Hi Friends (Again) – Re-introducing myself

Hi friends! I’m Laura. It’s been…a year since I’ve written anything so I wanted to re-introduce myself. I’m Laura, and I occasionally write this travel blog and slightly more occasionally post on my Instagram, @Hifriendsitslaura. I am a travel blogger based in Seattle focusing on National Parks and international travel.

About Me
I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest eight years, so most of my travel is around this area. With the panini quieting down, I have been traveling a little more for work, and a bit farther and wider for fun. If I could, I would spend several weeks on the road driving across the western United States, or Europe, or Canada, or Central America. Two things are stopping me. First, summer is the ONLY nice time in the PNW, and I hate to miss a minute of it. Second, my Trusty Pup doesn’t love roadtrips so I have to limit where and when I travel for her sake.

Since I posted last almost a year ago (insert side eye emoji here), I have had a few larger trips that I hope to recap:
-10 Days in France for my birthday, including Paris, Loire Valley and Bretagne
-Christmas on Whidbey Island
-Several trips to the Oregon coast
-Extended weekend in Tucson, AZ, to see Saguaro National Park and the Gem Show
-A jam packed long weekend in NYC to see all the shows
-Day trip to see Indiana Dunes NP (in my home state!)
-Four Days in Rocky Mountain National Park – to be fair, this one is in a few weeks but realistically by the time I post this it will be here! (Update, first post is up!)

Travel Style
Early on in my travel days, I was very much a budget travel. If my sister and I were staying at a hostel outside the main part of the city, we would walk or bus it. I distinctly recall doing this in Salzburg, in the rain, with luggage (Sorry, Julia). Nowadays, I’m a smart budget-adjacent traveler. If taking a cab means I do not have to lug a suitcase across town on a 90 degree day, I will take the cab. I rarely stay in hostels now but will stay in pensions or B&Bs, although my loyalty to Marriott sometimes trumps this. Gotta get those hotel points!

My favorite types of activities while traveling are historic sites, especially with good audio tours, walking tours to orient myself to the city, and light hiking and kayaking. I cannot stress this enough: I. Love. A. Tour. More places, especially museums, need audio tours. They add so much to the interpretation and the experience. The best audio tour is at Alcatraz in San Francisco (it’s award winning!). The best tour guide tour is the Beefeater tour at the Tower of London. It’s stupendous, and I don’t say that lightly.

I am not a foodie, so I will rarely post must-eat-restaurants. The restaurants you will see on my blog fit into the criteria of “Close by Whilst Hangry” or “Outdoor Patio Perfect for Day Drinking”.

I have two guiding “bucket lists” when I am traveling. I have long been trying to check off everything on the Lonely Planet Ultimate Travelist, which lists 500 of the world’s best places to visit. It has a strong overlap with UNESCO World Heritage Sites. I have visited around 50 places on the list, and need to start traveling into Northern/Eastern Europe and Asia to make much more progress. The latest place I was able to cross off on this list was Mont St. Michel in Normandy, France.

The second bucket list is, like many other travelers on IG, all of the US National Parks. I’ve visited 17/63 national parks so far, plus more parks-related sites stamped into my passport. This love affair with getting my National Parks Passport stamped began eight years ago when I was in the Bay Area for a friend’s wedding. My friend Cords and I had time to kill sightseeing, so we drove to Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Once I saw my friend get a stamp in her parks passport, it was game over for me. Since then finding parks and sites has been a driving factor in trip planning. The latest stamp I was able to get was at Indiana Dunes NP, and I will soon get more at Rocky Mountain NP.

Upcoming Trips
I’m planning a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park soon with some friends. We won’t be camping – camping doesn’t really fall into my travel style. We will be doing some light hiking, light water sports, and not-so-light day drinking. (Read out the first post: Planning a Summer Trip To Rocky Mountain National Park)

My “big” trip for the year is Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Canada. Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to visit PEI. I was not only an Anne fan, I read and watched everything I could about Avonlea, Green Gables, and PEI. From doing some trip planning it looks very commercialized now, however. I once went to the central library to look up everything I could find about Green Gables (this was pre-internet), and I remember the house being on a golf course. It’s now part all part of a tourist attraction, with everything about Anne-with-an-E. I still want to go though!

Dream Trips
Kumano Kodo– I would love to hike this spiritual pilgrimage trail in Japan after reading about it on Two Wandering Soles. It’s a hut-to-hut hike through the forests of Japan, where you can sleep at tea houses and the like each night. I began planning a trip last winter when it seemed like the panini might be over. However, travel to Japan hasn’t opened up enough for me to safely plan a trip without being worried it would get cancelled.

The other dream trip is one I was also planning pre-panini, as a hut-to-hut hike in the Dolomites, in the Italian Alps. This would have been a summer 2020 fundraising trip. I could theoretically still have done it this summer, but my ankle is not up to it. I sprained it pretty badly last summer and I only did my first “training” hike today – a measley three miles with no elevation at Discovery Park.

Favorite Posts
Check out some of my favorite trip recaps:
–Plan a Trip to the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park
–Dog-friendly Redwoods: Bring Your Pup to Redwood National Park
–How I Planned my Two-Week Digital Nomad Roadtrip

Looking forward to writing and recapping more as I reinvent myself as a travel blogger here in Seattle and the Northwest. Thanks for sticking around!