My Travel Bug has a birthday (kind of): June 24, 2010, the day I left for Australia. The idea of Travel Bug had been with me since, I don't know when...I read my first National Geographic at age 10 or so? But this was my first big trip on my own, and I would be in Australia for four weeks and Fiji for one week. Travel Bug and I didn't get along at first. She gave me anxiety and homesickness. She used to be really rude. After we got past that she got annoying because she wouldn't leave me alone. She kept bugging me day after day after day when I got home from that excursion. Isn't it funny how the things you love most drive you the most crazy? Needless to say, it was the best five weeks of my life.
Travel Bug's urge to hit all 50 states and all seven continents really kicked in then, and I started to make plans for the next summer. Because I had spent a large portion of my savings traveling to Australia and Fiji, I didn't have enough $$$ to go abroad again. The states and I then became friends, too. Me, the states and Travel Bug: the three amigos, musketeers, if you will.
I took every opportunity I could find. Sorority business called me to Colorado in February. Brother #2 moved to Florida for the summer and provided free stay and transportation. The only Western state I hadn't visited, New Mexico, called my name to the Four Corners. Sister and nephews needed a nanny on their vacation to North Carolina and Washington, D.C. (which included Virginia, Maryland and Delaware). Best friend took me home to Idaho to hang out with her fam, twice. Best friend and I road tripped down the California coast; Nevada (and all its nasty wind) came, too. Fraternity formal went to Wyoming.
Between June 2010 and August 2011, I touched water on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, saw the water on both coasts of the United States (i.e., Pacific and Atlantic), swam in the Gulf Coast, was in 13 states (6 of which were new), spent time on a new continent (making three out of the seven), and more, I'm sure. It was a fabulous year. Yes, I realize the Four Corners monument isn't actually in the correct spot...but it's a little east of the actual spot, and the whole goal was to go to New Mexico, so mission still accomplished.
But Travel Bug bit me again, meanie pants that she is. Summer 2012 will bring 2, possibly 3, new countries: Tanzania and either Spain or Belgium and the Netherlands (plus England and France), a new continent and some things crossed off my bucket list (see right).
Oh, to be a college student...that can take the summer off from the world to see the world.
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