Road Tripping & Wedding Highlights

Road trips are a most unique sort of vacation. They offer both the opportunity to see a wide variety of sights and landscapes, but also provide vacationers with a multitude of appealing attractions that are purely unaffordable in terms of time. Every small little town that crosses your path looks delightfully adorable, but stopping to explore even half of them means that those main attractions planned for further down the road will need be considerably shortened if not altogether done away with.

While this little traveling conundrum is not entirely unique to the road tripper, it is much more prevalent when driving through town after town. But on the other hand, these sorts of vacations lend themselves to random, quirky, unusual, and spontaneous stops that any trip with structure or restrictions, in terms of location, transportation, and otherwise, would never allow.

And that is why Mike and I love to travel by car. Even though each stop comes with an opportunity cost, the most fond and clear memories we made on our first road trip, a two-week cross-country adventure, are those we could never have planned for. In fact, we made so many spontaneous little stops on our journey to California from Baltimore that we made a spontaneous decision to bypass the Grand Canyon. Part of this was encouraged by fellow travelers we met at smaller canyon overlooks and welcome centers, people who had seen a lot and knew that, amazing as the Grand Canyon may be, there are also plenty of breathtaking canyon vistas in National Forest lands throughout the Southwest that are much less crowded, less expensive, and that allow you to take photos. And so Mike and I were able to see the stunning Sunview overlook in Dixie National Forest, a canyon painted in bright reds and bold oranges beneath a cloudless blue sky, all because we opted out of seeing the tourist-laden Grand Canyon. I'd still love to see the Grand Canyon at some point in my life, but the places we went on our first cross-country trip completely make up for what we missed on our re-route and neither of us have a single regret (though I do wish we had stopped at a roadside store with a sign advertising "garlic ice cream" and I'm still not sure if these were two separate items or one interesting culinary delight!)

Our road trip up to New England for our honeymoon was much of what we've come to love and expect out of car travel. There were a few re-routes, some things missed in lieu of spontaneous decisions, and a little less relaxation than your standard vacation. But lying on a beach somewhere and getting a sunburn just wouldn't fit my personality or Mike's. We love to go out and see things, explore small towns and capture the feel of different people in a different place through film. And so we decided to go a slightly more stressful, at times tense, but ultimately more rich and diverse route by traveling around via Toyota Corolla for our honeymoon.

I'll be sure to share all the highlights of our trip in upcoming posts, but for now here are some of our favorite wedding photos to share and some pictures of the newest addition to our family!

Our short, sweet, and beautiful ceremony atop Federal Hill Park in Baltimore. The Inner Harbor served as a unique and special backdrop for us.

Having fun with our photo session. This was taken in jest but is one of my favorite photos from the wedding.

Mike and I catching up post-ceremony. I love this picture because it allows me to show off my hot blue shoes!

Our favors were simply mason jars full of Reese's Cups.

We did have a small cake so we could do the ceremonial cutting, but pies were the dessert star of this event!

Meet Louie (short for Louise) our new puppy! She's a 6 month old pit mix we found at the SPCA and the sweetest dog that Mike or I have ever known! She's also a bit hard to photograph given her high energy... hopefully I'll snap a good shot of her napping sometime soon!