All Posts
Let’s Chat
Follow along on my Journey!
I promise to share fun and infrequent updates
My Latest
Adventures
Well Hello
I’m Kate
For more than a decade and a half, I’ve helped people create a life by design through my lifestyle and travel blog.
I’m a mom of 3, a full-time romance author, and I’ve been to more than 40 countries and nearly all the states.
I’m happy you’re here.
Learn More >>
Shop my Favorites
5.3M
syndicated blog views per month
Latest Blog Posts
-
Airlines Blame Weather. The Real Reason Your Flight Is Late Is Far More Embarrassing for Them.
Weather and air traffic control get blamed for most flight delays, but they’re responsible for a fraction of the actual problem. The real culprits are operational failures airlines could fix tomorrow — and the one delay type that virtually guarantees you’ll miss your connection.
-
Every State Had a Tourism Project That Was Supposed to Put It on the Map. Here Are the Ones That Spectacularly Failed.
Some states have the Grand Canyon. Others got a $40 million roadside monument to a fruit. Every state has at least one ambitious tourism project that was supposed to draw visitors by the millions, was funded by taxpayers, and quietly became a punchline. Here’s a tour of America’s most spectacular tourism failures — and what they say about how states think about attracting visitors.
-
These Cities Are Begging You to Stop Coming — and These Ones Are Desperate for You to Show Up
Venice is considering banning day-trippers entirely. Barcelona residents have staged protests against tourists. Meanwhile, cities an hour away are watching their cultural heritage crumble because nobody comes. The overtourism conversation is real and important — but it’s also missing half the story. Here are the places asking you to stay away, and the places that genuinely need you to come.
-
What a Year of International Travel Actually Costs — Not What the Gap Year Instagram Posts Say
The gap year travel content will tell you to budget $20,000 for a year abroad. Then you’ll hit month four in Southeast Asia, make a few reasonable choices, and realize the math never accounted for flights between regions, travel insurance, emergency expenses, or the fact that ‘budget travel’ is not actually free. Here’s a real breakdown of what a year of international travel costs by region, including the things nobody budgets for.
-
What Other Countries Think ‘American Food’ Is — And Why It Barely Resembles What We Actually Eat
Travel almost anywhere in the world and you’ll find a restaurant serving ‘American food.’ Order from it and you’ll receive something that exists in a fascinating parallel universe — familiar ingredients combined in ways no American would recognize, missing the things we consider essential, and sometimes more American than America ever was. Here’s why the international version of American cuisine is so weird and so revealing.
-
These American Towns Exist Because of One Thing — and When That Thing Left, So Did Everything Else
There’s a town in West Virginia that exists because a single factory put it there in 1902. There’s a town in Kansas built entirely around a military base that’s been downsized three times. And there are dozens more across America where the entire economy, the school system, the grocery store, and the post office depend on a single employer — and nobody talks about what happens when that employer leaves. Here’s the story of those towns.
