My month without social media was September. The first three weeks were a breeze. I barely noticed not getting on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. Although, the last week got pretty difficult. The news was getting stressful (Supreme Court) and I desperately wanted a distraction. I pushed through the last week and spent a ridiculous amount of time on social media on October 1st.

I realized that I did not care about Snapchat at all. I missed Facebook far less than I anticipated. But Instagram… I missed it so much more than I thought I would! Instagram was not my social media platform of choice, but I think after this month, it is. I love that I get to see my friend’s pictures without seeing things they’ve liked or shared. I feel like Instagram eliminates all of the annoying things about Facebook. Now, I just need to get all of my friends and family onto Instagram so I can delete Facebook and never look back! 🙂

I think I missed seeing pictures of my friends’ kids the most. I also felt like a whole lot of people got engaged/married/pregnant/had babies during the month of September! Congratulations to all of you! This month did push me to actually text or call friends that live far away, which was great! If I could do the 30 before 30 challenge over again, it would be to text or call a long distance friend once a week instead of one month without social media. That would have been a much better use of my month!

Overall, this challenge was disappointing. I really thought I would feel refreshed or revitalized or better connected with people around me at the end of this month. But I just felt like I had taken a break from social media. No major breakthroughs or life lessons learned. Perhaps my expectations were a little too high. 🙂

I had never considered myself particularly outdoorsy before moving to Chattanooga, TN. I was in girl scouts as a kid, and that’s when my camping experience ended. I enjoyed being outdoors, but couldn’t imagine sleeping on the ground and not having a bathroom. But since moving to Chattanooga, I have come to enjoy the great outdoors much more! It started with hiking (the gateway drug of outdoorsing), progressed to car camping, and finally backpacking.

Packing for this trip was awful at the time, but hilarious in retrospect. We really had no idea what we were doing. I read about how to pack in layers based on weight and bulkiness. I filled up my entire backpack and was still packing the bottom layer. There was a lot of sweating and a lot of swearing trying to fit everything into our backpacks, but we finally did it!

 

Kathleen, Mackenzie, and I decided to go backpacking for Mack’s last weekend in Chattanooga. Luckily, we are so close to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park that it was an easy choice. We started our trip at the Dragon’s Tail Cafe and realized that we were at the start of a popular destination – The Dragon’s Tail. It is 11 miles of roads through the Smoky Mountains with 318 curves – of course we had to do it! We tackled the dragon, and ended up a couple of miles into North Carolina (Mackenzie got to cross a new state off her list). We finished the epic drive and pulled into the gas station and cafe with Spice Girls blasting from the Mazda (surrounded by bikers!)

 

The actual backpacking trip started off a little rough – the hike I chose was very difficult. I didn’t really know how difficult it was. It was only 2.7 miles, but it was 2.7 miles of switchbacks all the way up the mountain. Then the last mile of the hike was straight down a stream bed. I don’t plan on ever doing that hike again.

The campsite we chose was very nice! We met a nice couple with a young son and a family of three (a step-father and two teenage daughters). The family of 3 ended up staying at the second campsite with us as well. The hike on the second day was quite a bit easier, thankfully, because we were still very sore from the previous day’s hike. Luckily, our second campsite was nice and flat as well – with a great water source nearby.

The hikes were really beautiful!

 

I think it’ll take a bit of a break before I’m ready to do it again. By the time we were back at the car on Sunday morning, I think I was the most disgusting I have ever been – and the food was terrible. But with some tweaks, I will be 100% ready to try it again next summer!

I wasn’t sure how much I enjoyed my trip, until now when reflecting back on it. Seeing the pictures and remembering the awful & incredible moments with my friend and sister makes the journey much sweeter.

My takeaways:

• Alcohol is not optional – it is necessary
• Don’t buy your packaged food from Walmart – I don’t know a good alternative yet
• Definitely look at a topography map before you go
• Next time, I will stay at the same campground for both nights and do day hikes
• The scenery was gorgeous – it may have made the whole trip worth it

 

 

 

 

Well… ultimately I was not able to find the bottom of the waterfall. I tried a couple of times and both times came up empty. 😦

This last attempt, I hiked with my friend, Kathleen, and my sister, Mackenzie.

Josh was nice enough to drop us off and come pick us up when we were done. Since this was a trail-less hike, there wasn’t anywhere to park. To start the hike, I’m pretty certain we were hiking through people’s yards. Through most of the hike, we were hiking along (and in) Falling Water Creek. We tried to hike the creek for about a mile and a half to the falls. Once we got about a mile in, we realized the boulders were getting way too big and there was no way to (safely) continue.

We did have a really cool hike, though! We were able to find a couple of very secluded swimming holes, which we definitely took advantage of. I forgot how fun it is to hike in a creek and climb over the boulders and around the trees! We totally felt like bad-ass adventurers.

 

Although we did not find the waterfall, I am still counting this as a win! The destination may  not have been what I was hoping for, but the journey was incredible! This felt like an important lesson to learn as I wrestle with all 30 of these tasks.

 

The first item on my list I wanted to tackle was to visit a new state! The options were New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Michigan, Ohio, Hawaii, Alaska, and South Carolina. We chose to visit Greenville, SC because it’s only a 3 1/2 hour drive from Chattanooga and has a great food scene! We spent five days in Greenville and had a blast – mostly eating and drinking!

We stayed at an Airbnb on Main Street, which was close to almost everything we wanted to do while we were there! I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel because I like to cook at least a couple of meals while I travel, so access to a kitchen is a huge bonus!

Josh and I quickly discovered one of our favorite spots in Greenville – Methodical Coffee. We went to this coffee shop every morning of our trip! The coffee was excellent and the pastries were out of this world! We had to take home some of their coffee beans and a sticker for me.

 

Falls Park on the Reedy is right in the middle of downtown Greenville and less than a mile from our Airbnb. We didn’t get to explore this as much as I would’ve liked because it rained most of the time we were there. The two photos were taken 24 hours apart – all of the rain caused the run off to turn the river brown, and that’s how it stayed for most of the trip.

 

We had some incredible food while we were in Greenville! We had incredible oysters and pasta at Jianna, a rainy lunch at Pasarelle Bistro, a french cafe on the Reedy, a memorable lunch at Husk, and amazing cocktails at Vault and Vator!

 

We visited a fishmonger and a farmer’s market and made dinner at the apartment our last night in Greenville. We had local sole with cilantro salsa, tomatoes and cottage cheese, and corn on the cob – all of it was local!

 

On our trip home, we stopped at a small town north of Greenville called Traveler’s Rest. We did some antique shopping and had amazing tacos at Farmhouse Tacos.

We ordered the seared tuna taco, braised pork with pineapple, a duck taco with blackberry sauce and goat cheese, and a fried avocado taco. They were all great!

Overall, it was a pretty great trip! I would recommend Greenville to anyone – especially if you love fun, creative food and cocktails! It was my first time visiting South Carolina and I’m sure it won’t be my last!

 

 

Thanks for joining me on my 30 before 30 journey! I am attempting to accomplish 30 goals before April 12, 2019! They are as follows:

1. √ Visit one new state
2. √ Weekend backpacking trip
3. Read 10 books (completely)
4. Eat at St. John’s
5. See a beautiful sunrise
6. Write letters to 10 people who have influenced me
7. √ Find the bottom of Falling Water Falls
8. √ Visit a National Park
9. Learn how to belay
10. Open a bottle of champagne with a saber
11. Hold a plank for 5 minutes
12. Get a spray tan
13. Hold crow pose for 20 seconds
14. French braid my own hair
15. Trail run 5k
16. Meditate every day for 1 month
17. Photo shoot
18. 4 weeks Zero Waste
19. 4 weeks without processed foods
20. Watch 20 movies from AFI’s “America’s 100 Greatest Movies”
21. Build my own 30 before 30 website
22. √ 1 month without social media
23. Cook a 5 course meal for my friends
24. The Kitchn’s 20 day Baking School
25. 100 hours of community service
26. Buy stocks
27. Make Christmas cards for friends and family
28. 23&me’s DNA kit
29. Shuck a dozen oysters
30. Complete 1 Second Everyday video

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton