Why You Should Plan A Trip Right Now

Are you planning any trips right now? I have three on my schedule right now: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Toronto. Even when I don't have anything planned for months, I'm always planning trips, because it's fun for me and it relaxes me just thinking about being on vacation. 

So, why should you be planning a trip right now? Besides the obvious, that we all need to get away from normal life every once in a while, there are benefits to both planning and going on a vacation:

• Problem Solving Skills - When we plan travel, we work on our scheduling skills, making sure everything we want to do fits into an itinerary. We also figure out a plan to save the money we need. On vacation, we work on our time and money management skills, making sure we hit everything on our list and we don't go over our budget.
• It's Educational - Whether you think it is or not, we learn so much when we travel. Through museums and walking a city or even just talking to locals. We learn about new places and history and culture.
• Builds Tolerance - Leaving our bubble of home and all the things we know and how we live and people we know is good for us. We meet new people and we learn how they live and work and play. Learning about new cultures is good for us and opens our minds with new experiences. People who travel have more empathy for others and are more connected to people as a whole, becoming less selfish.
• Get More Exercise - Exercise is good for us and when we travel, we often spend more time walking around, climbing stairs for amazing views, strolling beaches, swimming, and running to catch busses or our plane. It gets your blood pumping and makes you healthier.
• Try New Food - One of my favorite parts of travel is food. I love trying new cuisine and exploring grocery stores and farmers' markets in other destinations. You can learn a lot about a place from their food.
• Makes You Happy - Going on vacation just gives us good feelings. It helps us make more of the hormones that contribute to our well-being: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Colors, smells, tastes, and more can all raise these hormone levels, giving you joy, and there's no better way to assure this than to go somewhere new and take in new colors, smells, and all those other good things.
• Become Well-Rounded - Did you know that when you travel, you look better to prospective employers? It shows you're more open-minded, are open to new ideas and perspectives. Having a little bit of an edge over other candidates is only ever a good thing. 
• Learn About Yourself - Whether you travel alone or with others, being in a new place can teach you about yourself and how well you deal with certain situations. These can help you deal with different situations once you get home, too. 
• Create Bonds - When you travel with others, it can make or break your relationship, because you'll be spending a lot more time with each other than normal. Traveling well with others demands good communication, and when you learn that you can create stronger bonds with your travel companions. 
• Lower Stress/Blood Pressure - Not having to go to work or answer to anyone is great for lowering stress and just generally making you feel better about life in general. The break gives you time to recharge and refresh and gives you a new start to work and home life when you return.

So, if you aren't currently planning a trip right now, you should start. And if you plan on going on a trip in the summer, the earlier you plan and book it, the better. If you need some help, check out my summer vacation post. 

What's your favorite part of going on vacation?

St. Patrick's Day At-Home Celebration

It's almost St. Patrick's Day, and you know what that means! Bars are going to start serving disgusting green beer and be packed with drunken revelers that announce that everyone's Irish on March 17th. As lovely as the Irish are, I'm not entirely sure they agree with all that nonsense, regardless of them doing similar things in Ireland for tourists.

If, like me, the thought of cramming into a pub with a million other people who are loud and don't understand personal space sounds like one of the worst ways to spend your time, then perhaps having an at-home celebration is more for you. Make it kid-friendly for your family, or use it as an excuse to have your own celebration with friends in a less obnoxious environment. Plus, it's way cheaper to drink beer at home, and you can stream the parade, Irish musicians, and even watch the celebrations in Dublin as they happen.

We dug out our Ireland banners and created a little outdoor pub feel in our dining room. We put on our Ireland colors and headwear to get in the spirit.

This year, I made my own spread, because it was easier than ordering something and driving to go pick it up during dinnertime and I wasn't limited to the menu at that restaurant. I made a leprechaun tree for my centerpiece and sprinkled gold coins around the bottom of the cauldron. The topper is actually a dog toy/wearable, that the dog will neither wear or play with, and the green boa in the bottom and the shamrock garland are both from the dollar store. I found the green cauldron at Party City and I snapped it up, because you can't have enough cauldrons in our house.

Eric picked up some beer cheese fondue on a trip to the store and I made sure that was our starter for this meal. If you don't have a fondue pot, it's no big deal. I have this dip contraption that you can either put hot water or ice in to keep your dip hot or cold and it worked perfectly. Just make sure to keep it covered until you're ready to eat it, so it doesn't congeal. I paired it with a cut up baguette.

On the left are my desserts: Irish potato candy and grasshopper bars (which I just cut into a slab, because it didn't totally set in the fridge). I added Lucky Charms marshmallows to the top for some whimsy.

St. Patrick's Day is the perfect excuse to make colcannon, a potato, leek, and cabbage dish.

That was my most involved dish, which is really only involved, because of all the chopping you have to do, but I only dirtied two dishes to make it, because I made the mashed potatoes, emptied them into the baking dish, then make the other half of the dish, added the potatoes back in at the end to mix together, and then put it all back in the baking dish to finish in the oven. I picked up a pre-made corned beef from Trader Joe's and whipped up some ginger maple carrots to round out the meal.

Just me at an iconic Dublin bar with my iconic leprechaun tree. LOL!

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We put on a stream of a previous year's parade in Dublin (which I still don't really understand, because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Ireland) and just had a really low-key celebration. I took this time to try some stouts I had in the fridge that I hadn't gotten around to drinking. This is a great time to try all the interesting things you see at the store, but never buy.

Here's a fondue cheers to great St. Patrick's Day shenanigans, no matter how wild or tame they may be. Here are a few other things you might want to decorate your space:

• Rainbow Plates
• Sham-Rock napkins
• Celtic tablecloth
• Irish blessing
• Banners & garlands
• Shamrock wreath
• Lucky coins or chocolate coins
• Headwear
• Mini green hat
• Leprechaun hat
• Head boppers
• Shamrock wreaths
• Pompom headbands
• Green & white floral headband
• Light-up accessories
• How To Catch a Leprechaun book
• The Great Book of Ireland
• Activities
• Bean bag toss
• Irish Gauge strategy game
• Scratch-off fortune cards
• Gnoming A Round card game

I hope this helps you have a wonderful and fun celebration full of delicious food and travel facts and maybe good friends. With a week to go, you have plenty of time to get any of the suggested items and round people up for a good time.

How do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day?

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The "Riviera" of California

When we travel, we like to go places that regular travelers may not be interested in going. When planning our trip to Palm Springs, I scoured Google Maps to check out what things in the area might worth checking out. One of those things was the Salton Sea, which sort of promised to have some good photo ops and possibly even a walk on the beach. I was right, but also very, very wrong.

I didn't do any research outside of looking at the map, so on one of our days, we got breakfast, stopped in Indio to see the Coachella Valley Museum, then headed out on a drive to see what the Salton Sea had to offer. In Oregon, any seaside town has a certain charm, no matter how small it is, so when we also learned at the museum that this was meant to be the Riviera of California in the 60s, I was more excited to go check it out.

For a time, the Salton Sea was the vacation destination and the area was growing with vacation homes, resorts, and golf courses, then, suddenly everything was abandoned and nobody ever returned. So, what happened? Well, to understand that, you have to know how the Salton Sea came to be, because it wasn't a natural lake. 

In 1905, a ton of rain caused the Colorado River to flood and spill into this natural crater, called The Salton Sink/Basin, now the largest manmade lake in California. In the years following, farmers were using the river water for their land and diverted the excess into the basin to keep the lake the way it was now. 

In the 50s and 60s, it became an unlikely vacation destination, and they decided to capitalize on it, and it was working. It was marketed as the Riviera of California and people flocked to this spot. They trucked in saltwater fish to stock the lake for fishing and there were watersports and yacht clubs and people lounging on beaches with drinks, but then water run-off containing fertilizers were entering the water and created a layer of algae on the bottom, which in turn created a poisonous atmosphere for the fish and birds, causing them to basically all die off pretty suddenly. Not a great atmosphere for a relaxing vacation. The travelers moved on to better recreation spots.

The saltiness of the sea is so high, it can't sustain wildlife and the beaches are almost nothing more than fish skeletons. That would have been okay, but in the 90s the water levels lowered to the point that the lake bed was exposed and the diseased dirt formed dust clouds that made the towns hard to live in with the terrible air quality. People still living there moved out and didn't move back. 

Now, the towns are basically deserted, with bones of resorts and homes being the most likely thing you'll see. There are a few people still living among these abandoned buildings and there's a recreational area on the opposite side of the lake from Salton City, and RV park at Desert Shores, and even a market (one of the only places still open for business when we were taking a tour).

This is a place to explore if you like abandoned places, but make sure you bring snacks and drinks with you, as you won't find much out there. Luckily, it's less than an hour drive from Palm Springs to Salton City, and there's also the town of Indio and a casino resort nearby, but all the beaches on the west side that we found were private property. 

The mountain views can't be beat.

Did we find places to take photos? Of course we did. Most were buildings that had fallen into disrepair, but also a motel that, shockingly, claimed to be open with vacancies. Some of photos I took still felt very cool and personal, like maybe we shouldn't be there, even if no one else was there either. I would love to go back and explore different areas around Salton Sea, but in the meantime, if you'd like to learn more, check out this post. It has photos of then and now and a very short video documentary. 

If you rent a car and want a completely different vacation vibe than that of Palm Springs, take a day to drive out to the sea. It's quiet and the drive is beautiful. Maybe on the east side you'll find actual beach lounging opportunities, but you'll also find a lot of fish carcasses, which may or may not detract from your relaxation. 

Do you love abandoned places? What are your favorites?