TRAVEL BLOGGERS START AT HOME

Travel bloggers come in all shapes and sizes.

They’re not all baby boomers reminding others not to litter in new places.

“Put your gum in a tissue and drop it in a garbage can, not throw it out the car window.”

But they all bring a sense of obsession about where they are at any given moment.

Who are they?

Embrace Someplace is a Portland-based travel website written by a life-long local.

In 2021 I left my steady job to become a full-time travel blogger (talk about scary). In 2022 I’m packing my bags to travel the world for one full year. Feel free to follow along!

My name Antonina and I’m a thirty-year old traveler from Portland. Embrace Someplace was born in my small Portland, Oregon apartment (with the help of my husband, Will) in an effort to share my love for my hometown. 

Antonina is a thirty-year old traveler. Is she one of the travel bloggers writing for her hometown, or writing about getting out of her hometown?

Instead of traveling for a year, I’ve talked to people on the road at one of their regular stops, the laundromat.

I was doing a load in Brugge, Belgium when a couple from Australia came in. They’d been traveling four months.

The lady said the most important part for her was a clean top sheet. She brought her own.

If you want a taste of the local flavor, go to the nearest laundromat.

From Asheville, North Carolina to King City, Oregon, you’ll get the scoop.

Ten Epic Marvels For Travel Bloggers?

A part of the travel bloggers’ tribe loves hyperbole.

If it ain’t epic why bother?

A nice older lady came to Oregon and wrote like she’d survived the original Oregon Trail.

She ‘traveled’ to Portland after a two day stay in Oregon wine country.

It reminded me of people I met in England who always dreamed of traveling to Wales when it was only forty miles away.

Forty miles and a lifetime away.

All they were saying was they’d rather stay home.

Two Hot Takes

First, start small, as in right where you are.

What would you need if you were the new person on the block.

If you left your house, your apartment, your condo, your tent, and planned on being gone a few weeks, what would you pack?

Now consider if you were being evacuated and didn’t know if you’d have a place to come back to.

What would you take for that?

Next, imagine yourself part of a married couple.

You and your husband built a life on a piece of land he dreamed of owning.

The kids are all grown and out of the house, and you have the strongest yearning in your heart that you’ve ever felt, a yearning for new places, new people, new food, a different roof over your head.

Your husband is living the dream you both bought into, and you’re not feeling it anymore?

What do you bring on your trip?

Not your husband. In fact, why not get divorced in the most positive way and wish your old man luck in his new dating life?

And do it on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss anyone who needs encouragement to blow up their marriage.

What’s really going on here? Someone is tired of hearing the same old same old.

Part of it is the clock clicking louder and Louder and LOUDER.

Someone attracted to outrage needs more outrage. Otherwise they whither.

Someone attracted to anonymous crowds can’t stand the sense of familiarity for too long.

What to do? Run away. Run away.

Baby Boomer Travel Bloggers

Let’s say you’re not thirty, not living in a small apartment, and have kids with kids of their own?

Figure it out, grandma. I’m talking about you, grandpa.

Part of the problem with baby boomers is all of their extra time with nothing to do.

Is living a good life all about monitoring your digestion? Your good night’s sleep?

Is your best life mostly being bored half to death and trying as hard as you can to not talk about it?

Maybe that’s why you drink more booze than a sailor on pass.

Well have another one, but not before you make a certain commitment.

It goes like this:

I will make a place in my life for my kids and grandkids and when we are together I will help take the parent pressure off them by stepping up.

You are the answer to the question of, “Who’s watching baby while we ____?”

If baby is asleep in the car at a whale watching stop, you stay in the car.

Nap time for baby at a food truck stop? You stay in the car with the air on.

If parents are brave enough to travel with their baby, you’re boomer enough to lend a hand.

Besides, there’s no better nap than a nap with baby.

And you can take that on the road with you.

But, what if it’s just you and your partner?

Don’t start yelling if they give driving directions from google maps that don’t work.

They may not remember everything you saw, or what you did, but they’ll remember you screeching like a banshee forever.

So, don’t do it.

If you’re looking for me, I’ll be over here hanging laundry in the backyard of my little grass shack.