Over the summer, I locked-in a job opportunity following graduation. During this process, I was flooded with excitement, fear, and relief all at once.
Excited to get the opportunity to work with a top-notch cardiothoracic surgeon. Scared to be living by myself in a place I’ve never been. Relieved to have started to figure out what I will begin to accomplish after college.
Beginning in June of 2017, I will be working with Dr. Gan Dunnington in the Arrhythmia Department of St. Helena Hospital in Napa Valley, California. Dr. Dunnington specializes in the treatment of atrial fibrillation (a-fib), a common heart condition in which the heart beats with an irregular rhythm. This can lead to blood clots, and eventually stroke. The video below features Dr. Dunnington, and tells a little bit about what he does for his patients.
It is not my newly acquired job or atrial fibrillation that is the subject of my blog, but rather the road trip I plan on taking in order to reach my new home on the West Coast.
I wish to create a travel guide for myself, highlighting stops I wish to make as I travel across the country. Specifically, I’d like to base my travel destinations off of restaurants, national parks, and sporting venues. Every place I go on my journey will feature aspects of each of those things.
Currently, there are a plethora of travel blogs out there, however, not many focus specifically on taking a road trip across the United States.
I am inspired by the beauty and design of Nomadic Matt, an extremely popular travel blog. What attracts me to this particular blog is that it is not heavy in sponsored content and does not contain paid trips. This blog shows you what it is really like when you’re out on the road, and that will be most helpful when deciding which destinations to include in my own blog.
I plan on including plenty of breath-taking photos in my travel guide. For that reason, Everything Everywhere catches my eye. This blog is picture heavy, and in that way it will be similar to my blog. I like the idea of including lots of pictures and letting their beauty do some of the talking. However, the layout of this blog is too cluttered, making it hard to navigate. My blog will differ in this aspect, as I plan to make my blog simple and easy to navigate. In order to do so I will use lots of lists and very few big and bulky paragraphs.
Within my blog I plan to do something unique and special. I will try and feature a few special guest posts from a friend who recently returned from a road trip that spanned across the country. His real-life experience will help add another element to my blog. In this way, it will be similar to Suitcase Stories, a travel blog that features posts from two different authors. I hope to use this strategy to create an open dialogue within my blog of the places I might want to travel by utilizing the experiences of someone who has been there.