The Journey Begins

OOTO?

When I realized my time off on my work calendar starting saying “OOTO” for out of the office and unpaid leave rather than “PTO”, I knew I may have planned too many trips this year… Just kidding. That’s impossible. But for real guys, we are spoiled at my job and get a huge amount of paid time off so that’s saying a lot.

The biggest reason I decided to start a blog was because I wanted to grow myself as a person, as a traveler and hopefully one day as an entrepreneur. I’ve spent my entire life unsure of what I wanted to be and do with my time. I mean, how can you devote your whole life to one career? It makes no sense to me because I constantly feel like I want to do and try everything! And unfortunately I mean that… everything. From wanting to be a pediatrician when I was younger to testing out the waters in bartending, psychology, english (what was I even thinking when I was an english major?), and now I’ve finally just dropped the idea that I needed to master something right now and start a career. I have wanted to take some time for myself and travel since I graduated high school and I never did it. Instead, I forced myself into college and don’t get me wrong it’s been fun so far, but it’s also taught me a lot about who I am and what I want to do with my life. Blake is amazingly talented too and I think we make a great team, so this could really be a good step for us to follow our dreams of traveling and still learning how to work and make a living at the same time. I’m a firm believer that you learn something from the outside world and all about who you are that you cannot gain from being stuck in a college classroom. I’ll go back to school one day, but it’s just not my time yet and I’ve been fighting that battle within myself for almost 4 years now.

Some things I really want to focus on in the future of the blog:

• Travel tips
• How we get the opportunity to travel so often
• Best music festivals!
• Where the best places to eat are
• Sharing some fun & crafty hobbies of mine in my spare time
• What keeps me inspired
• “What’s in my bag” — a fun topic for a future backpacking trip
• Cultures and how much they differ (once we start traveling more internationally)
• BIG ONE: Get better at taking more pictures and sharing the best ones for you all — as you can see the blog is starting out a little colorless. That will change.

And the list is growing! I have lots of fun ideas that I will explore some more on, but I’d love to hear what you all want to see as well. I welcome any ideas, recommendations on travel destinations and tips you might have, of course. Again, thank you so much for all the support from my amazing friends who have really inspired me to finally do this and their feedback has been incredible. I want this to be a fun place where I can share my life and what I love to do. This is a huge step towards a long-planned journey. Welcome. 🙂

 

The Basic Food Post

I know, I know… everyone posts about food. But hopefully, this will be slightly different since I’m only an okay cook and this won’t be focused on what I’m making. In my travels, I want to focus on some awesome places to eat, drink and indulge all over the world. I have some posts in the works, past recommendations of where we’ve been already and will have a few exciting ones soon with my upcoming trip. If I’m being honest, my prediction is New York City will give me so many amazing places to eat that I will have to smoosh them all into one post, or separate posts with different categories — breakfast, lunch, dinner, treats, & drinks? What do you guys think?

One thing I’ve also been addicted to, and are so underrated if you ask me, are smoothie bowls. I don’t know if it’s just where I live right now, but every time I eat one somebody is always confused what I’m eating and hasn’t tried one before. You guys, if you’ve never had a smoothie bowl or açai bowl before, YOU NEED TO. Seriously, life changing. They’re my favorite addiction because they are full of fruits, protein, most times dairy free if you find the right place (I don’t really eat dairy, maybe a story for another time) and just so darn yummy. Yet another reason I love Hawaii, this is where I discovered them since they are ridiculously popular there. I had to share a photo of my first açai bowl, topped with honey, almonds, strawberries, bananas, and chia seeds. Strangely enough, Jamba Juice still holds the gold star for my favorite in the area, and I’ve tried quite a few different places. I don’t know what they do so differently to theirs. Maybe it’s all the peanut butter… Anyway, I’ll always be looking for the best smoothie bowl so the hunt is officially on!

I’ll be on the lookout for some amazing and unique places. Of course, I’d love to hear any good places to chow down at along the way as well. Blake and I don’t put much of a limit on food when we’re traveling because we want to try all the most amazing things. It’s not our favorite thing to spend money on, but we don’t ever seem to regret it much afterwards when we’re in food comas. I am getting so hungry writing this right now because I’m thinking about all of the good places I’ve eaten on the west coast in the last few years (specifically the clam chowder in San Francisco) and my stomach is going crazy.

Oh… this page is going to be so much fun and such a struggle. Might have to just write here while eating a smoothie bowl, bummer. 😉

Travel Bug

Welcome! This is my first ever blog post and I’m bursting with excitement to publish this. Let me tell you a little bit about what’s going on around here.

While I swear I have a life and actually stay very busy, my thoughts seem to constantly be revolved around trying to get out of town and keeping my eye on ticket prices and the funnest places to go next. You guys, when I say I love to travel I mean I seriously LOVE to travel. I constantly have an itch to explore and get out of town. Lucky for me, Blake has that same itch so I don’t have to venture out on my own. In the last year and a half, Blake and I have taken more trips than I can hardly believe! There are a lot of trips coming up this year which finally made me want to start a blog because I don’t think we’re ready to slow down anytime soon. Blake is so close to finishing school and when he is finished we plan to explore our hearts out! There is so much we want to experience and a lot in store for the future, it was time I finally shared it with everyone I love.

Some fun places we’ve been to so far are Hawaii (my all-time favorite), Las Vegas for the most incredible music festival of my life, Portland, Sun Valley, and I’ve personally gotten to have a lot of experience with Seattle (also a huge favorite). Of course, summers seem to be filled with car rides a few hours into the mountains to get some fresh air away from Boise with a good hike, so we’ve had our fair share of Idaho mountains and towns too. I might consider reminiscing on these trips from time to time on the blog and offer some tips on where we stayed, what we did and how most of these were somewhat spontaneous — especially Vegas and I don’t regret a thing — and still totally doable.

I want to take you all on my journeys while I travel because I really want to focus on new experiences and seeing the world a lot more in the upcoming years. We’ve set some goals for ourselves to eventually move somewhere new (even though we absolutely love our friends and family here), we’ve starting saving a ton of money to be able to afford to take trips and make that our focus for the next chapter of our lives together and I honestly could not be more excited about it. I’ve never felt like it’s a better time than right now to travel and explore all the beauty the world has to offer. We have yet to be out of the country, but I think that’s just around the corner.

Where do you guys think we should plan a trip for in the next few years? I’d love to hear any advice and recommendations you have along the way and I’ll probably be asking that question a lot. Keep an eye out for the countdown to the right of my page! It will count down to each trip I’m taking this year and I will be posting lots of fun things in between. I have learned a lot about saving money, finding the best deals, intensely planning for trips, and lots more and I wanted to be able to share that with you all as well. I’m very new to being so public about these types of things though and while I’m BEYOND excited, I’m also very nervous! I appreciate everyone’s constant support, feedback and comments on every post. It means more than you know!

Well, here goes nothin’!