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Why travel and this site?
Perhaps you’re a veteran traveler whose desire for new adventures grows with each experience. Or maybe you’ve just discovered the joy that travel can bring through a recent experience. Everyone should understand what drives their lust for travel.
The drive to travel may differ from person to person. Perhaps your interest stemmed from influential childhood experiences. or maybe it was a series of eye-opening experiences while studying abroad. Perhaps it’s as simple as a quick trip out of the country where you felt the embrace of a stranger’s hospitality in a foreign land.
Whatever the case may be, everyone has a story and that’s why I decided to start this blog, to share my story and to promote YOUR aspirations to follow YOUR travel dreams.
My Inspiration and Adventures
To start, I wouldn’t consider myself as having an addictive personality however, when it comes to exploring and adventures, it’s a different ballgame. My hunger to travel began developing at young age thanks to my parents.
My grandparents raised my mother to have an adventurous spirit. She was raised on a farm where days were spent frolicking through the nearby fields and forests with her two older brothers.
For her, childhood was filled with outdoor experiences such as swinging on grapevines, exploring wilderness, and poking beehives (this didn’t always end pleasantly from what I was told).
My grandparents took my mother and her brothers on ‘adventures’, one of which was a cross-country road trip that spanned the United States including brilliant sights such as the Grand Tetons, Zion National Park, and Yellowstone. Experiences like these emboldened her adventurous spirit which ultimately would influence my adventurous drive.
We’re going on an adventure!
I’d hear my mom shout with excitement as she’d surprise us kids with another new outing. Many of my childhood adventures would be local excursions, but of course there were those week long trips to the mountains of central Pennsylvania. It was here where my mom and dad, through sweat and grit, built a getaway home or as they called it, “The Shack”. They worked on this project for over the course of 20 years. The work was back-breaking, but we were all proud of what they had carved out for the family.
The Shack in PA
The Pennsylvania getaways provided a blank canvas for me to be free spirited and adventurous. My family and I would go on lengthy hikes through the mountains, tubing down the nearby river, sight-see for elk or bear (occasional mountain lions), and tell stories around nightly ‘bonfires’ under the boundless stars of the Milky Way.
It started with a Globe
On top of these adventures, I had a strong interest in history and would spend countless nights of my younger years gazing at world maps to gain a better understanding of why civilizations ended up where they did, how cultures developed over time, and the traditions of the people who lived inside these squiggly lines called borders.
Along with these maps, a globe that sat on my dresser as a kid was instrumental in spurring my curiosity about the world. I developed a pre-bedtime routine before turning the lights off. I would hold my finger at a random place on the globe, spin it as fast as I could, and see where my finger would land once the globe had stopped spinning. When I’d remove my finger, I would take a moment and ponder what it must be like living in that funny sounding town or 
city which my finger pointed to.
Questions would race through my mind such as, what are people here doing at this very moment? What’s their life like? What are their beliefs? What do they value? Are they happy? Free? Is there conflict there? Then, I would picture myself there, living among the populace, embracing rituals and speaking their native tongue. Shortly after this, I would close my eyes, doze off, and the imaginations of travel would flood my dreams.
55 Adventures and Counting
Since my upbringing and throughout the past decade of my life, I’ve traveled to 51 countries and counting. While I know this may pale in comparison to some travel enthusiasts who’ve trotted the globe twice, this is my pot of gold and I’d like to share some of my stories with you.
Traveling is an investment in yourself which forces you to grow, strengthens your appreciation of those who look or may behave differently, turns strangers into friends, and ultimately broadens you spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.
So without further ado, please enjoy this blog as you hopefully draw inspiration from my travels including adventures like paragliding in Medellín, running with the bulls in Pamplona, road tripping through the Andes, drinking champagne in Champagne and many more.
