I can perhaps say it all started while staring out over the vast horizon of cityscape, eyes peering through porthole on the American Eagle flight that would change everything (though that’s a story for another time), chasing sunset at 600+ miles an hour at an altitude that left the landscape below unmarred beneath the clouds on the short distance from Buffalo, New York to Chicago, Illinois.

For months now, I’ve considered documenting my travels, but have always abstained from sharing, thinking that my method and experiences would be of little interest to others. And that may be true. But for myself, and for anyone who is or may become interested in hearing about my travels, I’ve decided to put together a little blog as documentation. Maybe it’ll help someone down the line decide how to spend their time at a designated destination, or maybe it’ll provide some insight into how to go about light planning well in advance of leaving home. Mostly I think it’s of purely selfish reasons that I’ve decided to start writing, as having a written catalog of enjoyable (though sometimes stressful) experiences may help to ease sudden bouts of sadness and not-so-enjoyable thoughts by which I sometimes find myself frequented. Everyone has something: mine is I get sad.

To give some background, I’m a 23 year old recent graduate from Chapman University where I studied creative writing and narrative television. I have lived in Southern California my entire life, in a city that is considered one of the most ethnically and economically diverse in the state. I have always been surrounded by things to do – from museums to theme parks to beaches – the list goes on. Almost everything in the area where I have grown up has always been open late – this is the mecca of 24-hour McDonald’s, Subway, Del Taco, you name it, after all. At any hour of the night, you could likely find something to do, even if that something is hanging out at in a vape space with other twenty-somethings and bored teenagers with parents’ cars and no curfews.

When I was little, I lived at the theme parks – I regularly had annual and season passes to the Big Three – that is, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios Hollywood, and Disneyland (this would go on to include Disneyland California Adventure when it would open in 2001). During the summer, we would make at least one trip out to Wild Rivers and Raging Waters, the largest of the Southern California water parks. Prices used to be extremely reasonable for passes – especially considering my parents made it a weekly routine to visit one of the parks on Friday nights. To cut costs down on dining within the parks, we would have dinner beforehand, and we would maybe grab a snack or dessert later in the evening: my frugality in adulthood I owe to my parents.

At an early age, I had already become familiarized with prime travel destinations that many flocked to year-round; I adopted an interest in modern-day amusements – particularly those with historically derived pasts: my dreams became water-colored vestiges of menageries, bustling, peanut-crunching carnivals, velvet-tufted merry-go-rounds, palace thrones, and zip-a-dee-doo-dahs, rusted yard art, and Houdini-inspired slights of hand. Put simply, I had acquired interests. To this day, my bucket list includes visits to the Museum of Pez, the Vent Haven Museum (museum of ventriloquism), the Ringling Museum (dedicated to the circus), Goats on the Roof (a place that is exactly what it sounds like), Graceland Too (R.I.P.), and more. Perhaps these aren’t the typical locations one seeks out when they’re looking to make a trip across the country, or even across the globe, but it is exactly what draws me in – after all, how many places are there where you can forge your own metal kazoo like at the Kazoo Factory in Eden, New York, or you can ride a ski-lift to the summit of a hillside to mini golf with a view like at Hillbilly Golf in Gatlinburg, Tennessee? I am extremely fascinated by the tourist trap and traditional American road side attractions like the world’s largest ball of string, the world’s largest thermometer, basically the world’s largest (or smallest, as miniatures prove to be exceedingly popular throughout Europe) ANYTHING that have sprung up and entered the travel lexicon since the advent of air-travel and inter-state highways. I’d like to debunk the myth of the tourist trap by proving no such traps exist, but we’ll just have to see how I’m able to work that one out.

In the meantime, this space will be dedicated to my forages across the United States, as well as wherever affordable airfare and my willingness to just go take me. As a member of academia, I anticipate that I will at some point venture off into analysis and intellectual discussion over specific questions as they are posed, such as: what exactly defines travel? What makes a destination? How exactly did the history of this place affect its desirability as a destination of travel? And so on. As a patron of music, art, fashion and television, I may also prattle on about whatever happens to capture my attention or challenge my perspective at that time. So it is that I, Natalie, am a novelty grrrl, a woman of independence, not necessarily defined by my interests or my “likes,” but by my dedication to the art and method; by no means am I the end all and be all of travel, leisure, and entertainment – this simply is to act as a safe space for ideas and thoughts to promulgate (and congregate) and maybe answer a few questions (or raise a few, who knows?) for anyone of those wanting to ride shotgun on the journey.

-n