So, as you can see, I decided to start a blog. The intent is to record some of my boyfriend, Matt, and I's upcoming travel adventures. Me starting a blog may come as a surprise to some, coming from a person who just a few short years ago referred to, in all seriousness, a blog as a "blob." I still have not lived that down, and so have come to embrace it. Hence the name of my blog or blob. Travel Blob was already taken, so I had to settle for Traveling Blob. On the plus side, I do like the fact that the name of my blog ends up sounding like some kind of cheesy horror film, or overweight tourist, or dense pollution cloud (which might not be so far fetched in our first overseas destination - the thin ozone layered Australia). So, feel free to apply whatever definition is most entertaining for you.
I am very excited about our upcoming travels. Since I can remember, I've always had the travel bug. I didn't have cable growing up, so the travel channel was out of the question. The closest thing I got to seeing travel was Rick Steve's Europe on PBS. I'm not sure why they ever specified that it was Rick Steve's Europe, because he never went anywhere outside of Europe (excluding the northern part of Africa and Iran as part of other European trips), but that's besides the point. I would get so excited when the show would come on, watching every new place with awe, the locations changing but good old Rick's '80s style staying a constant.
My first trip outside of the country was in high school. It was a 2 week exchange program to Switzerland that I had slowly saved up for with babysitting money (my rail pass in Europe having been paid for by generous contributions from friends' parents). I was not disappointed by this trip, Rick Steves had not lead me astray. It was one of the best times of my life.
Since then, I have been very lucky to have been able to do the traveling that I have done. I studied abroad in Spain for 2 months while in college, traveled around Europe for a month backpacking, been to Morocco, went to Tunisia a year ago, been to various parts of Mexico and all over the USA. This upcoming trip is a little different in that we have very little planned and don't have a specific end date. We're trying to plan as little as possible, as I'm sure different opportunities will come up as we go and we don't want to get too set in a specific plan or idea.
Our journey begins with a small road trip out to the west coast before we fly out of the country. We leave in a few days and spend two weeks driving out to Grand Rapids (MN), Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, and Scottsdale.
As a final note to my first entry, try to have low expectations while reading my blog (hard to do, I know). For me, traveling is all about the experience and living in the present moment (or trying to as much as I can). I don't want writing in my blog to overshadow the experience, making the reflection of the experience more important than the actual experience, or change the way I would act normally because it might be a cool thing to write about later. Therefore, if I don't write for awhile, don't feel slighted. Besides, movies are always better when you have low expectations, I'm sure blobs work in the same way.
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