The longer version is that Sue and Brian Bakkila met as students at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids. After Sue's Colorado Outward Bound semester — the full story is worth reading — they started adventuring together with college friends and never really stopped. Between them they've backpacked, camped, sailed, canoed, rock climbed, kayaked, bicycled, hiked, snowshoed, cross-country skied, motorboated, dirt biked, whitewater rafted, and canyoneered. They've done most of it badly at least once, which is maybe why they're patient teachers. Their son Garrett enjoyed many of the family adventures and spent his tween and teen years growing up alongside the business before heading off to his own adventures post high school.
 

Some favorite trips: Yosemite's High Sierra Loop Trail, rafting Utah's San Juan River from Bluff to Mexican Hat, exploring Tennessee's Big South Fork, and a road trip through two national parks and four state parks across Nevada, California, and Utah.
 

A Boston Whaler brought them to the Les Cheneaux Islands in 2011. After years of trailering boats around Michigan to investigate various lakes and camp — always, somehow, in the rain — they planned a week in Hessel. Like many before them, they were hooked. Since 2012 they've spent as much time as possible here, returning to Grand Rapids only when the cottage is winterized each fall. The Whaler has since become a 170 Montauk, but the impulse to keep exploring these waters by motor and by paddle has never changed.
 

Sue runs the business full time. Brian joins on weekends — and can change a bike tire considerably faster than Sue.