Dana McMahan: BootsnAll Author

Dana McMahan
BootsnAll Author

Dana in London Summer 2001

Until her early 20’s Dana never ventured outside the southeastern US (except for two years spent living in Oklahoma as a child when mortgage rates hit 20% and kept climbing, forcing her homebuilder dad to move the family out to the oil boom state). In fact, when she met her future husband (who was from Michigan) the furthest north she’d ever been was probably Dayton, Ohio. Her travels pretty much consisted of one spring break in Daytona and a trip to New Orleans in college. Her husband traveled a lot for work, and she joined him on many trips, quickly gaining a tolerance for long hours in the front seat of his Mercury Mystique, and soon developed a travel bug. A honeymoon in Cancun and a side trip to Toronto from Niagra Falls got her out of the country, but she was determined to go somewhere necessitating a passport.

After finishing her degree in psychology, she moved to the Cincinnati area with her husband where she learned a Bachelor degree in psychology was basically useless. Next thing she knew she was a webmaster working in a cubicle.

Planning a trip to Europe sustained her during this period, and plan she did! A year and a half was needed to save the money and vacation time for the 25 day trip, and she read everything about travel in Europe she could in the meantime. You can learn more about this trip here.

After the big trip, Dana resigned, and they moved back to her hometown of Somerset, Kentucky. While her dad built them a place to live, they moved everything into storage and traveled to New England just in time for the foliage. Their home was ready a couple days before Thanksgiving, they moved in, and took off on a month long cross country trip for her husband’s job. Highlights included a sudden snowstorm in Wyoming which left them stranded in their Suburban for four hours (really not too bad with the backseat VCR and Thanksgiving leftovers), snowmobiling in Christmas Meadows, Utah, losing and winning in Las Vegas, and spotting Ben Affleck in Beverly Hills.

Dana playing a lush at murder mystery weekend

She’s spent the last year on more US travels, hitting spots such as Area 51, Yellowstone, Charleston SC, and NYC. A fabulous five year anniversary trip to Great Britain was forfeited when her husband’s fear of flying got the best of him and they didn’t go to the airport. She’s saving the money she makes as a freelance web designer to get him some therapy because she cannot imagine spending the rest of her life only seeing places within driving distance. (Granted, her husband is more than willing to drive for up to seven consecutive days, but still.)

Most recently, Dana has been searching for work in human services, and working on a murder mystery weekend story for a B&B. She has also organized a vegetarian cooking club for her most carnivorous town, and is trying to learn the dulcimer. Her latest trip was with her mom to see the Oprah show in Chicago.

You can keep up with Dana and her husband on their web site.

Feel free to email Dana at travelingmcmahans@europeanemail.com. Click on her name below for links to all of Dana’s BootsnAll articles.

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