I took a road trip that changed my life.
Okay that might be a bit dramatic but it did change a lot of things. I’m Lori, a southerner from Alabama who loves to travel. My daddy always said my middle initial “G” stood for go. Southerner Says is my way of sharing my adventures with you. Let me catch you up.
My travel story is probably similar to a lot of other people. I grew up in Alabama, road tripping and traveling with my parents, mostly in the eastern United States. Summer vacations were spent in Florida and fall trips were spent in “the Smokies”. We did vacations, but with the exception of a few visits to NYC and Virginia, we never ventured out much. Then, when I was fifteen, I had the opportunity to visit Mexico on a high school Spanish class trip and that was it for me. I fell in with Mexico — and travel — and was ready to see the world.
But you know what they say about the best laid plans. After I graduated from school, I got married and moved to Georgia. A job, a family and adulting kept me busy. Not to mention we were self-employed so taking time off was next to impossible — and budgets were tight.
Still, I traveled as much as I could – creatively learning how to stretch money and my PTO after I started working in healthcare at a hospital. Weekends in Atlanta, Florida beach vacations and plenty of road trips to Chicago to visit friends, satisfied my wanderlust somewhat. All of our spare change went in a travel fund jar and I drove my Chevy Suburban over 300k miles so could avoid a car payment and spend that money on travel.
I’ve been riding down a two-lane highway, pretty much all of my life. Trying to do things my way. Wondering if I’ll get anywhere but where I came from. Hope I’m sane by the time I’m done.”
Jamey Johnson
As time passed – a whole lot quicker than I wanted it to – I realized it was now or never. If I was going to travel and see more of the world, something had to change. Interestingly, that change came about with the help of an outsourced job and a severance package.
And the road trip I mentioned.
With the money I got from my severance package, my daughter and I took a 6,680 mile cross country-road trip from Georgia to California. We camped and visited 15 states, 9 national parks and 1 state park and we decided we wanted to travel even more.
Since my daughter was entering her last year of high school, she knew it was just a matter of time before she’d be in college and adulting too. We decided to make a list of all the places we wanted to go in the next five years. Let me tell you — it was way overambitious but it was just what we needed to get the ball rolling on our travel goals.
After the outsourcing fiasco, I found a remote job — before they were cool I might add — and since I worked in quarterly assignments, I was able to travel between assignments. Then, once my daughter moved away to college, I started traveling solo — I’d already been traveling alone for work so why not for fun too?
Ultimately we didn’t do everything on our list but it was still a win. Our first road trip gave us a starting place. We proactively put our idea on paper and worked towards a goal. Despite our adult responsibilities, we have managed to complete several more cross-country road trips together. We finally made it to Alaska in and we have continued to visit national parks together. I just made it to my 50th state and her 49th.
Besides the travel plan, there were some personal goals on the list as well. I’ve always been a travel guidebook reader, obsessive note taker and trip planner. Talking about and planning a trip is almost as good as going on one and one of my goals was to start a blog. If you are reading this now, well — I have a blog. I’ve also recently added the role of travel advisor to my resume so now I can plan even more trips for other travelers.
Since I’ve built website, I’ve taken some epic road trips and woken up to some gorgeous views. I’ve crossed off places on my bucket list — I’ve danced salsa in Cuba, saw the northern lights in Iceland and swam with whale sharks in Baja. I’ve worked with awesome travel brands and tourism organizations, attended fabulous travel conferences and met so many wonderful people.
And all that travel didn’t just change me. After visiting so many national parks together, my daughter is a park ranger with the National Park Service. I couldn’t be more proud of her. Out time spent together traveling and road tripping was priceless and I still drive across the country to visit her all the time, until hopefully, I go west permanently.
In this crazy busy world, I know there are plenty of people out there just like me. People that have lives, kids and other responsibilities that can’t quit their jobs to travel. There are families with tight budgets that want to take vacations. There are women who want to travel solo but aren’t quite sure how to start. The main reason I started Southerner Says was to help those people. You can travel and have adventures despite those things. I did it and you can do it too.
So what’s next? Well, more travel and road trips. I’m not a full-time traveler so when I’m at home, I’m busy planning more travel and plotting out an ever changing five year plan that includes maybe a podcast, leading a group tour to Iceland or Chile and a Baja or Alaska road trip. Who knows where I’ll go. After all, I have to live up to that middle initial.