visit all 50 states before i am 30

More dancing adventures, for dance and travel are synonymous right now in my life. As I do love it to be!

Thanks to the most amazing combined birthday/Christmas gift from my dad, I was able to do what I had been dreaming about doing for New Years and that was attending Lindy Focus in Asheville, North Carolina. What is Lindy Focus? Well, it is an incredible event where Lindy Hoppers from all over come for a week to take classes, compete, and dance until they can not longer stand it! The hotel is taken over by dancers and musicians and it is like being transported into a fantastic alternate world!

Besides having an amazing time, meeting some incredible new friends, catching up with a few old ones, and hopefully improving my dancing a bit… I also got to knock a couple of states off of my list too does a happy dance.

On December 26, bright and early I flew into Atlanta, Georgia. Proceeded to get very lost in their airport and took the longest walk of my life to get to my luggage, which of course made it there before I did. Haha! From there I headed off in a carpool of people, most of whom were also not from Atlanta. We drove through South Carolina on our way to get to our final destination which was North Carolina! In total the drive was about 3.5 hours I think.

At which point I spent 7 days and 6 nights dancing and barely sleeping having the time of my life :D. I am pretty sure this is how I want to spend my New Years this year as well!

On January 1, I hopped into another carpool headed back to Atlanta and then flew back to Vegas from there.

Things I would like to make note of for the next time I travel:
North Carolina is colder than I expected!
Atlanta has the worst airport I have been in so far. Bad customer service, no free wifi, and is not clearly labeled. I have never been lost before in an airport :).
I must stay in the event hotel next time, for I want to be 100% immersed in the experience instead of mostly immersed :).
Asheville was beautiful and I loved the downtown area! Lots of cute local shops and restaurants, I would most certainly recommend visiting :).

So I started off the year by getting to check off 3 states, which leaves me at an official total of 28/50. I am more than halfway there! This is going to be an exciting rest of the journey to finish of the remaining 22 :D.

I am again writing a bit delayed, but was in need of updating and was away from a computer for almost a month.

At the end of April I attended Barrier Island Blues a Blues dancing workshop in Pensacola, Florida. I was terribly stoked to be headed to Florida since I had never been to the East Coast in my life. Barrier Island Blues was incredible! I flew into Birmingham, Alabama with a dancing friend here from Vegas and we drove the rest of the way to Pensacola (about 4 hours). After the weekend was over some of my wonderful dancing friends invitied me to join them to head down to Orlando. After spending about a week total in Florida I headed towards Oklahoma, since three of them lived there and that was were they were headed and they so graciously allowed me to come along too!

Our drive to Oklahoma took up through Alabama, Mississippi, scooting along the very eastern edge in Lousiana, Straight up through Arkansas, and then into Oklahoma :D. From there I spent a week in Oklahoma, and then drove over to New Mexico with another friend from the original group of us who headed to Orlando. Slowly making my way west to get back to Nevada. After a wonderful week in New Mexico I proceeded to fly back to Vegas.

This was without a doubt one of the most amazing, random, and spontaneous trips I have ever been on in my life! I thought I would be gone just for the weekend, possibly a week but left my way to get home open ended just to be flexable and I am terribly glad that I did! :D I met some of the most increible people, was able to check out Disneyworld, and Universal Studios Adventure Island, dance on a beach in the gulf coast, check out petroglyphs in New Mexico, eat lots of green chile, dance in a fountain in Oklahoma, visit my step brothers whom I had not seen in almost 10 years, spend almost 50 hours driving in cars having fascinating conversations, drank butterbeer, was tumbled around by crashing waves, met two wandering hitchhikers making their way from west coast to east coast that inspired me to keep going, and ate sooo much delicious food….

Everything I did was becuase I was with amazing friends, meeting amazing new friends, and the wonderful hospitality and adventuresome spirit of the other dancers whom I stayed with, met, ate with, danced with, talked with… Dancers are my favorite people! :D I without a doubt made some friends for life this trip too, and that is not something I say often.

Can’t wait to see what is in store for my next adventure! :D

So to get to the point… I was able to add 5 more new states, bringing my grand total so far to: 25/50, woot! Half way. I totally know that if I set my mind to it, I can visit th3e remaining half in the next 2.5 years :D.

Ok, so this entry is a little late :). My mom and I drove up to Oregon to visit my brothers in early March and we decided to keep going up to Washington, specifically to Seattle because none of us had been there. Lucky for us the weather was sunny and beautiful (just a bit cold) and I was so very impressed with Seattle! We were only there for one night, but I surely want to go back sometime. I love the fountain near the Space Needle, we got in and played like all the little kids and had a blast taking pics :D

Visiting Pikes Place was one of the highlights too! I wish that I could live somewhere where there is so much color, flowers, smells, and interesting things to look at that people make! Ahh :D

Oh and as a side note there was this really cool museum that I so want to check out next time I am up there too. The Science Fiction Museum. My family really wanted to check it out and I was not interested. The price tag for the tickets were a bit out of our budget on that trip so we headed into the gift shop just to get a feel. After going in there I wanted to check out the whole place :D. Haha! Funny how things can change your mind.

Next place I am going should be Idaho… But who knows :)

Now am at 20/50. I better get cracking only 5 years left to get 30 states in :D

Well I recently just got back from a very spontaneous trip to Portland and then took a very nice train ride all the way to LA :D. The leaves were all in the process of changing which was BEAUTIFUL! Being from the desert it is a real treat to see seasons like fall.

Which means that I have one more state down, Oregon. Yeah now I am at 19/50. Hooray! I hope to hit up Washington next, but who knows where I may go :D

My brother recently graduated from college in Ohio. My family flew out to attend and celebrate. I was pretty excited to be visiting a new state, of course that fell behind the excitement of my little bro achieving this landmark in his life :D. He needed to drive his new car and all his stuff back to Arizona and my family nominated me one morning while I was sleeping in to drive back with him. That was pretty shocking, but I was stoked!

New states added to my list are now: Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.

Which makes the grand total as of right now 18/50 (I am counting Idaho and Montana, even though I previously stated they don’t count).

32 left to go :D

As of today I have been to only a handful of states. Nevada, California, Arizona, Utah, Hawaii, Missouri, North Dakota, Colorado, and Texas (also Idaho and Montana riding on a Greyhound but those don’t count). The crazy thing is that I have lived in 5 of those states. Haha. Maybe I should just move to each state ;)