Each New Year I love to sit down & dedicate some time to reflect on the past 365 days and remember all of the great memories, awesome people, and funny stories that made my life so special.
In all, 2019 was a crazy year filled with extreme opposites. There were a ton of ups & a lot of downs. The highs were insanely high, but the lows were also terribly low.
I achieved a ton of personal & professional growth and felt like I was on top of the world. I also experienced a lot of rejection which knocked me down a couple pegs & humbled me greatly.
I traveled to eight different states and one new country, learned so much about so many different topics, had new & exciting experiences, made new friends, and overall had an outstanding year.
If I could use one word to describe 2019 it’s growth.
Growth in my personal life & relationships.
Growth in my career.
And growth in my passions, goals, and skill-sets.
With that, cheers to a great year & many more to come in the next decade! Here are my Top Nine moments in 2019:
Visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
I embarked on a last-minute trip to Ukraine this year & it was definitely the highlight of all 2019! With about one month’s notice, my friend Derek, from Wandering Earl Tours, invited me to join him on a tour he was leading into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The timing was definitely tight – but I couldn’t pass up this once-in-a-lifetime chance to visit one of my biggest bucket-list destinations!
Visiting Chernobyl was one of the most eye-opening & crazy experiences of my life. It’s one that I will remember forever and I am so grateful for the opportunity to visit, explore, and learn about this unique & tragic place first hand. I wrote more about my exclusion zone experiences in a separate post if you’d like to read more about it!
Central California Road Trip
After working in Santa Cruz for a few days, I took some vacation time and spent three days on a solo road trip cruising down Highway 1 through Big Sur along the West Coast. I saw mountains, beaches, redwoods, waterfalls, wildlife, and so much more along this breathtaking stretch of coast. It was absolutely stunning and one of the best road trips of my life.
This trip was also my second ever solo road/camping trip & it was every more amazing and empowering than my first around the Olympic Peninsula in 2018. That said – I do still prefer traveling with Travis.. it’s just not the same without him!
TravelCon Round Two in Boston
In 2018 I attended the first-ever TravelCon in Austin & fell completely in love with the entire event and experience. So, naturally in 2019 I attended again – but this time in Boston.
For five days I hung out in Boston and met new and interesting people, explored the vibrant city, and soaked up all the excitement and knowledge I could from my peers, industry experts, and some of my travel/blogging idols!
Overall the best part of TravelCon was the people (as always!) I met up with old blogging friends like Tara from Travel with TMc, Sarah from House of Wend, Calvin of The Calvin Chronicles & so many more. I also met new friends too like Lauren from Always Find Adventure, Cat from Cat’s Nine Lives, Rachel from Rachel Off Duty, and a hundred more motivated & inspiring souls just like them!
I left Boston feeling energized, fulfilled, and excited about my blog & travel. I’m already looking ahead to TravelCon round three in New Orleans this spring!
My 25th Birthday
To be honest, I really wasn’t looking forward to my 25th birthday. I officially hit my quarter life crisis and started to feel really old & lame. BUT my friends & family all showed up to make 25 one of my best birthdays ever.
- Travis snuck out of bed at 5:00 AM to cook me a mega breakfast. We’re talking omelets, crispy bacon, toast, hash-browns, Vietnamese coffee, AND fresh squeezed orange juice! He doesn’t cook much, so it was completely unexpected!
- My mom surprised me with an amazing & thoughtful gift that listed out the 25 best memories she had of me in 25 years. It was so sweet that it made me tear up.
- A huge group of my friends came out to celebrate my birthday with a dive bar crawl around Milwaukee’s East Side. Everyone even stayed out until 2 AM to close Wolski’s even though some of them had run a marathon that morning or traveled across the country that day.
Even though it wasn’t a birthday I was looking forward to – it meant so much to have everyone celebrate with me & make my day so special.
Backpacking at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
In May, we corralled a group of friends together to backpack 30-ish miles along Lake Superior through Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (one of my favorite places on Earth!) It was such a fun and laid-back long weekend filled with constant laughter and fast-cheetah, slow-cheetah packs.
We ate dinner by the lake, mooned a tourist boat, played games, and shared a ton of stories along the trail and around the campfire. Travis even caught a fish from the water with his bare hands which may or may not have been one of the coolest things he’s ever done!
Oregon Coast Road Trip
I visited Oregon for the first time in 2019 (finally!) and it was just as amazing as I expected! Work brought me out to the West Coast again, so I spent a week working and exploring Portland, Corvallis, and Eugene.
Most excitingly, I got to meet up with fellow travel blogger & friend, Chong, who lives in Eugene! We spent three days talking nonstop about our shared passion of travel as Chong showed me around the area. The highlight of my time in Oregon was an amazing day trip driving along the Oregon Coast and exploring all the beaches, tidepools, and seaside towns along the way!
One Last Trip to Deep Creek
My best friend’s parents have a cabin on Deep Creek Lake in Maryland and it is honestly one of the most beautiful and relaxing places on the planet. They recently decided to move back to Wisconsin (yay!) but that also meant the end of an era at the cabin.
Over Fourth of July weekend I joined the Loch Family for one last summer hoorah at the cabin in Deep Creek and had such an amazing time. We shared a great extra long weekend filled with boating, drinking, bonfires, and getting to spend quality time with my best friend and her incredible family. There really wasn’t a better way to spend the holiday.
I Got Promoted!
On the very first day of 2019 I officially moved up the corporate ladder from an Account Coordinator to an Account Executive at GMR. I’d been hustling for a promotion for a long time & finally got to take on more responsibility on the Comcast University team this year! Every week was filled with new challenges and opportunities to grow, lead, and improve the work we do for our client. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a stressful year – but at least I wasn’t bored!
Van Progress
For those of you that don’t know, Travis & I bought a Chevy Astro Van and are converting it into the ultimate adventure mobile complete with a bed, kitchen, storage, and solar power. Overall, 2019 was a huge year of progress for the van build and we are anticipating finishing it in early 2020!
We’ve put in so much time, energy, and physical labor into building our custom van and it feels really good to see it finally taking shape & knowing we’re getting that much closer to using it!
(Disclaimer: by “we” I mostly mean Travis. Although I’m personally invested in the project, my skills are sub-par at best. However, Travis is insanely talented & adaptable when it comes to constructing & building literally anything. So thank you Trav, for making our dreams come true!)
