see anybody.

I want to do it as cheaply as possible. I'm not judging, but that's, you know, I'm not sure if that's, I don't know if that's right with Mexico. Yeah, and I always tell people that you may think you're all alone, but you're never alone. People saw you go down this road. Right. And people know that you're down there. Right. So just because you think you're there by yourself, you know, like, yeah, it's just an illusion.

And mainly in Mexico is more so. Yeah. It's, you know, only until when you get down to start getting heading into Oaxaca, you see some more open space again. And Oaxaca, Chiapas, and all that area really open our eyes to a lot more of the indigenous side of Mexico. You know, so we really fell in love with that. And, you know, even though this time when we had two months to go through, because we had gone through before, we spent three months every four, we were able to not see the things that we already saw and see some more new things.

Yeah. The in between stuff. Tell me a couple of those things. And microphones up. Tell me a couple of those things about Baja that you really enjoyed. Now you've got two trips. You've spent three months and four months with the full intention that you've only got six months to spend in the country without renewing your visa that you would have to live.

leave the country to come in to get another six months. So there's a, the clock was ticking, so to speak. Right. But you, you stayed again for four months because it was good, right? Because we love it so much, yes. Yeah. So every time we get down to La Paz, just a couple things that you love. Tell me one, two things about Bahá and then mainland and then we'll wrap this up. So surfing, I think surfing is something that I grew up doing. So obviously, every time we get to camp on the beach, there's just something magical about camping. on the beach in Baja. So we would camp on the Pacific side near Toto Santos. We camp along the East Cape. And those are just, you can, even though there's a lot of people going down there now, you can

still find magical empty beaches on the East Cape. You know, so that's something that just we dream about still. And when dance surfing in the water, if you just look a little bit past them, there's like whales breaching in the wintertime. And it's just like, dance catching a wave, whales breaching. It's just like, it's so magical. I remember down there. Last time we were down there, sitting in the lineup at a relatively popular surf spot

on the East Cape. There's a few people out there, and there's just whales going nonstop breaching, like there's mama and baby swimming by, and then their spouts are going off. And then we're sitting there, like, waiting for waves, looking at waves, turning around paddling. And then this girl paddles up into the lineup.

And then she's like, she just got there. So she can't believe this is happening, but nobody's looking at it. And then she's like, you guys see this? It's like, oh, the whales, yeah. No, of course we see it, but they've been doing this all day. We're just here for the waves. Ignore the whales. We have to catch waves.

Yeah, and so whale watching, swimming with whale sharks, how does that resonate with you and your family and that you've done those things? It's like a lifelong memory. Like, it's, you know, the kids. they go to a lot of places, but, like, especially the gray whales and lagoon by Giro and being on that panga boat and just waiting for a mama whale to swim toward you with pushing, pushing their newborns to get closer to you, and then they turn their heads, and you just see this huge eyeball, and they are just...

You see right through into their soul, you feel like, and they see right into yours. Yeah. It's just, you can't. There's no words to explain that. There's some conflict that people have about being out there and being with the whales. But in these two lagoons, the one in Guerrero Negro and the one in Ojo Libre and then also the one near San Ignacio. San Ignacio Lagoon. These two are protected areas.

Yeah. You know, and you're not actually allowed to go to 75% of these lagoons. You only allow certain areas. So when the whales come up to you, they're choosing to come up to you. You know, so. And I'm not questioning it. I just am amazed and I take my group there every winter. Yeah.

And I think it's one of the great phenomena in the world. It will never, you'll never be able to do a whale watching trip. Like, that's like the thing, you know, the normal whale watching trip, again, where you're using binoculars to see. No, it spoils you. And we're going to leave it right there, Marlene. You have the last word, Baja whales spoil you. There's a lot more about you, folks. 53 countries 17 years a couple of trucks with four-wheel pop-ups and a sprinter van in between

how do people find what you're doing we're most active on instagram you can find us at molly dot mish it's total sense by the way it's croation for little mouse we started traveling back in the day before social media and we just picked a random name that didn't matter but now it matters Well, it kind of makes sense because Molly Mish is kind of what like Croatian grandma is called like little babies. Oh, it's my little mouse like, you know. So because we sort of are out there showing people that they can travel with their kids, you know, our travel is very family oriented, showing people that you don't have to stop traveling because you have kids. Or you don't have to wait until the kids go to school.

Or you don't have the way to have kids because you want to continue to travel. Yeah. And we started traveling because of kids. That's right. Amazing. Well, thanks for taking care of me. This Overland Expo, enjoyed the coffee, enjoyed spending some time with you, having a drink, and hope to see you down the road. Thank you for having us.

With your tequila. All right, we did it. Well, I hope you like that conversation. Really beautiful family. It's really nice just being next to them. You know, we camp pretty close to folks at Overland Expo. You got to love thy neighbor. they were easy to love. Dan's super cool. Marlene took the opportunity to mom me a little bit and

mother me. And I really appreciate that when I was camping with Frank in my little tent. If you like what I'm doing, folks, if you like me getting out on the road bringing you these conversations, these intimate conversations, I'm going to ask you to drop a taco in the tank. that doesn't happen very often. I really do need the support. And after six years, if you're still listening, 170 episodes, get off your good intentions and drop a taco in the tank. You do that at slowbaha.com slash donations.

It's pretty easy, pretty quick. I will often send you a thoughtful gift for your thoughtfulness in reciprocation. And while you're over there at slowbaha.com, you can go to the Slowbaha store. There's some hats and some teas and some cool stuff in the shop. And I got to tell you, love, love, love, love, hearing for folks who are wearing a Slow Baja shirt or a Slow Baja hat. And it spawned a conversation when they were at Bahia Concepcion or here or there in Baja. They saw somebody and somebody said, hey, I listen to Slow Baja. Baja, and one thing led to another, and they had a new friend.

It really does happen. And, of course, those yellow stickers do get you out of jail free. I haven't had anybody tell me otherwise yet. So you better buy a set and get them on your Baja rig or a Baja benchmark Baja Atlas. I'm selling all that stuff in the Slow Baja stores. Trying to survive is what's happening here. All right, well, you've gotten to the part of the show where I tell you about Slow Baja alum Mary McGee. She was so cool. So lucky I got a chance to have two conversations with her on Slow Baja.

You know, first person to solo the Baja 500 on a motorcycle. She raced the first Baja Mexican 100 in 1967. Talks about that in the podcast. Well, it's almost the 60th anniversary of that race coming up next year. Anyways, Mary McGee, she had a pal, Steve McQueen. Steve got her out to Baja. riding dirt bikes and you know Steve loved Baja he really did you say to her you know Mary Baja's life anything that happens before or after it's just waiting you know people always ask me what's the best modification that I've ever made to slow Baja without a doubt it's my Shielman seats you know Toby at Sheelman USA could not be easier to work with he recommended a Vario F for me and a Vero F XXL for my navigator Ted

is Ted's kind of a big guy. And Toby was absolutely right. The seats are great and they fit both of us perfectly. And let me tell you, after driving around Baja for over a year on these seats, I could not be happier. Shieldman, slow Baja approved, learn more and get yours at shielman.com. You know, I'm all about keeping things simple, traveling light, and finding the really good stuff.

And that's why I've been wearing iron and resin for years. It's not just clothes. It's gear that holds up in the dust, the salt, the spilled tacos, and still looks good when you're rolling into town. Made in small batches by folks who care, no flash, no fast fashion, just the kind of stuff that gets better, the more you wear. Check them out at iron and resin.com and pick up something that'll last the next thousand miles.