Hi! I’m Sara

Traveling is important to my family, and it is something that we love. When planning a trip I always look through blogs and guides to plan our best trips, and I noticed most of the travel blogs had a similar theme – the author who left their office job to become a full time travel writer.

Don’t get me wrong, that sounds like an amazing life! But for my family, we have more traditional careers that we also love and didn’t want to give up the stability of a “9-to-5” job (or 7 – 4 in our case). So instead, we’ve been able to travel and see so much of the world by optimizing our vacations away from work (or along with work, sometimes). I started this blog to share our experience, and highlight how traveling can fit into the more typical career path.

MY FAMILY

I met my husband, John, in college in 2015. We were both music education majors in the percussion studio at West Virginia University. Towards the end of our sophomore year, half of the percussion studio took a spur of the moment day trip to New York City – up and back on a Megabus the day before end of semester juries (I’m sure fellow music majors know the risk we took not living in the practice room that day). It was an amazing trip, ridign bikes through Central Park, eating New York bagels, and visiting all the famous buildings in Manhattan we could see in a day. And don’t worry, we did all pass our juries.

The NYC team quickly agreed we had to travel again in the fall semester, and we set our sights on Niagara Falls this time. We all heard advice to visit the Canadian side while we were there, so the group agreed to get passports over the summer. When the fall rolled around, only John and I had gotten a passport and the travel bug apparently hadn’t bitten the rest of our crew. So we traveled with just my sister up to Toronto and Niagara falls over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, once again having a wonderful time on the trip. About a month later we started dating, and we knew traveling was one of the cores of our relationship.

Our first big trip was for Spring Break, leaving Morgantown, WV and traveling as far up I-95 as we could go, stopping in states and cities along the way to see the east coast, before heading back to college. 7 States in 7 days, we called the trip, making it as far as Boston. Since then, we have traveled around the country and across the Atlantic to Europe trying to see as many new places as possible.

We are settled now in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, in the city of Martinsburg, with our two dogs: Sammy and Cocoa, and our young son.

When our son was born in June 2023, we knew that he would change the way we travel but we made it a priority not to give up the thing we loved. After some new learning experiences traveling with a baby, we were soon back on the road, and then in the air! Shortly after his first birthday, we had a wild summer taking our son everywhere from the Grand Canyon, to Alaska, and all the way to Sweden! We learned a lot, and unlike the cautious tales we were told, we had just as much fun traveling with a baby as we did solo travelers.

We’re looking forward to continuing to travel the world as a family!

MY WORK

I am really lucky to be one of those people who genuinely love going to work. With a love of travel like my family, we always see and meet people who travel for a living, and the thought is very tempting. But when we look at our family and career goals, I realize that I want to stay and grow with my current company, and prioritize travel when I can.

I started out my career as a math teacher in the West Virginia Public Schools, but after completing a Mechanical Engineering degree online I left for a career in engineering. After a few years I was encouraged to consider Project Management, and found it fit perfectly with my interests. A PMP and MBA later, and I now get to manage the industrialization of new projects coming into my facility.

I work for a Swedish company based out of Gothenburg – if you’ve ever traveled to the city I’m sure you can guess which one. We are all over the airport! Working for a global company gave me opportunities to travel that I never expected when I first applied for an internship. I’ve gotten to travel to at least 6 different countries, and learn more about how things work in all parts of the world!

My love of planning makes my job fun every day, and also led me to an interest in travel planning. I typically lead vacation planning for my family, and love nothing more than researching destinations, flight options, how to get around a city, and everything that goes into a trip. Depending on the size of vacation, I might break down a daily or hourly schedule to make sure we see everything we want to explore!

Talking with friends and family members, I soon learned that not everyone shares this same love of planning, and actually find the process frustrating and a reason not to go on a trip! I’ve taken on planning trips for family and colleagues, and would love to do the same for you!