Trip Planning and Budgeting Part 1: The Planning

My family has talked about wanting to travel ever since I can remember. When we were kids, my parents told us one day we would do a trip out west, up to Wisconsin, and see the house Laura ingalls Wilder grew up in (I don’t remember anything else about the trip, only that part LOL). We never did end up doing that trip, and my family never did go out west together.

As I grew up, I continued having the desire to travel and see new things. When I was in college, I remember telling my friend, “I don’t even know what to major in, I just want to have money, a clean house, and be able to travel.” Super ambitious! LOL

When I met Levi, I quickly found out that traveling was, and always had been a huge part of his family’s lives. That was one reason I liked him, because he loved traveling, and I had always wanted to So when we got married, traveling became a big part of our lives. My Aunt has always wanted to travel to new places, but didn’t feel comfortable traveling solo, and my dad always said he wanted to travel with my mom, but never actually took the steps to make it happen. So sometime last year, I started talking to my family about possibly taking a road trip out west, and a few months later sent a text to find out who was really interested in it, and where people wanted to go.

One problem that stemmed from that, is that I had literally talked to every member of my immediate family, and that made the group too big for one trip (in order to all settle on one time frame, and a time frame that was actually long enough to get out west and have time to do things). So that was the first problem, and the second problem was that some people wanted to do one trip, and some people wanted to do a different trip. The way we solved that is Levi had the idea of making three different options, and people could choose whichever option they wanted. My dad had already thrown out a Route 66 trip idea, and although that didn’t interest me (I prefer seeing national parks, hiking, and being active, and on a Route 66 trip, you spend at least half the time in the car), I knew it was a bucket list item for my dad, and my mom was interested in it too. Therefore, that’s the trip we settled on doing with my mom and dad, and Levi and I planned on doing a different trip with the remaining family members who were interested.

So the next step was to plan the trip out. Since this was a bucket list item for my dad, I mainly wanted to know what he wanted to see, so I asked him to get a list ready for me (I assumed that since it was a bucket list item, there were specific things he had seen online or heard of that he wanted to visit). He bought a package of Route 66 maps off amazon (called “Here It Is! The Route 66 Map Series”), circled the places he wanted to see, and I took those maps to map out the trip and timing of all the stops. Those maps turned out to be very helpful and I would recommend them to anyone planning on doing a similar trip.

I knew I wanted to throw in a National Park if possible, and since we could swing our way right past the Grand Canyon on the way home, I wanted to make that happen. So my plan was to drive down Route 66 on the way out, then drive back on the interstate, and stop off at the Grand Canyon.

We left a LOT open. I wrote out a tentative itinerary, with ideas of where to stop each night, but we opted to leave hotels un-booked in order to give ourselves more flexibility. None of us had ever done a trip like this before, so we had no idea what to expect! This was a good idea for us because we didn’t have our hearts set on staying at any specific iconic motel. If you go on a trip like this and DO want to stay at a specific motel, I would absolutely recommend booking ahead of time because those iconic motels book up quickly.

So that’s the basics of how this trip came about. More to come on specific trip details soon, so stay tuned!

Soli Deo gloria,
Charity

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Venturing in Mammoth Cave

By charity sampley • August 1, 2023

I've been trying to get to Mammoth Cave for 6 years and today I finally made it! Woohoo! I have a bucket list goal to visit every national park in the US (hopefully I can get to them faster because they just keep adding more), so there's another check mark to one! One of the things I've been realizing lately is just how many national parks are within 8 hours or less of where we're located. An 8-hour drive isn't too bad with the kids, and several are even closer. Mammoth Cave is about 1 hour from us (I know, it's almost wrong that we haven't gone before now). Prior to making the trip, I had looked on Pinterest for different recommendations and I had seen where the guided tours fill up quickly so it's best to register for them online before going. However, I decided that with the kids being the ages that they are, I didn't want to do a guided tour and would rather do the self-guided (called Discovery tour). I'm also not a big fan of guided tours anyway, but I did see some pictures of some cool views that you can only get to through a guided tour, so I think it would be worth it to do that one day. However, we spend 45 minutes in the cave, and I couldn't imagine spending any more time in there because the kids were about spent. I'm very content with the decision I made for this trip! All the information you'll need can be found on the national park website here . I had also read that the park is free to enter, but you have to pay for all the tours. This ended up being the case for us as well, even though we did the self-guided Discovery tour. It was a bummer because we have the annual national park pass, so I feel like we've already paid to enter all the parks for the year, but the tickets were only $8 a piece, and kids under 6 are free, so it wasn't expensive. As it turned out, I was very glad that we did the Discovery tour because the kids ended up being scared in the cave! We walked all the way down from one end to the other, but by the time we were leaving, they were definitely done with the cave. Killian is 2, and Reagan is 3, so if you have toddlers, I recommend just keeping that in mind when you choose the right option for you and your family.

I Finished My Nutrition Certification!

By charity sampley • June 23, 2023

I hope your week is off to a great start. A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday morning, I woke up early (okay, not that early), opened my laptop, and took the final exam to my Precision Nutrition Certification. It has been, and continues to be, so important to me to be able to continue my education in order to better serve my clientele, formally or informally. This certification is just one more step on my journey to improve myself as a coach and expert in the field of nutrition. I started it back in October, and continued to work through it during all the phases of life with two toddlers: sleep regressions, meltdowns, potty training, and all the things in between. At times it felt like I was never going to finish, and just like that I'm done, and it didn't seem all that rough! 😅 Soon after finishing, I decided to register for an NLP and Life Coaching certification, and who knows what else is in store. The sky's the limit!

Why I Started Coaching

By charity sampley • June 16, 2023

I didn't grow up being athletic, in fact, it was the opposite for me. When it came to races or playing tag, I was always the slowest. When it came to a sport, I was always uncoordinated. When it came to body weight strength, I was the weakest. When it came to being picked for a team, I was always picked last. Throughout high school and college, I managed to improve this predicament slightly as I played sports, began training on my own, and eventually made it onto my college basketball team. But I still always struggled. I always tended to be the most uncoordinated and the least athletic. When I started CrossFit in 2018, I was surprised at how my body adapted to the training. With what I felt like little effort on my part, I was able to do pull-ups and skills I had given up on ever having the ability to do. It taught me that everything is learned for everyone at some point in time, and we all have the ability to change what we've known about ourselves even if what we've known to be true about ourselves is something that has haunted us since childhood. While it was amazing that I could change my ability to perform physical movements, it wasn't until I improved my nutrition in 2019 and began to see the start of a 6 pack (which genetically speaking, wasn't really in the cards for me) that I started to truly realize how every decision we make and every step we take is an action either in the direction of what we want or what we don't want, but either way, we have the ability to choose in any given moment. Often times our ability to choose is determined by the beliefs we have about ourselves and about our circumstances. I think what shocked me the most is that I wasn't doing what I had always thought would be required in order to see these big physical changes. I was leaning out while eating ice cream sandwiches, chips, and fast food. And it wasn't just on my "cheat days" either. Although my diet was balanced, it didn't fit what I always believed I would need to do. It didn't fit m idea of "healthy" and it definitely didn't fit into most of society's definition of healthy. Most people would have assumed this was my way of having a "cheat meal", or that I was allowing myself to "be bad". But neither were the case. This was simply my way of life. And I was seeing amazing results with a very flexible approach to my diet. If we believe it's our calling in life to be fat, or weak, or slow, or addicted to food (all of which I believed about myself at one time), then those beliefs are what we'll live by. Those beliefs are what will dictate our choices. When I realized it was a choice for me to live in food freedom, and eat from a place of celebration and joy over how I can live my life and how my body can perform physically, that's when everything changed. I want all women who are where I once was to know that if they want to see change, then it's possible. But I don't want to just tell you. And I don't want to just show you. I want to help you get there. And that's why I started coaching. I started for you, and for all the women out there who are living a life making choices they're not happy with, in a body they're not happy in, but who don't want to sell their souls in order to see results. I'm here to tell you that there is freedom on the other side.

Trip Planning and Budgeting Part 1: The Planning