1KHO 873: The Trips That Become Family Lore | Grace Ly and Marty Ohlaut, Tent for Seven

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000hours outside, and today we're going to be talking about adventuring with family. Sometimes there are big mishaps, sometimes it goes smooth. Either way, there's lots of memories, and the author is a father-daughter duo, Marty Ohlaut with Grace Ly. Welcome to the both of you.

**Grace Ly** (1:22)
Thank you for having us.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:24)
So this book is called Tent for Seven, A Camping Adventure Gone South Out West. And there is a lot of information here for you. First of all, the book is a memoir, and it kind of goes through two different journeys. One is this journey of a family trip that goes south out west, as well as Marty, you thinking back to like these post-college years, you know, early adulthood and adventuring with your buddies, and it kind of cycles back and forth. But then, Grace, you have got a lot of information on your website, and I'll put the links to the websites in the show notes, where you're talking about all the things that you've done in your life, which is incredible. You've been in the CIA. I mean, you've done all sorts of things. You've gone all over the world, and you talk then about these adventure books that you love, non-adventure fiction books, how to turn your personal story into a book. And then on the CIA even website, all these articles that are written by you. So a lot to kind of dive down the rabbit hole on your family. So this is a total treat. I love the book. I was very entertained, and it was heartwarming because this vacation was a total mess.
And in the end, you did come out okay. And then at the end, there's this epilogue, kind of like at the end of a movie where you're like, what happens to these people? I thought that was a great ending because you go through each member of the family. So let's talk about this particular trip. Marty, you kick it off by talking about you're working at IBM. It wasn't really ever the job you wanted, but this is going to make ends meet. You got a lot of kids and you're working at IBM and you're working 60 hour weeks. But finally, you have this several weeks off. You're so looking forward to it. Can you talk about that feeling leading up to this trip and what you were hoping for?

**Marty Ohlhaut** (3:09)
We had been camping local here in North Carolina for a long time with the kids, as a way to bring them together, have them appreciate the value of having brothers and sisters, and build support and cohesion amongst them. Camping was really just a means to get that to happen. Have them spend time together, experience things together, get tight. After 10 years of going up to the Blue Ridge, we thought we had it down. We had been camping up there several different places, and they had a good time, and we weren't really campers per se, we just like to be outdoors, and enjoying the mountains and the streams and the waterfalls. We thought, let's do a big blowout, let's go out west.
We picked British Columbia specifically because, well, it's way north, it'll be cool. It won't be crowded because it's so far away, so far north. Of course, immediately and looking forward to that, I will tell you this, we were going to go in 93, and we had it all planned out in about a month before we were supposed to leave. I tore my interior cruciate ligament, and the doc said, you're looking at nine months of rehab.