I love traveling. 

I’m a full time secondary teacher and my husband is in a full-time sales position. We have a lovely house in the mountains of Colorado. I have two dogs: Smoky & Shamrock. I also love home. 

Whenever we travel, we end up chatting with fellow wanderers who are taking a month to really explore Cambodia. Or students who have taken a year or two “off” to just backpack around.

Pouring through travel blogs in preparation for our trips, most of the guides I’ve come across are written by professional traveler bloggers who make a living on blogging  and traveling. Which is fantastic. It’s just not the life that I can or want to live. 

Like most of you, I have student loans and other financial and family responsibilities. 

I also really love my job. And I love that feeling when you’ve been away from home for weeks and your dogs jump on you because they’ve missed you and you haven’t trained them properly. That feeling of just sinking into your own bed and not moving for at least twelve hours. Because you’re home. 

I don’t have the time or finances to take three weeks to just “be” in one place. However, with a lot of planning, research, and motivation, I have been able to still see a lot of beautiful places in a very limited amount of time. 

After booking two nights in Siem Reap, we were told by multiple people that there’s no way to see the ruins of Angkor in one day. Especially not on the rickety bikes we found at our Airbnb. Sweaty, sore, and exhausted as we might have been, I think we proved them wrong. Right? 

We’ve also made some mistakes along the way. Hopefully, some of you can learn from our mistakes and misadventures. 

I decided to write Whirlwind Wanderings for the travel lover who can’t afford (either money or time) to travel all the time, but who still wants to see as many places as possible, and not just from the road. 

And if you have months and months of travel time? Awesome! I promise I’m only a little bit jealous. Either way, I hope this blog will provide some good advice and even more entertainment 🙂