Tag Archives: travel

10.05.12

They say as soon as one vacation is over you start planning the next.

Oh wait…”they” don’t say that?
Well, I do.

We love to travel, we love to learn and see pretty places and meet the most interesting people.
Daydreaming of far off places gives us something to look forward to….more adventure I say.

We revealed in this post that we finally accepted that our priorities may not be the same as everyone else’s.  Now that we are ok with that, we have given ourselves permission to dream bigger and take more risks.  We aren’t going to eat raw bacon or anything, that is still too risky.  But traveling has pushed its way to the top of our list.

Before you call Suze Orman, know that our first priority is to get out of debt and save like crazy to be able to run away like gypsies.

But saving is hard….especially when Pier 1 has a sale.

So we put together a list of places we want to go.
Our “Dream Bigger” List

Obviously we can’t do it all unless we win the lottery or have some rich uncle we didn’t know about, but you can bet your tooshie we are buying our lotto tickets and checking family trees.

The point is to make the list so you have a reason not to buy the adorable ceramic owl that is half off.
I mean you know how I feel about lists.

Can I get an amen….and maybe a couple plane tickets.

We are now accepting donations.

Where do you want to go?  India?  Costa Rica?  Brazil or Russia?

Written by Christina and Tim
10.04.12

The most common thing we heard before we left on our almost two week road trip was, “oh this will be the ultimate test”.

Of course there were variations like, “pack a big bag of patience” and “please try not to kill each other” and even “whoa nelly you two will be enemies by day three”.

Not very encouraging.

T and I have always traveled well together, but we are talking small weekend trips here kids.  We really started psyching ourselves up for 13 days of being in a two foot radius of one another. To our surprise, it was easy breezy fun.
Disclaimer: we do not have chittlins, I believe that to be extremely important information.

We of course had our moments of frazzled map reading, and insane traffic never made us giggly….but we did a good job of remembering that we were frustrated with the situation and not with each other.

Once we hit the downward slope, aka the drive home…we both got a little grumpy.  But there were never any blowouts, which I think we both fully expected.

All my life I have looked at traveling as very hectic.  Traveling meant arguing at least 32% of the trip, usually in the very beginning.  I’ve been on some trips where people fight the whole time…not fun y’all.

Feeling like we might be onto something….we put together a list for you all. roadtrips with spouse/boyfriend
We hope all of your travels are as happy as ours!

Written by Christina and Tim
10.01.12

When we originally planned our road trip, we planned on ending in Chicago for the Cardinals – v- Cubs series.
But then I was asked to help with the United Way, so our trip got moved up.

We still wanted to hit up Chitown, even if we couldn’t root for the home team. We didn’t have much time in Illinois, since we still had to drive six hours home. Our main attraction was none other than the Shedd Aquarium.
Where we took over 400 photos.

I decided to dedicated an entire post to all those photos, so you’ll be seeing all the aquarium goodness later this week!
While in Chicago we made a stop at Millenium park to see The Bean (aka Cloud Gate Sculpture). It was yet another attraction that we paid to park, walked to see, and then left.
We enjoyed it while we were there though. It was really neato skeeto….could have stayed and tried to figure out how to take non-blurry photos played for hours.  But alas, we had to drive back to the Lou and go to work the next day.  So we put our grumpy pants in the car and headed on home.

It was a sad, sad day.

Written by Christina and Tim
09.28.12

Okay, maybe in my dreams.
Maine was our favorite place, our dream is to have a summer home there…anyone want to donate? Maine was a last minute decision.  We basically decided, we are only four hours away…are we ever going to get the chance to go to Maine again?
Sandy told us to drive on over to Camden, Maine and get us some chowdah.  So we did.

Here was the first clue that we loved Maine.  We were driving in at night, and being from the Most Dangerous City in America we decided to ask a gas station attendant what areas to avoid.  It went a little something like this:

Me:  Hi, have you ever been to Camden, Maine?
Super Nice Man:  Yea, you goin’?
Me:  Yes, that’s where we are headed.  Are there any places to avoid?
SNM:  Blank stare.
Me:  Like, where should we stay?
SNM:  Are you talkin’ criminal?
Me:  Yes, exactly.
SNM:  Girl, you just watch out for the moose and deer okay.
Me:  Oh so it’s pretty safe then?
SNM:  You do realize you are in Maine right?

The second reason I love Maine, their accents.  Wicked awesome.

This is for you Super Nice Man, but you have to share it with my mooseaholic mama. Since we drove in at night we couldn’t really take in the sights.  Tim wanted to find a hotel room, I was more concerned with getting a lobster in my tummy.

Tim likes to make me happy, so we focused on food.
Found an awesome little bar called Cappy’s.
It was awesome.
The lobster was unreal.  And you could even catch your own and they cook it for a dollar. I would highly recommend checking out Cappys, it was such a good time.
I have no clue why our eyes are so closed…I guess we were food drunk.Sorry for the terrible phone pictures, didn’t wanna get all professional up in Cappy’s.
After we stuffed our guts we decided to find a place to stay, this is when I realized Tim is always right.

Because Camden is such a small town, all of the hotels close down at 9.
It was 9:15…bummer.
Luckily we found one place a couple miles out that stayed open until 10.

 

They had lots of lobster statues, and a hot lobster quiche for breakfast.  Winning.

We had a full morning of lighthouse viewing planned, until we woke up to this. A whole lot of Maine fog.  It was the prettiest fog I had ever seen.

We didn’t let it slow us down.  We headed to a couple different lighthouses….  we weren’t able to see any of them…but the ocean was magical.

  Maine is everything you imagine.  It is peaceful and calming.  From the gentle tide to the sound of the buoy bells, I truly believe that is where we belong. We both just sat quietly and imagined walking out to the lighthouse every morning and drinking our peppermint hot chocolate.  Maine seems like a place of eternal happiness. The other thing we loved, and I think this depends where you go….the privacy.
It wasn’t touristy by the beaches at all, we sat by ourselves most of the day. The fog started lifting a little, but not enough to see lighthouses.  We just kept exploring.

We drove through a park and there was beauty everywhere.  From the birch trees to the graveyard to these two chairs begging us to sit a while. Is this not the most beautiful graveyard ever. I found lots of treasures….including the ducks. After we finished all of our beach viewing….we went into town.      It was a great little town speckled with Bed & Breakfasts’ and charming shoppes (with an extra ‘pe’ because they are quaint).

We walked along the harbor and admired all the fisherman, what a life. Everything is prettier in Maine. We found our third reason to love Maine while visiting the shoppes…everyone is so N-I-C-E.
Like crazy nice, overly nice.
Break out a map and draw you directions nice.  It was refreshing.

Upon the recommendation of a local, we went to Graffam Brother’s Seafood Shack and grabbed some chowdah.
Then we took it to the local hideaway that he drew directions to. And there we found our dream house. Can I please get a million dollar loan.
If I can, I’ll invite you to my backyard that overlooks a lighthouse.

Oh and let me not forget to tell you about the chowdah…not chowder.
I could live on that and that alone everyday for the rest of my life, fo sho.

Do you need more convincing that we love Maine….okay.
They love dogs. Dogs were everywhere, and it was wonderful.  There was even a shoppe that had a sweet dog trained to walk you into the store.  Seriously, the dog sat on the stoop and when you googled at him he walked you in the store and left you to spend oodles.  He returned to his stoop and grabbed the next sucker.  We watched him do it at least six times.  We have some training to do.

And because no road trip post is complete without driving pictures….here is our view as we drove out of Maine. And you know how I feel about bridges. It really was heaven on earth…we can’t wait to go back. Can you believe our trip is almost over?
We will have one more post on Monday….and it’s a biggin’ y’all.

Stick around.

Written by Christina and Tim