From Donley County to the World!

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

You never know where life’s road will take you, and that has certainly been true for Dusty and Nikki Green – a Howardwick couple who decided to follow a dream and are now on their way to becoming national celebrities on public television.

Nine years ago, the Greens started a simple blog – an online journal – called “Two for the Road” when they gave up their careers in Amarillo and started a grand adventure of traveling the globe. What began as a whim evolved into a web video series then a regional PBS television show and is now going nationwide.

“I never in a million years thought this is what we would be doing,” Nik says.

Dusty, a former executive with Channel 7 in Amarillo, and Nik, who worked in a dentist’s office, sold everything they had to follow their passion – traveling. An eight-month adventure in South America exhausted their savings, and they returned to Texas, setting up shop and combining their careers to shoot testimonial videos for dentists. That led them to shooting videos for touring companies to promote vacation getaways.

The “Two for the Road” blog really started as a way to keep in touch with family, but by the time they started putting videos in a web series, it was television that they had in mind.

“We knew when we started going on trips, we would have this mountain of material,” Dusty said, noting that the travel company promotions were only a few minutes long. “The web series was a way to get attention and to put the material together.”

The trip that started the series was a journey to Antarctica, and Nik says it confirmed for her the goal of what they were trying to do.

“We were searching for videos about what it’s like to travel to go to Antarctica, and there was nothing out there,” Nik said.

Having previously moved into a place owned by Nik’s parents at Howardwick, the couple returned from their Antarctic trip to what their family calls “the Camp,” and there, on a kitchen table, they started producing what would become their “Two for the Road” television series and began pitching the idea to networks.

“We talked to the Travel Channel,” Nik said. “They wanted a hook. Like, you take another couple and you have $500, but that’s not what we wanted to do.”

So Dusty took the concept to the folks at Panhandle PBS last October, where he knew the people that worked there and also knew that PBS would allow them to have more creative control of their show. They loved it and started helping the Greens get their foot in the door with other PBS affiliates.

“It helps when your local station is working as a ‘presenting station,’” Dusty said. “They showed us how to pitch the show to national PBS.”

By June, the Greens were knocking on the door of the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) in South Carolina, trying to sell the group that licenses and distributes educational programming in all 50 states, the US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

“They told us, ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you,’” Dusty said. “We just kept calling.”

In August, they had about given up, but that’s when NETA called and gave them the answer they were looking for and said they would pick up the show with just a few changes.

A trip to a conference in Baltimore then gave the couple the opportunity to start promoting the show to other PBS affiliates.

“Two for the Road,” as a 30-minute television show premiered on Panhandle PBS in September with eight episodes in the first season, and Dusty and Nik hit the road to sell the show to other PBS affiliates in Texas.

“Our first stop was in Dallas to meet with this guy that everybody around the state listens to,” Dusty said. “And he was just like, ‘Well, yeah, I’m going to run the show.’”

By the end of the Texas road trip, Dusty and Nik had nine of the 12 PBS stations in the state agreeing to air “Two for the Road,” and then last week, the announcement came that the show will be available for national distribution to PBS stations in January. One of the first out-of-state affiliates interested in the show is in Philadelphia with an estimated 1.6 million viewers.

There are still challenges. Each PBS affiliate decides on its own whether to run an available show. So the Greens and their supporters must continue to lobby stations to pick the show up, and they must also work to secure their own underwriters for the show.

Meanwhile, Panhandle PBS began re-running the first season last week in the show’s regular timeslot, Thursday at 8 p.m., and Dusty says 13 episodes are ready for season two when it airs next year.

Even with the burgeoning success of “Two for the Road” – which is still literally produced on a kitchen table in Howardwick, the couple is very happy making their home base in Donley County, although they did move out of “the camp” and bought their own house one block away.

“The people at Howardwick are nothing but supportive,” Dusty said. “And we’ve got deer, and turkey, and raccoons, and we can see the stars at night. We call it our crash pad.”

The Greens are now planning their next series of adventures to shoot footage for “Two for the Road.” Costa Rica is up first, and they would like to add Cuba, Australia, and Jordan to their destinations. Through it all, they are guided by a desire to produce a show that will tell their friends and family what it’s like to travel the planet. They are also gratified that people are taking such a personal interest in their adventures.

“I never expected people would be sitting around the television with their kids, watching the show together,” Nik said. “But that’s what’s happening.”

The journeys have also given the Greens a different outlook.

“The greatest thing is that everywhere we’ve been, the people are just good,” Nik said. “The government may be awful, but the people are good. We’ve never felt unsafe.”

“It’s reaffirmed our faith in humanity,” Dusty said.

To learn more about Dusty and Nik’s adventures, visit TwoForTheRoad.com.