Kilometer 66 is the collaboration between Charlene Fike and Janelle Hugel, a mother-daughter duo who’ve been working on this project, on and off, for twenty years or so, give or take a decade.

We believe life is both/and, not either/or.

Life is both beautiful and messy. For example, we want to be politically aware, but honestly, sometimes all we can muster is a Hallmark movie. We’ve learned to be ok with living in this tension.

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Charlene, and her husband Doug, purchased a run-down country inn with friends in the early ’90s. The messy part: two weeks after signing the papers their partners changed their minds. The plan was for them to run the inn and the Fikes to launch a leadership training center on-site. In retrospect… Best. Gift. Ever. The reality is we were stretched financially and forced to get creative.

Enter Janelle, stage left. She watched me renovating the inn one room at a time. When she was ten she asked how she could help. Not sure she knew what she was getting into, but the journey began. Together we scoped out great bargains and figured out how to DIY before YouTube tutorials were a thing. We learned to entertain with grace and to stock a versatile pantry because you never knew who Doug was inviting to dinner at a moment's notice.

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Over the years we’ve shared secrets learned with our friends. It really is possible to create a home you love, that looks like you, without breaking the bank. We share lessons learned on our YouTube channel, so be sure to follow our journey.

Another factor that shaped our both/and philosophy evolved because Charlene wanted to instill in her kids a love for learning and to be global citizens. That meant one thing — travel. Maybe someday over a great bottle of wine, we can go into more details about the places we’ve explored together. But the important thing is that travel changes you and leaves a mark.

As Ibn Battuta said… “traveling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

Kilometer 66 evolved from the urge to tell these stories.

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Oh no! We almost forgot to tell you about the Roman Caper.

Let’s just say it was a classic display of Charlene’s Chaotic Neutral vs Janelle’s Lawful Good nature at play.

Once, we decided to escape the heat of Rome with an outing to Ostia Antica. The near-empty archeological park paved with 900-year-old cobblestones was too tempting for one of us. After all, just a few would make an excellent addition to her found objects collection. We’ll let you decide who won that argument and kept us from a trip to the police station.