The Slacks

Our BIO

If we are gonna do this, we better do this right. Who the heck are the Slacks, and why do they have these weird wanderlust dreams? Well here’s a little bio from both of us, so you know who you’re dealing with!

McKayla Slack (ladies first…)  

Hey yall! I’ll try to keep this short and sweet (my hopeless romantic of a husband, can go into all the nauseating details for you later). My name is McKayla Slack, more formally known as “Plummer.” I am originally from Chesapeake, Virginia and grew up at Triple R Ranch. I grew up living a somewhat adventurous lifestyle with a lot of sports, camping, hiking, and exploring what nature has to offer (mostly credit to my father, who is basically Davy Crockett). It wasn’t before too long, that I realized I had a love for traveling and meeting new people. In my teenage years, I traveled to Tanzania and Kenya to work with orphanages and visit schools. Then, junior year I participated in a foreign exchange program and studied abroad at an art school in Germany, right outside of Munich. After high school, I enlisted in the Marine Corps and was assigned to work as an avionics maintainer on the F-18 Hornet fighter jet (the jet they use for the Blue Angles). Immediately upon completing school, I was stationed overseas for two year in Iwakuni, Japan. My squadron traveled every couple of months, and I got the opportunity to see some incredible places like: Thailand, Singapore, Korea, China, Guam, Alaska, and Iwa Jima. Japan also holds a special place in my heart because it is really where I got to know the love of my life, Daniel. We have been married since April 2017, and it has been a dream (a wild, crazy, exciting, border-line nightmare) ever since. I recently finished my 5 years of service, and decided it was time to move onto new challenges. Upon leaving the military, I have opened the door to new freedoms and the opportunity to visit places on my bucket list. My husband and I decided during this transition time would be the perfect time to tackle the task of a cross country road trip. We have converted a little SUV Santa Fe, and now we are hitting the open roads. I hope we can inspire, educate, or at least entertain a few of you throughout the process. I think everyone should travel, get out of their comfort zones, and grow as an individual. God Bless!

Daniel Slack  

Hello everybody! My name is Daniel Slack, I’m 23 years old and I am happily married to the lovely McKayla Slack- who you just finished learning about. I was born In Ventura, California where I lived for 8 years, before I packed up with the family and headed up north to the Pacific Northwest. We moved to The City by The Falls: Oregon City, OR. Growing up I enjoyed playing sports, camping, skiing, and reading. Although I enjoyed to read, I wasn’t the best student at times, as I was a brat-which can be confirmed by literally anybody who knew me between the ages 1-present day(oof). Oregon is an incredibly unique and awesome area, and I made many friendships during my upbringing there that I still hold close to my heart today. I devoted my life to Jesus Christ at an early age, however my path and my devotion was not always clear. I constantly found myself questioning Christianity and struggling with my faith, and through that I saw myself grow-either by listening to God, or by learning the hard way (usually the latter). I went on mission trips throughout the Northwest, aiding small towns anyway we could, and I was even fortunate enough to be sent to Jacmel, Haiti, to aid in the earthquake relief effort in 2012. My youth was a constant wrestle with what I thought was right, and what God knew was right. All in all, I’m thankful to have had patient mentors to repeatedly guide me in the right direction despite my best efforts.

After graduating high school and attempting to give college ‘the old college try’, I decided to enlist into the Marine Corps. After completing basic training, aboard MCRD San Diego (I was guide in bootcamp… nbd), I began my training to become an Aviation Ordnanceman. In January of 2015, Uncle Sam and the Green Weenie had a meeting and decided it was best to send me overseas, so they shipped me to the Far East to Iwakuni, Japan for my first duty station. While I was stationed there, I was fortunate enough to travel all over the Asian Pacific region for detachments to countries such as Thailand, Guam, the Philippines, and Singapore, to name a few. I quickly fell in love with the high tempo traveling that the Marine Corps ran on, and I could not travel enough. While I was in Japan, I also fell in love with somethin-or should I say someONE else. I met McKayla briefly in our time together in school before we both got stationed in Japan together. I am not sure if she mentioned in her post above (I haven’t read it yet, sue me), but we both worked on the F-18 Legacy Series Hornet together. She was a nerd, or as she would say, a Communication/Navigation Technician, which is basically a fancy title for being someone who works on radios and radars/other nerdy things. My job was to mind numbingly slam up anything that went BOOM onto the jet to include BUT not limited to: bombs, rockets, missiles, larger bombs, larger missiles, mines, Semi-armor-piercing-high-explosive-incendiary rounds (they’re as badass as they sound), and many more lovely loud freedom delivery systems.

I know it’s hard to imagine, but my mouth breathing kin would work alongside McKayla’s D&D playing kin from time to time, and I began to develop a crush on her. During 2 years of being friends and getting to know each other during our time in Japan, somewhere along the way the line blurred between friends and dating each other and by the time our 2 years together overseas was up, we were dating seriously with the intent to marry someday. We tied the knot on April 10th 2017, right before McKayla deployed to Bahrain, and the rest is history. I am so glad to have found someone who is madly in love with Jesus, serving others, and traveling. She is always so optimistic and her viewpoint on life is a refreshing take in a world full of skepticism and hate, desperate for Jesus. She truly is my better half, and she makes me a better man by making me whole (I know its gross, but it’s true). We are so glad you have decided to join us on this journey with us and I can’t wait to see what the road has in store for us in the future. I don’t know where we will end up in the next few months, but one thing I do know, is that it is going to be a hell of a trip there. God Bless!

Contact Info

We’d Love To Hear From You! Please feel free to reach out to us at either of our emails listed below. We will get back to you as soon as we can! If you’d like to follow along on the gram our instagram name is @thetravelingslacks.

McKayla’s Email: mckayla.plummer@gmail.com or facebook “mckayla slack”

Daniel’s Email: daniel.jacob.slack@gmail.com or facebook “daniel slack”

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