Our Weekend Wanderings

California.  How do you begin to express how happy you are when you book a flight to somewhere you've always dreamed of going? California was our place. Forget Tahiti, Forget Paris. Forget Iceland or Alaska or Hawaii... (though we'll go to all those places soon enough). For us, we just NEEDED to go to Cali first get it off our mind.  How did we find a RT flight from Florida to San Diego for $160/person? When we told people that we booked the flight for that crazy cheap they literally didn't believe us.  Here's how we did it:  Download flight apps on your phone and TURN ON notifications. There's a few that you can download that will allow you to search for a particular destination within a time frame and let you customize completely what you want... and it will NOTIFY you when it's found a match or even something close! This means if you can't scour the internet for countless hours, you still have a good chance at finding a well priced fl...

Lately we've gotten into the habit of stalking cheap flights. When I saw a 70$ RT flight to Niagara Falls (somewhere new for us) I couldn't pass it up. It just so happened to be around our 10 year anniversary together too, so what better way to celebrate? Truth be told... it was a ghost town. Again, we do literally the bare minimum amount of planning so we were unaware that it was a highly seasonal town and since you are literally looking at Canada you can bet its freakin cold. Actually, the winter gear we bought for our earlier in the year Chicago trip came in handy for sure because it was 2 degrees in NY. That was without the extreme windchill factored in that left us minimally frostbitten because we refused to go inside since we only had one day to see everything. In hindsight, it would have probably been a much more exciting trip if we stayed on the Canadian side, but we didn't think that far ahead. We still enjoyed our day looking at the falls and practicing our ...

Hogg Mine This trip had all of a few days of planning from the time we were invited to the night we left. My dad actually asked us randomly early in the week if we wanted to go to Georgia with him to mine for rose quartz. I'm going to be honest and admit I had never thought of mining and/or rose quartz but I am not the kind of person to say no to a trip! So we tagged along.  The drive was about seven hours from Tampa FL and we left sunny and 75 to go to overcast and 30. We were unaware of the temperature change due to our zero planning so we had to buy some warm clothes to keep from freezing in the mine all day. We slept in the car for the night and was off to the dig site! We mined for rose quartz, smokey quartz, tourmaline, and aquamarine from 9am-5pm for only $35 a person and a 5 gallon bucket limit! We found our fill in gems and crystals and were on our way back home with sore body parts and a few minor injuries due to a pick-axe to the hand. But if you're ever...

As you can surly tell from the title of this post, we went to Chicago in the middle of January and lived to tell the tale. Okay so I'm well aware that the question going through your mind is "Why the heck would any sane individual CHOOSE to go to Chicago in the middle of winter?" well, long story short, some of our fellow travelers found some incredibly cheap plane tickets that they couldn't pass up so we joined along. Sky Deck on the Sears Building Honestly, it wasn't that bad. It's amazing how hard it is to find REAL winter gear in FL, even in winter!! We have like two cold days a year and that's about it. Luckily, a friend of mine suggested the Columbia store and we went! Apparently Columbia doesn't believe that Floridians only wear shorts and tank tops and had a fully stocked wintery selection of everything warm and cozy for our near-Canada journey. When we got to Chi Town we were of course greeted by an Uber driver that literally had ice...

For our last day in Tennessee, we decided to check out the city of Gatlinburg. With a morning temperature of 19 deg. and a high for the day in the low 40's again, we were sure to bundle up and make our first stop for a local little shop in the Villages area of Gatlinburg for some delicious coffee. The main strip in Gatlinbug is impossible to miss and is adorned buy more shops than you can count that have everything from interesting varieties of Jerky to indoor mini-golf, a skylift up a mountain, and soooo many whisky distilleries. Don't worry, there are more places to shop than I knew what to do with! The perks of travelling to these cities near the holiday seasons is that they really get into the spirit of the seasons and once night set in there were beautiful little lights adorning the walk-ways. Beware of the pigeons though, they are a little bold when it comes to funnel cakes (yes I am speaking from experience). Some of the things we did while walking around in the ...

Have you climbed a mountain before? If you have, we have mad respect for you. On day two of our Smoky Mountain cabin retreat we decided we would try to hike an 11 mile trail up a mountain that offered awesome views and even (what we thought) caves. Saturday morning before we left a cold front came through that took the weather from upper 60's in the day to the mid to lower 40's and at night even lower into the 20's. From the rainstorm that brought the front, the electricity in our cabin as well as the water, went out, leaving us similar to camping... or should I say glamping since we were still in a beautiful cabin. Nearly at the top After the morning struggles of getting a group of 7 people fed and ready to go without power and water, we made it to the Alum Cave Trail-head around midday. We stopped a few times throughout the drive to the trail to admire the beautiful colors of the trees and what looked to be some snowy mountain tops in the higher altitudes. Once ...

This weekend getaway took us from our home in Apollo Beach to a breathtaking gorge in North Georgia, and arriving at our ultimate destination in the Smoky Mountains just outside of Pigeon Forge. I really enjoy road trips most of the time just because of the actual destination part, but all the in-betweens really just feel like wasted time so we generally try to drive overnights and get where we’re going in the early to mid-morning hours. This time we left at midnight and traversed the highways up to Tallulah Gorge State Park, Ga. Of course, I get motion sickness really easily and drove most of the way, tried to sleep the rest, which resulted in a never ending nausea and some fun moments scrambling for a trash bag near Atlanta… all part of the fun, right? Anyways, Tallulah Falls Gorge is amazing. While we are in the Smokies and surrounding areas, there are currently some pretty major forest fires that have been burning for a week or so by now and it has left much of the neighbo...

Cheers for October and all that it brings! Fall weather to cool us down, the start to some colorful trees, though just bits scattered about, and the feeling of summer coming to an end to make way for boots, scarves, and cool breezes to make us smile while we walk around. It's becoming a tradition for us to visit our favorite city at least once a year, and though we've yet to go in Summer, we can't imagine a fall without Savannah, Georgia. Have you been? What were your favorite spots? After leaving early morning (and I mean like 3:00am) we arrived in Savannah around 8am just in time to celebrate our arrival with breakfast at Spanky's on the river. Okay, so Spanky's is a bar and it's not exactly the most dainty beautiful breakfast you've ever laid eyes on but for about $4 a plate and some oddly delicious "spuds" you get a great about of food and a great view of the river while being right in the middle of all the coolest places on the river sid...