Today was the first day of our road trip that we let ourselves sleep in. Between all the hard-driving and the champagne last night, we needed it. We didn’t plan to do much in St. Louis, considering we stopped here only to see some good friends that just relocated here. We had already seen the Arch on the way in, so we decided to skip that and wander to the downtown St. Charles area and were pleasantly surprised with all the nice things to do.
Category Archives: 35 Day Road Trip
Road Trip Diary Day 4 Knoxville to St. Louis – Lauren’s Birthday
Here it is…the big 3-0! I was fully expecting to wake up feeling old and depressed, but when life takes a serious turn in exactly the direction that you have always dreamed of, it’s hard to feel melancholy. I have my husband, my dogs, and a lifetime of road trip adventure ahead of me. When you want something bad enough, you have to get motivated and go out there and get it! I decided to start our road trip drive from Knoxville to St. Louis.
Road Trip Diary Day 3 Playing in the Smoky Mountians
Day 3 of our road trip started in Knoxville, TN with a plan to drive into the Smoky Mountains to hike around and play a little. This in itself was a big deal to us because we have tried to visit twice before and were stopped by inclement winter weather. We left the hotel very early (and sadly had to leave the doggies) to beat traffic and get there with enough daylight hours to stay in the park. Our playlist today started with the twang of Rilo Kiley’s Smoke Detector :) Continue reading
Road Trip Diary Day 2 Jacksonville to Knoxville
We woke up refreshed and eager today at 5:30 AM. Pretty surprising considering no alarm was set and we’re on vacation. It must be a side effect of not having a job or something. We ended up doing an offbeat “rambling road trip” 536 mile drive from Jacksonville, FL to Knoxville, TN. It took much longer than it should have because we made it a point to take a bunch of detours along the way and found plenty of things to do. It made the previous day feel like a practice run for the real thing. We headed out that morning full of laughter and giggles ready for adventure to come our way.
Road Trip Miami to Jacksonville Diary Day 1
After quitting your 10-year retail career with no real plan for your family’s future and knowing that you have limited funds to survive on, the only sane decision is to stuff your entire family into a 2-door hatchback and drive for 30 days right? Well somehow that’s what Lauren and I came up with. It seemed like the only sensible thing to do after being driven crazy by 60-hour work weeks and the insanity that our life had become. In the past 2 years alone, we lived in 4 different cities in 2 states with all the relocation I had done for work. We were at wits end, and frankly our marriage was suffering right along with us. With all that going on I quit my job and we packed ourselves and our two dogs, Zoe and Punkin, into a VW GTI and proceeded to drive for 35 days and 9,063 miles. The drive took us across 24 different states and countless highways and byways. Needless to say we were on a journey to find ourselves, each other, and hopefully a new direction for our lives. Continue reading