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!

The Goonies House:

Astoria from Astoria Column:

Beach in Oregon:

North Head Lighthouse in Cape Disappointment State Park, Washington:

Just a couple of weeks ago I was on a several day roadtrip because I decided to temporarily move to Oregon. (Hurray for doing things on a whim!) Now I’m planning a new roadtrip, a completely huge and awesome one across the entire country.

Here is the tentative schedule for the roadtrip of awesomeness:

July 3 – Drive from Salem, OR to San Francisco, CA  (9 hours, 43 minutes)

July 3-6 – San Francisco, CA

July 7 – Drive from SF to Los Angeles, CA  (6 hours, 26 minutes)

July 7-8 – Los Angeles, CA

July 9 – Kepa arrives in LA from New Zealand!

July 10 – Disneyland!

July 10 – Drive from Anaheim, CA to Las Vega, NM  (4 hours 20 minutes)

July 11 – Drive from Las Vegas to Tucumcari, NM  (11 hours 58 minutes)

July 12 – Drive from Tucumcari, NM to Arlington, TX  (7 hours 50 minutes)

July 13 – Arlington/Dallas, TX

July 14 – Drive from Dallas, TX to New Orleans, LA  (8 hours 28 minutes)

July 15 – New Orleans, LA

July 15/16 – Drive from New Orleans to Memphis, TN  (6 hours 13 minutes)

July 16 – Memphis, TN

July 17 – Drive from Memphis, TN to Cincinnati, OH  (7 hours 49 minutes)

July 18 – Drive from Cincinnati, OH to Northfield, NJ  (11 hours, 9 minutes)

July 19 – New Jersey/NYC

July 20 – Drive from Northfield, NJ to to Cincinnati, OH  (11 hours, 9 minutes)

July 21 – Drive from Cincinnati, OH to Memphis, TN  (7 hours 49 minutes)

July 22 – August 6 – Memphis!

Yeah, it’s a lot of driving in a short time. It’s going to be crazy. But really we aren’t interested in seeing a ton of stuff and the main places we want to stay a bit are because there are people there we like and/or it’s a place we haven’t been before. The main goal is to see as much of the country as possible, meet as many blogging friends as possible, and also to not go broke doing so.  Lot’s of meetups are planned and staying with family/friends. It’s going to be a really fun experience if nothing else. :)

I’m in Salem, Oregon now.

Considering I wasn’t planning to be in Oregon a few weeks ago, this is slightly crazy. But it happened and is real and wonderful and I’m loving it here already even though I’ve only been here half a week.

So how did this all happen?

Well, on May 3 I was fed up with my situation living at home and felt the need to get out of what was a toxic environment for me. I posted on Facebook a flippant comment about figuring out someplace to live for just two months. I wanted to leave but wasn’t really sure that I would make the commitment to leave since it wasn’t a long period of time.

My former college roommate from my freshman year who lives in Oregon replied saying that she needed a roomie. I’d been trying to move in with her for the past year but something always came up – going to Vermont, going to New Zealand, etc. When she asked I thought that it sounded like the best idea ever. I’d finally get to live in Oregon and experience the West Coast. We talked about it and she ended up getting another roommate but still wanted me to come and crash at her place. Since I’m a fan of air mattresses and will sleep/live almost anywhere I decided to still go.

I decided on a Tuesday and left for Oregon on Saturday morning. I packed up my car, printed off directions, bought some food for the trip, and set off headed West.

I drove 12 hours the first day, 7 the next, and then another 7 the day after that. I stayed with bloggers in Fremont, Nebraska, and Salt Lake City, Utah. I spent an extra day in Utah hanging out and meeting several other bloggers in the area. I loved my stay in Utah and had a ton of fun there. The day I left Utah I drove over 14 hours to get to Salem, Oregon.

And that’s where I am now. I love it so far and I can’t wait to explore the city further. It’s going to be an interesting month or two up here.

We took a ferry ride over to Waiheke Island the other day, after spending a few minutes on the wharf trying to decide on the best destination. The ride itself was quite nice; it takes about 40 minutes to get to the island and there is plenty to look at leaving Auckland.

Once we got to the island we had to decide what to do. Our choices were between sea kayaking, riding a scooter, or riding bikes around the island. We chose the bikes because it would be a fun way to see the island and provide a little bit of exercise.

It was a lot of exercise as the island is hilly, so we were going up a pretty steep hill ever five minutes or so.  We biked over to this beach and took a little water break underneath a tree.

In the end we cut across the traditional loop they had for bike riders.  We shortened the route due to sunburn and fatigue on my part, and missing the first turn we needed to keep going the marked route.  Instead of back tracking to get back to the normal loop we just picks a street and cut across… missing another turn, but in the end reconnecting with the correct streets.  Might not have gone the right way but we still had a fun time on the roads we did decide to take.

Since we cut it short it turned out to be a fun time. I did end up with a decent sunburn and super tired muscles, but all in all the next day I feel fine. I’m glad we did it! And next time? Next time we will do more and I won’t be so tired/unprepared.

One of my favorite things to do when traveling is go kayaking. In Memphis I’m a bit limited in where I can, or would want, to go kayaking so generally I just don’t do it. I wait until I have opportunities when traveling and then take advantage of whatever beautiful river or lake I’ve happened upon.

In New Zealand, Lake Taupo offered the almost perfect kayaking opportunity. I say almost perfect because the weather didn’t cooperate with us. We set off in our kayaks in mid afternoon after having clear skies all morning. There were a few clouds in the sky but nothing to indicate what was coming. We were so blissfully unaware.

We kayaked a while, maybe around a mile down the coast. And then we saw the clouds darken and the rain begin to fall across the lake. We had not gone as far as I wanted, so I didn’t want to turn back yet. I thought the rain might stay where it was and we could continue. As we kept paddling the rain crept closer and closer. Soon it was raining on us and we started paddling toward shore as the rain fell harder.

Sitting on shore we waited until the rain let up… or at least that was the plan. Once it seemed like there was a break we got back in the kayaks and started to head back to the hotel. But then we saw the lightning and heard the thunder and decided that wasn’t the best plan of action. As we searched the shore for a place to hang out until the storm passed we realized we were out of luck and had nowhere to hide.

Then the woman who had been swimming with her family and got out of the water when the lightning started like we did came down to ask us if we wanted to wait out the storm with her family. We put the kayaks in her shed and then went up and had coffee and tea with the family while their four year old son entertained us. We tried to wait out the storm but it never got much better and after an hour we decided to try to get back before the sun went down and made the situation worse.

We made it back without incident and ended the Lake Taupo Kayaking Adventure that had started out as an easy paddle down to the city center. Was the first time I’ve ever gone kayaking in the rain or had any kind of storm show up. It turned out to be really nice meeting and spending some time with a family from Auckland vacationing at Taupo. But next time we will check the weather before we head out.

At least the day ended well with a beautiful sunset, even with the clouds. Every sunset I’ve seen since being in New Zealand has been gorgeous.

I’ve been in New Zealand for three days now.

I LOVE it here.

What’s not to love?

It’s a really great city.  Clean and green, that’s the New Zealand slogan, right?  Totally fits.  Even in the city there is so much green space it’s amazing.  And you are just minutes from water and beaches in every direction.  In my book that constitutes a beautiful place.

I’m enjoying visiting a place with a built in tour guide.  Traveling for the sake of seeing new places and having new experiences is fun and all, but I think I enjoy the experience of having friends show me the city from their perspective.  I like seeing someone else’s favorite spots and seeing what makes them appreciate the city they live in.  And since I’m staying here a month it’s much more like I’m living here than just visiting.

Next week I’ll be going to Taupo and Rotorua, so there will be a little touristy goodness during my stay here.  And on Saturday I’m hosting a health/fitness blogger meetup in Auckland.  That’s the niche of my other blog and I’m quite excited to meet some other bloggers and discuss things.   Meeting other bloggers is one of my favorite things to do because I enjoy blogging yet have few friends who do it, or at least do it consistently.  So this weekend’s meetup should be fun.

Alright, I’m off to enjoy another beautiful day in New Zealand. ;)

Back from Gatlinburg, TN after a fun trip with my mom for her 60th birthday.  It wasn’t exactly what I would normally do, but she seemed to have a good time and that was what it was all about.  We walked a lot and went to the top of the mountain and ate all her favorite foods and let her relax instead of worrying about her family.  She had a good time so my birthday present was a success!

Looking back the only thing I wish we had done was got a picture together.  Not sure how I managed to miss that particular thing.  But the rest of the photos are great and we had a really awesome time in the mountains.

Love the smoky mountains. One of my favorite parts of my home state and most definitely one of the prettiest.

But I’m going to leave it on Wednesday.  Headed to Brisbane, Australia for a day to hang with a blogging friend and then on to Auckland, New Zealand.  More on this later, but let’s just say I am super freaking excited!!

With all the excitement and planning for my New Zealand trip, I almost completely forgot about my other trip in January.

Yeah, I’m going on another trip.

This other trip is much closer and much shorter.  It’s a 4 day vacation in Gatlinburg, TN, with my mom for her 60th birthday.  While it might not seem as flashy as a trip abroad I am very excited about it, especially since I leave in three days.

I’m also excited because my mom is coming on this trip.  Actually it’s her trip entirely.  I’m just planning and financing it.  Since she never takes vacations and it is her 60th birthday in January I told her we could go on a vacation anywhere in the US.  She went back and forth between a few places but ultimately decided on Gatlinburg because she loves the mountains (and partly because she knows my budget isn’t that big).

Still I’m not sure exactly what we will be doing in Gatlinburg.  I know if it was my trip I would be snowboarding, but I don’t think my mom has the same kind of ideas.  More likely it will be a relaxing trip with nice meals and walks and maybe spa day type stuff… which still sounds pretty good to me!  And from what I hear there is plenty of things to do in Gatlinburg.

I’ve been to Gatlinburg once before, but was with a group for a conference and had very little opportunity to see or do anything.  It will be nice to visit without a real agenda and with the chance to do whatever comes to mind.  Most of all I’m excited to be traveling to the other end of Tennessee.  I love the mountains in my home state and miss the chance to see them more often, as I live in the very flat world of West Tennessee.  I can’t wait until Wednesday when we hit the mountains!

It is quite pretty in Gatlinburg this time of year with all the snow.

After I get back from the Gatlinburg trip I have three more days until I get on a flight to go hang out in Australia and then head to New Zealand.  January is going to be a freaking awesome month of travel!