Yesterday I got engaged at my mom’s house in Millington. (Proposal story here.)
We celebrated with lunch at Las Tortugas in Germantown.
And had Jerry’s Sno Cones in Memphis.
We chilled in Audobon Park in Memphis.
And for dinner we ate at Central BBQ in Memphis.
It was kind of the perfect day of love, food, celebration, and Memphis.
I love being engaged and I’m glad it happened here. Memphis will always be a special place for me.
Even though this is my “travel” blog, I never blog about traveling when I’m actually doing it. But that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few weeks.
Since I left for Oregon a couple months ago I’ve traveled thousands of miles and gone through 15 states. I spent the last three weeks traveling and basically living out of my car on a road trip from Oregon to California to Texas to Louisiana to North Carolina to Tennessee.
I started in Salem, Oregon, where I was living for a month and a half with my good friend. From there I traveled to San Francisco and then Santa Monica to meet up with bloggers from the healthy living niche.
Venice Beach, CA
Emerald Isle, NC
I went to Los Angeles I picked up my boyfriend after he traveled to the US from New Zealand. We then went to Disneyland (see The Happy for the best photo ever from Disneyland), Vegas, Texas, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, and finally ended up on the east coast in North Carolina.
Seven Lessons Learned From A Cross Country Road Trip
1. Be flexible. Having a plan in place is a great idea, but make sure it’s not very rigid. Having some flexibility for new opportunities that might come up will make your trip more enjoyable. We had a tight schedule in certain places and it would have been nice to be more flexible and try more things.
2. Expect to spend more money than you budget. Unless you have a high budget, you probably will over spend. We had a very modest budget and definitely overspent in certain places. It’s hard to predict when gas will cost more or an unexpected but necessary expense presents itself.
3. Take care of your car carefully. If you are going on a roadtrip across the country you will be spending a lot of time in your car and putting a lot of miles on it. Getting your oil changed on schedule, having air in your tires – these things are important for your safety and for your car to be as efficient as possible. You might also want to consider getting AAA, which even if you don’t use gives you piece of mind on the off chance that anything might go wrong with your car.
4. People you’ve never met will be the best people to stay with. On our trip we stayed with a lot of bloggers to keep our expenses down and meet some of our readers (Kepa and I are both bloggers). Many of these stops were the most amazing and unforgettable experiences of the trip. The people we stayed with shared their homes and gave us more than we ever could have expected. If you get a chance, instead of staying in hotels stay with people you know or even those you’ve never met. Check out couchsurfing.org if you don’t know bloggers in a million places.
5. Explore as much as possible. See a random billboard on the interestate for something that looks promising? Get off and try it out. That’s how we found Lea’s Lunchroom in Louisiana, which gave me the best slice of apple pie I’d ever had. Don’t always stick with the standard stops – explore a little bit.
6. It’s hard to be healthy. I’m a healthy living blogger who tries my hardest to eat healthy food on most days. On a road trip, however, it’s ridiculously hard. If you are trying to fully enjoy the roadtrip you want to try local dives and specialties, not chew on celery sticks. A long term road trip can definitely lead to weight gain when you combine the yummy food with sitting in a car for hours upon hours.
7. It’s worth it. A cross country roadtrip was something I’ve wanted to do for years. It’s one of those things on my life list that I knew would stay on there until I did it. It was the most exciting, most fun, best relationship building, worthwhile experience. Road trips can turn out the other way though, so make sure whoever you go with is someone you really enjoy spending time with!
Those are a few things I learned in the past three weeks while traveling across the country. I’m finally back in Memphis now and I’m glad. My last three weeks in the United States will be filled with showing Kepa around Memphis and tying up lose ends before moving to New Zealand.
Currently I’m hanging out in Tennessee, at home, one of my stops on our cross country road trip.
I finally have had time to relax and catch up on internet happenings while I’ve been gone. It was only one week of traveling, yet it was jam packed. We went from LA to Disneyland to Vegas to Dallas to New Orleans to Memphis in a week. That’s with the driving too. Quite crazy, right? And we still have to travel across the state of Tennessee and then North Carolina so we can visit the other coast and complete the road trip.
At some point I will sit down and blog about the entire trip and all the places we’ve been. But let’s just say that on this trip I’ve found the happy.
Wheee!
I’ve been staying in Oakland with a wonderful blogging friend for the last few days. I had the chance to explore the bay area a bit and had a great time. But instead of blogging about any of that, I want to show the results of a few hours spent organizing her home office while I was here.
Before:
After:
Oddly enough, I like to clean and organize. My adventures into living minimally and without clutter have pushed me towards doing the same for other people and enjoying the process. I love tackling a project like this that feels overwhelming (which is why it hasn’t been done already) and leaving the space useable and clean. And it’s so nice when the person appreciates the final result. Perhaps I have a future as a professional organizer?
