Traveling by Nature

Whew, it was a lonnngg travel day to Fort Smith Arkansas, but I made it and I’m ready to get my week started.

I picked up a rental car at the start of the day and hit the road. And none of my roadtrips would be complete without a stop at Buc-ee’s. I picked up my coffee, water, Celsius, and breakfast tacos to get me through the drive.

I was hoping for some beautiful Fall sites on my drive, but I don’t think I realized how much of the trip was going to be through Oklahoma which can be very hit or miss with Fall foliage. Everything was pretty dull and dead looking, no vibrant Fall colors this time. I made it to Fort Smith a little after 2PM and decided to try a coffee shop in town while getting some work done. I picked up a coffee and scone to power me through emails and projects.

Unfortunately, the coffee shop was filled with wasps flying around and my fear of being stung would not allow me to focus, so I called in quits and decided I’d get that work done later. I started my journey around town to experience the Unexpected Mural Project. It’s a revitalization project that’s bringing urban art, music, and speakers downtown areas. The murals were not incredibly easy to find, but I drove around and stopped whenever I saw one. Check out some of these murals!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

My dinner plans fell through because both places I was planning on trying this week were unexpectedly closed on Mondays. So after checking into my hotel and picking up groceries I had a quiet evening in with some takeout and Disney movies.

If you want to see more of my travels from today, check out my Youtube video!

Hello travelers! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We had an exciting and busy one over here!

Friday

My weekend technically started on Friday since I was off work for the day, but it was very productive nonetheless.

I started my day at a local coffee shop, Pax & Beneficia Coffee. I am in my last 5 weeks of grad school and spent a bout three hours focusing on the last few sections of my thesis. They have incredible Turkish coffee and I could have spent several more hours here if I hadn’t had other things to do that day.

I run a couple of errands and picked up lunch from Cava and enjoyed a Mediterranean bowl while taking a much needed brain break.

Earlier in the day as I was leaving the coffee shop, Aaron called me and asked if I was interested in having a date night that evening. I, of course, said yes, and in true Aaron fashion It had to be a surprise. So we headed out at the end of his work day and had an early dinner at our go-to restaurant. If you guessed Chuy’s, you’d be right. We split some chicken fajitas and caught up on our day before heading to his surprise.

Aaron told me that we had a scheduled entry time for our activity and we had about an hour to kill beforehand, so we walked around the Shops at WIllowbend. They had already put up many Christmas decorations, which I am all for!

After taking a couple laps around the mall, I started to have an idea of what we were going to be doing. And I was right! We went to the Friends Experience: The One in Dallas. I had seen this advertised a few days prior and was super but interested, but I didn’t bring it up to Aaron because the price for tickets deterred me. It’s almost $50 per person after taxes and fess for purchasing an online ticket. You can purchase standby tickets at the experience, but risk them being sold out when you get there.

I think the experience is worth it if you’re a huge Friends fan. And by that I mean you’ve seen every episode multiple times and you will catch even the most subtly of references. You walk through the most famous sets from the episodes – Monica and Rache’s apartment, Chandler and Joey’s apartment, Central Perk, and there is even the scene with the couch — PIVOT! There are staff members throughout the entire experience that are stationed to take your pictures. I definitely recommend taking your time to get your money’s worth. Check out these pictures from our experience!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

All in all, it was definitely a fun experience because I have seen Friends probably 14 times through, no exaggeration. It’s a traveling exhibit so check if it’s coming to a city near you!

We finished up our date night with some dessert. In case you didn’t know RaceTrac gas stations have a frozen yogurt bar that’s actually pretty good! And instead paying by the ounce, you pay for the cup and can fill it up as much as you want! We highly recommend!

And I’m a big believer that if you can see the frozen yogurt through the toppings then it’s not really frozen yogurt.

It was a fun and much needed date night! The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing at home before I got the road again. Check back tomorrow for my travel and some fun to Arkansas!

Food Tour

I flew into New Orleans a few days ago and decided to check something off my bucket list that had been on there for awhile: a food tour! I chose one of the less expensive options, and was also intrigued because the description stated that the tour would teach the difference between Cajun and Creole food. We met near the French Quarter and were told that we would have four stops along the tour to learn dome history and try food samples.

The four stops were restaurants and we tried small samples and learned whether the sample was Cajun or Creole. I will say that while we learned some brief differences, there was not enough information from our guide to really learn the difference between the two. You can see the samples below, which included: Jambalaya, Gumbo, Crawfish Étouffée, and Red Beans & Rice (my favorite!).

• 

• 

• 

All of the samples were wonderful, but I wish we would have learned more about the history behind the food and the restaurants we visited. Also most of the restaurants were along Bourbon St and it was very hard to hear the guide with how busy it was in that area.

The best stop was Laura’s Candies where we received a pecan praline and had a chance to do some shopping. The tour ended here and the group split ways.

All in all, I hope to do another food tour in the future as this was did not impress me much. I want to bring ya’ll positive experiences, but I also want to be honest. The Taste of Nawlins’ Food Tour is not your best option, unfortunately. I’ll try a different one in the future and hopefully share a better experience where I have more details to give.

Palmetto’s on the Bayou

I treated myself to a nice dinner in Slidell, Louisiana at a restaurant called Palmetto’s on the Bayou. And you guessed it, it’s on a bayou. It’s a beautiful little restaurant that you wouldn’t notice if you were just passing by. I was the only person there, except for an entire rehearsal dinner so I felt like I was crashing a party!

I requested outdoor seating and it was just incredible outside. They have covered seating on a deck and the weather was perfect for an outdoor dinner.

The ordered the New Orleans BBQ Shrimp, and no, it’s not shrimp covered in BBQ sauce. It was jumbo gulf shrimp in a traditional rosemary and pepper butter, over smoked gouda grits and a grilled pepper salad. Holy cow! This was the best meal I have had in a long time! I’m pretty picky when it comes to grits, but these were so smooth and creamy they could have been mistaken for mashed potatoes and all the flavors worked so well together!

The grounds around the restaurant are beautiful too and they are open for hosting private events and it made me want to throw a party! I highly recommend checking this out for dinner if you’re ever passing through Slidell.

So there’s another Foodie Friday for you! Come back next week for my Arkansas adventures!

Hey there, travelers!

I’m coming at ya with a Vegan Chocolate Cake recipe this week, and I hope you enjoy it! This was my first time experimenting with this recipe. It didn’t turn out the be the prettiest cake, but tasted delicious!

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. In a small bowl dissolve the hot chocolate powder in 2 cups of warm water. Once dissolved, mix into dry ingredients. Add oil and vanilla to the mixture, and mix until batter is smooth. Quickly mix in the apple cider vinegar. Divide batter into two greased 8-inch cake pans. Bake until tester comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Once baked, let cool in pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack.

3. In a bowl, beat margarine with an electric mixer. A paddle attachment is best for this. Beat until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add powdered sugar, hot chocolate powder, coconut creamer and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

4. Transfer one layer of cake to a cake plate or platter. Top that layer with about 1-2 cups of the buttercream frosting. You may have some icing leftover. Spread evenly over cake layer. Top with the second cake layer.

NOTE: When I remake this recipe I will be sure to trim the tops of the cake flat to keep from cracking like the above picture. Rookie mistake!

5. OPTIONAL: I melted about 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and drizzled over the top layer of the cake. You could also top with remaining frosting or leave bare.

I hope you enjoyed this Foodie Friday!

Hello fellow travelers! I very much enjoyed having a week at home after such heavy, not-s0-fun travel for several consecutive weeks. My week was filled with running errands, resting, and feeling like I was getting my life together again. A great week led into a great weekend that ended up being way busier than we had planned. We had actually planned on being in Branson, MO for a leisure trip this weekend, but some of my work plans changed that just didn’t make it feasible anymore. I was a little relieved to have a few extra days at home, especially since we have a Branson trip coming up in December!

Friday Night

Friday night kicked off with one of our favorite downtown Dallas dinner spots before heading to the Dallas Stars home opener of the season! We went to Mesero for an early dinner which is a modern Mexican restaurant in the Victory Park area and right down the street from the American Airlines Center. I enjoyed their Nachos Conocidos with brisket and it’s the perfect portion size and served with what they call mesero slaw!

After dinner we walked down to the American Airlines Center in the heat dressed fully in our Jersey’s ready to cheer on our favorite team! We always get to the stadium very early because Aaron loves the watch the pre-game videos.

It was great to see a FULL arena for the first time since before the pandemic and hear the fans cheering loudly through the entire game. We won in the last 45 seconds of overtime with a winning score 3-2. It’s going to be a great season and I’m actually so happy that our plans changed and allowed us to be home for the game!

Saturday

We started off Saturday with an early morning walk around the lake while drinking coffee and planning out our day. We even noticed that our neighborhood has already started decorating the public areas for Christmas!

We spent most of the rest of the morning eating breakfast and hanging out together at the apartment knowing we were going to have a busy afternoon. Breakfast was my normal for the week which was toast with peanut butter and sliced banana.

This pretty much took us into lunch where I finished off the last of the Lentil Tortilla Soup I posted for Foodie Friday!

After lunch we got ready to head out for some house hunting! We have been renting since we got married and are ready to make the big leap of buying a home! We met up with our realtor to see a few properties we had found online. We saw some duds, as in did not match the pictures online, but we also found a house we LOVED! Unfortunately, the seller was asking for some waivers we weren’t comfortable with at this stage in house hunting, but it was great practice and we learned SO much! I always rolled my eyes when I heard adults talking about how stressful buying a house was, thinking they were exaggerating, but wow! There is so much to it and I’m already a little stressed!

We spent enough time out seeing houses that we weren’t going to make it to Saturday church on time so we picked up some take-out fajitas and spent the rest of the evening at home together.

I’m going to skip including Sunday in this post because my travel schedule is wonky this week and that will be my travel day to New York! See you all tomorrow!

I actually have a full week home….no work…no travel. Just a pure week at home to catch up on life! It doesn’t happen very often so when it does, it’s quite exciting! So I thought I’d take you all on a little “Day in the Life” journey with me!

7AM

Any good day of morning starts with a yummy breakfast and catching up on my favorite TV shows. I made extra-burnt toast with peanut butter and banana slices. I am LOVING Sam’s Club Natural Peanut Butter. I’m also rewatching the LOST series right now so kicked back with an episode while eating breakfast and drinking my coffee. The rest of the early morning hours were spent responding to work emails and catching up on expense reports.

9AM

After getting ready for the day, I headed out to check out a thrift store in my area that I’ve been wanting to try. Texas Thrift has multiple stores across Texas, and they have other parts of their chain in Florida. I’ve typically been pretty impressed by my finds at their stores, however this one let me down a little. I didn’t find anything fantastic and it was more pricey than other thrift stores I have been to, but I walked away with a few good items nonetheless.

11AM

I stopped by Buc-ee’s for some fuel for me car and fuel for me! I picked up my second cup of coffee for the morning and a Celsius, because they are way cheaper at Bus-ee’s than they are anywhere else! I met up with my mom and siblings after to to complete some paperwork we needed to do as a family.

12PM

My brother, sister, and I met up with our Papa for lunch at a small hole-in-the-wall burger joint in Greenville Texas called Terry’s. They are honestly some of the best burgers! We spent a good amount of time catching up before I decided I better get a start on my hour drive home.

2:30PM

I arrived home and had several things to catch up on, including getting the mail, emails, some planning for my other small business, and working out. I have been using the Down Dog apps for my workouts as they have apps for HIIT, Yoga, and Barre. I did short HIIT workout so that I had time to prep dinner before Aaron got some for work.

4:30PM

I grilled some easy marinated chicken for Aaron’s dinner and heated up a Lentil Tortilla Soup I made for my dinner. Recipe will be on the blog for Foodie Friday! It’s so easy in the crockpot and was SO delicious! I. honestly can’t wait to have more for dinner tonight. I topped dinner off with a leftover CRUMBL cookie!

6:00PM

We do early dinners in this house so that we have plenty of time for evening walks and that’s what we spent most of the evening doing after dinner! And that it pretty much it for my non-travel day!

Question of the Day:

What is something exciting that happened in your day today?

I was sent to Harrisburg, PA for work and everyone told me I needed to go to the Hershey Amusement Park in the next town over of Hershey, PA! Unfortunately, the amusement park side was closed during the week, but Hershey Chocolate World was open and operating!

I dropped my luggage off at my hotel and caught a Lyft over to Hershey Chocolate World with plan to experience some different attractions. I bought a pass for around $33 that included the 4D Chocolate Movie, Hershey Unwrapped Live Show, and the experience to create and design your own chocolate bar. Each event had to be scheduled for a certain time slot, and I missed my reservation for the 4D movie due to difficulty getting a ride in time.

I arrived with five minutes to spare before my reservation to create my own chocolate bar. I headed right to the check-in and they provided me with an apron and hair net.

I would have preferred that this experience be more hands-on in the creation process, but it was a fun activity nonetheless. You have a pass that you scan at each station so the system can match your creation and designs with your chocolate bar throughout the creation process. You can pick three fillings for your chocolate bar. Mine included pretzel pieces, toffee pieces, and chocolate cookie (Oreo) pieces. And I, of course, opted to top mine with sprinkles!

At that point, a machine does all the work for you. You can watch the creation of your chocolate bar from behind plexiglass glass. Make sure to checkout my Youtube video if you want to see the process of making the chocolate bar!

I was able to design my own wrapper, which was super fun! They secure your chocolate creation in tin case wrapped in your design!

My favorite part of Chocolate World was the free dark-ride located inside. Anyone can ride this ride without purchasing an attraction ticket. It was a fun tour through the history of Hershey and the making of their chocolate! You even get a sample chocolate at the end of the ride!

Hershey Chocolate World is really a giant chocolate lover’s gift ship with anything Hershey you could ever dream of! They also have a food court where you can nourish your body between all the sweets or indulge your sweet tooth in more chocolate treats. I splurged and tried a White Chocolate Birthday Cake Milkshake. It was delicious but I regretted it going into my next experience.

My last experience of the day was a live show called Hershey Unwrapped! They did not allow filming or photography during the show, but ti was such a fun experience. SPOILER: You get a secret chocolate box filled with fun size chocolates.

Without giving away too much of the fun, this show will take you through a tasting of each of the chocolates so make sure you don’t overindulge prior to the show. Learn from me!

This was an incredibly fun experience! I highly recommend taking the family (or going by yourself) if you ever find yourself near Hershey, PA!

Check out my Youtube video of this experience!

Check it out and subscribe for more adventures!

It’s official! The Traveling by Nature YouTube channel is up and running with my first video to say hello and explain what you can expect from the relationship between the blog and the vlog!

Go check it out! Hit that like button! And subscribe!