15/03/2026
A beautiful thing happened yesterday, and I felt the need to share. But like all good stories, there is a bit of background you should read first.
We have not been actively sharing the story of our life on the road lately, for reasons I explained in our latest newsletter. What started as an incredibly naive dream to drive from Alaska to Argentina in 2018 has turned into years of other adventures, most of which are beyond any imagination we had until we found ourselves in the midst of them.
Lindsay's father, Jim, passed away unexpectedly in 2022. We were starting our first season of work camping in Custer State Park and she flew back to Florida to tend to all of the decisions and logistics involved in wrapping up her father's life. Two thousand miles away, I stayed with our pups and supported her in any way she needed.
Lindsay never had the chance to say farewell to her father. The last time he called, we were too wrapped up in watching some show on Netflix I'll never remember. He left a voicemail. That's the last time she heard his voice.
Jim had very little to leave behind. But he had no will for these things, nor for his final wishes. Unsure of what he would have wanted, and with the financial burden falling on us, we decided to cremate his remains so that he could travel with us.
We had no formal service for him. Nobody he knew indicated they could or would attend a service. And where would we have it? Jim was a bit of a nomad himself. He had no roots. Only tendrils stretching in different directions, mostly around small towns in Florida.
Lindsay flew back to South Dakota a week later and shared that she knew in her heart what she wanted to do to honor her father. As a child, they frequently went on road trips together and fished offshore as often as possible. Jim wore a marlin pendant around his neck, a fish he had never caught but always admired.
Lindsay decided she wanted to take his remains on a fishing trip in Baja. She wanted to catch a marlin and release it with her father's ashes into the sea. This was her beautiful dream and we set out to achieve it.
That winter, we hired a local captain and went dozens of miles off the coast of Baja into the vast Pacific in search of her marlin. It was late in the season, but captains were reporting that the marlin were still striking. We put ourselves in the best position we could to fulfill her wishes of honoring her father.
We struck out on that trip. It was a sober ride home, with several hours of silence as I held her and wished for the whole world that we could have caught a marlin.
A day or so later, Lindsay came to me and told me that she knew another way she could honor her father. She wanted to take him fishing in all fifty states. It was ambitious. But we set the plan in motion by saving everything we could.
I charted a course that would take us through every state, broken into segments of either one ambitious year or spread out across two years. We'd always break up winters with a return to Baja. Maybe we could find a marlin there, or finish the trip back in Florida with the chance to land one there.
Unfortunately, between budget-breaking breakdowns and my confronting my alcohol dependence, we had to abandon that dream too, in 2024.
But Lindsay never lost hope of honoring her father's memory. We hiked to the top of a mountain in Custer State Park on his birthday, said a prayer and scattered some of Jim's ashes in a place he had never been but would certainly enjoy. He would enjoy any place with Lindsay. But there's no going back now.
This winter has been particularly warm in Baja. The warmer waters have kept or brought back dorado (mahi mahi) and marlin when they would normally not be around.
While leading one of our RV caravans into La Paz, Lindsay saw a post from a captain we had hired in the past, who revealed that his guests were catching dorado and striped marlin as recently as this week.
We had a free day and two guests who were interested in a fishing trip. So we woke early yesterday and drove to meet our captain. Within ten minutes of setting our trolling lines behind the boat, a massive dorado hit the lure.
The dorado was off before we could set the hook. But it was a great start to what we thought would be a bountiful day.
Then we trolled for nearly 4 hours with nothing but blue skies and a fairly calm sea to keep us entertained. Our captain continued to troll back and forth past buoys that marked where the dorado should be. We watched other fishermen land and haul the bright yellow colored dorado into their boats.
But nothing for us.
As the sun started baking the four of us, we decided it was time to throw in the towel and head back. But our captain was determined. He baited two lines with large ballyhoo and dragged them a hundred and fifty feet or so behind the boat, covering the same ground we had already passed maybe five or six times already.
Then the pole bent in half and someone yelled out, "Fish on!" The captain quickly ran to the back of the boat and very methodically set the hook.
Then began what would be a 2-hour battle with the four of us rotating turns at landing what appeared to be a sizable striped marlin. Although we preferred mahi mahi for the savory filets, Lindsay had brought some of her father's ashes with her and was prepared for the challenge ahead.
The marlin fought valiantly, leaping multiple times as we reeled as much as we could with any line he gave us.
There were times it pulled back so hard the line went the wrong way on the reel as it retreated hundreds of feet beneath us. With every pull, we'd wait patiently for the marlin to give just enough to claw back the line we had lost.
Lindsay had her turn several times in this magnificent battle. At some point, the captain tapped me on the shoulder and told me to finish the job.
This would take another half hour or so. But eventually we brought the spectacular fish alongside the boat, measuring what we would later find to be over 8 feet in length and weighing nearly 150 pounds.
Unfortunately, the marlin had swallowed the hook, a fatal decision that led the captain to tell us the fish would not survive if we released it. So the captain and I hauled the big, beautiful marlin into the boat and we all stood in genuine awe at the creature. It was truly remarkable, designed in every capacity for the life it led beneath the sea.
A few minutes later, Lindsay held a portion of her father's ashes in her hand and released them in the wind. As they fell into the sea, the remains slowly drifted down to where the marlin had come from.
It was a fair exchange, in taking the marlin from the sea for Lindsay's father's remains. It was, quite literally, a dream come true for a woman who had waited several years for the opportunity to say farewell to some degree to the man with the marlin chain around his neck.
I wish Jim could have been there with us. I wish she had never had to say goodbye. But so is life, and death, they say.
Embrace the ones you love. Pick up the phone when they call. You're never too busy to say hello, because farewell will take the rest of your life, and you may find yourself year after year, boat after boat, in pursuit of your marlin.
Yesterday, Lindsay caught her marlin. We know her father sent it, with whatever sway he has in Heaven. God knows Jim was a great salesman, and even God Himself would not protest the deal we know he had proposed.
Thanks, Jim. This day will not be forgotten. And neither will you.