The Great 30th Birthday Road Trip

I have always loved to travel and swore that traveling would be a major part of any career path I took. Well, if traveling includes driving around town to meet with clients, then I succeeded. Two years ago as I approached the big 2-8 birthday, I had a brief panic attack. I found a list I made at 21 of all the things I would accomplish by 30, and while I had managed to mark off a few things, the traveling ones made me the most regretful.

So, during my thirty minute commute, I called one of my best friends and made her swear that we would drive across country for my thirtieth birthday - those crossing multiple travel items off that dreaded list. Being the Adventurer she is, she quickly agreed, as long as I agreed to join her in Italy for a birthday journey two years after mine. Italy, sure, (check mark another thing off the list - i count planning process as doing at this point) why not? I then recruited my other best friend and we had the makings for an interesting road trip/birthday bash. Then the second friend backed out, and my dear well-traveled mother mentioned that in all her adventures in all her years the one place she had yet to get to was California. After a bit of consideration, a bit of guilt, and a shot of insanity, I said "ah, why not?" She even considered asking her sister to join us - which truly would have made for an interesting group. We probably could have recorded the trip and sold it to WE or OXYGEN for some crazy reality show.

Alas, here we are with approx. 2 months to departure and friend 1 is bowing out due to circumstances at home. And then my mother has the nerve to call and say she's having second thoughts about traveling cross country, in a car, for 21+ days - with me. Which makes the party go from 2 to 3 to 4 to 3 to 4 to 2 to 1 over the span of the last year. Then my dad steps in and at a social function with a large community crowd he announces that his wife will be traveling around the country this summer with their daughter - eliminating any chance of her bowing out.

Now it's just the two of us, which is bound to make for an interesting trip on it's own (let's hope it goes better than the weekend getaway in Paris - but that's another story), and her biggest fear is my driving. Interesting considering I'm usually the one gripping the armrests when we're traveling together. We're going to start off in the South (where I live), head West to California, drive up the PCH to San Fran and come back out to Pennsylvania to pick up the rest of the family and continue south for a family reunion.

So, this here's my basic plan, we'll be stopping at points in between for various places/things/sites and just taking it easy and having fun. We've decided to shop, eat, and photograph our way around the country, maybe easing those big 3-0 jitters for me somewhere along the way.