This post does have something to do with road trips but I need to give a little back story so bare with me!
I was in the Orange County airport. I had been at Disneyland and was heading home. As I was sitting there, with my friend, waiting for our hour long flight home I thought about how miserable I was as a bookkeeper day in and day out.
On Mondays, I picked up invoices and processed them. On Tuesdays, I paid the bills due that week. Wednesdays, I did the profit and loss reports and so on. There was never a surprise or the anticipation of something different. As I sat there in the airport dreading Monday’s picking up of the invoices, I decided I could not go back. So I called my boss then and there and gave my 2-week notice.
It all was actually the perfect timing because the next day I tested positive for Covid. I was sick for ten days. I spent the ten days preparing everything for my last day of work. Actually, I only had to work one day, and that day was spent sending all my work to the general manager.
That was that, never would I do bookkeeping again…well, I have to do it for my own business but that’s how running your own business works. You have to do the boring back of house “stuff” so you can do the fun traveling planning stuff.
After the last day of my job, my daughter and I took off on a three week epic road trip to Colorado, there is an upcoming Colorado blog.
As I was driving and thinking during our trip, and my daughter had her headphones on and was off in her own world, I realized what discourages many people about going on these long road trips is the planning. There is a tight schedule, a different lodging reservation every day or two, the route, the stops, and the list goes on. It is a very detailed process.
What I also figured out on this trip is, I like the process of planning and I’m good at it. Oh sure, I made mistakes, but sometimes the mistakes make a trip that much better.
When we went to Canada (there will be a Canada road trip blog in the future), I hated a campground where we were supposed to stay. So, I pulled up stakes and we moved on to find another campground.
Everywhere was booked except a campground in Calgary. I hadn’t planned on Calgary, but decided we were going to wing it and go check out the city.
It was 9am and there were hundreds of people all walking in the same direction. We decided to follow them and see what was happening.
It was the Calgary Stampede! It’s a famous rodeo fair type event held every year.
We bought tickets and went in. It was so fun and we saw Mounties! My point is, we never would have stumbled upon it if I hadn’t made a mistake with our original campground and decided to take a chance on what was down the road.
Back to Colorado. When I realized I enjoyed the planning process, it hit me…I would start a road trip based travel agency. I have never been passionate about any job except for raising my kids. But this idea excited me. I started coming up with my plan of attack while we were still on the road. When we got home, I hit the ground running and started Hit the RoadTrips!
Initially I was going to do a vlog as a companion piece for my agency, but that entailed a lot of technical work I was not in to learning.
Interesting side note, I loved taking on the technical learning involved in making my website, hittheroadtrips.com.
I decided a blog was a better choice. I could talk about road tripping, and my new business and hopefully inspire people to get out on the road and see all the things!
And now here I am writing my first blog for you all, and a lot of future blogs about my adventures. I hope you come along for the ride!
– Gaylene
The Hit the RoadTrips Blog Players
Me and Abs
Peanut and Loop
