Category: US & Canada
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Tucson
It’s good to be back in Tucson. Tucson is sort of my second home, after all the other places I have lived before. We came during February and we couldn’t be happier to get away from the negative temperatures in Vermont. I ate my body weight in Mexican food, which I really missed, especially birria.…
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Manhattan
I had a great day in the city with my in-laws. We played mini-golf, got fancy pastries, went to a photography museum, and ended the night with Korean BBQ.
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Phoenix
My sister got married in Phoenix, which made it the third time I have gone in three years. I’ve always had Tucson loyalty but Phoenix is slowly winning me over with the food and bars. Yeah, it’s that easy for me to love a city.
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Gilroy
My husband and I have had a fascination with Gilroy ever since we moved here. Apparently, it is the largest exporter of garlic in the world, and if you’re eating garlic, chances are it’s from a farm in Gilroy. Gilroy is just south of San Jose and not considered part of the Bay Area. It’s…
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Sanborn County Park
We had planned a long engagement but with our out-of-state move looming closer, and no end to the pandemic in sight, we decided to have a tiny ceremony. We figured we’d have a larger party later. The most important guests, my grandfather and Uncle Joe, live in California, so it was a good location and…
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Scrapbooking winter break
I love getting done with a scrapbook! Then it gets to go on my shelf, with all my other travel memories. I create one even for in-town trips. I have been sharing pages from Katie and Casey’s Winter Break Adventure 2020! We were socially distant on all our adventures this winter break. More pages to…
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Ano Nuevo State Beach
After living in California for over three years, Casey and I realized we had only been to Santa Cruz once! We had never really been to the beaches here. We took the beautiful drive along Highway One. One day we started from Santa Cruz. Another day we started from up North, near Palo Alto, then…
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Almaden Quicksilver Park
The best part about living in South San Jose is that you are right up along the mountains. It can’t get any better than that! I’d take Northern California landscapes over Southern California beaches any day. Alamaden Quicksilver Park is less than fifteen minutes from our house. There is a grueling uphill loop. We did…
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Monte Bello Preserve
Monte Bello is a special hiking spot Casey and I go to near Palo Alto. It is our favorite place because it is never crowded and the loop is just at the appropriate level of difficulty. By the end, I am complaining, and we finish right when Casey gets tired. So it’s a win-win for…
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Nisene Marks State Forest
Casey and I visited Nisene Marks at the beginning of our myceulium obsession. We were just learning about mushrooms and getting excited when we could identify basic roussulas. Now, we’ve gotten pretty good and can identify many things! We went to Nisene Marks this past week. With Covid, it was crazy the amount of bikers…
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Capitola Beach
We’ve been living in the Bay Area for four years now but we have yet to spend too much time at any of the beaches. This winter break from distance learning, I set out to change all that. Capitola is an urban beach with a low-key beach town. It is near Santa Cruz. The drive…
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Oakland/SF
Quarantine makes me nostalgic for places I’ve been, even if they’re not my favorite places. I haven’t left the house really, since March. As I clean out my house, I find little snippets of life before quarantine – maps, ticket stubs, flyers, and more. Last August, Casey and I saw a comedy show in Oakland.…
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Las Vegas
Las Vegas has always had a special place in my family. I think Nevada occupies that space for many families in the American Southwest. Disneyland or a theme park is an expensive ordeal that requires planning. Vegas is kind of a place your exhausted parents can get the whole family packed in to the car…
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Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz has a cult following around the Bay Area. Everyone has a bumper sticker of The Mystery Spot. Well, it seems that way. I finally got to visit. It definitely reaffirmed that Santa Cruz has a strange energy to it, not in the sense the attraction advocated about, but in the attitude that people…
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San Luis Obispo
My friend was living in LA and I was a new transplant in San Jose. We wanted to meet but didn’t want to drive over nine hours to see each other. We settled on San Luis Obispo, a cute town right in the middle. San Luis Obispo was having a poppin’ weekend. They were having…
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Tucson
For this year’s climate-poclypse, Casey and I headed to Tucson. We packed up everything of importance into our car and drove twelve hours southeast. The wildfires were only a few miles away from us. We ended up staying two weeks. We didn’t do much while there because it’s wasn’t really a vacation. However, it’s still…
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Philadelphia
One of the best things about having a family member an official tour guide is all. the. discounts! She gets comped to go to museums all the time because she brings large groups of students there. So, following her around a new city is a lot of fun. Rusty took us to Philadelphia. We had…
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New York City
I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been to New York City. If I had never met my partner (who’s from New York), I probably would not have had the chance to see it in all the different ways that I have. I don’t know if summer or winter in the city is better. For…
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Marin County
Marin County is the area north of San Francisco, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. I had heard a lot about that area from fellow mushroom collectors and identifiers. It is moist, mountainous, and has great trails. My boyfriend and I shared a special weekend there this Valentine’s day. We liked Mount…
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Phoenix
Most of my time spent in Arizona is in Tucson. I went to school there for two years and all my cousins live there. Tucson is low-key and funky. Phoenix feels more corporate, cleaned-up, and built out. I definitely prefer Tucson even if it doesn’t have much of the same conveniences that a large city…
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Yosemite National Park
I went to Yosemite for the first time in October. I’ll be honest – I don’t like the idea of Yosemite. Apple (and capitalism) has ruined the name for me. The kind of affluent, oblivious Colorado-loving kind of American that I despise – really love going there. Two super cool documentaries were even made this…
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Berkeley/SF
I moved to San Jose three years ago. San Jose is an hour south of the world famous San Francisco. Every movie and TV show takes place there, everyone abroad dreams of visiting San Francisco. However, in my three years here, I’ve only managed to visit SF a few times and sort of end up…
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Davis
One of my favorite travel partners is my grandpa. He and I have been to countless places… Brazil, Hong Kong, Canada, Northwestern United States, just to name a few. It had been more than a year since we went to Brazil, our last trip. So it was time for another trip… I got the idea…
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Cleveland
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cute Little Paper Blog (@cutelittlepaperblog) on Sep 29, 2019 at 5:45pm PDT I spent ten days in Cleveland this summer. Before going there, I heard from a lot of people that it would be boring. They were so wrong. I met the most amazing, sweetest Ohio…
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The Bay Area, from South Bay to the Peninsula
Casey and I just celebrated four years in the Bay. California has been enjoyable, with new experiences, and good memories. We don’t know if it’s the perfect fit for us, though. We are far too kooky for this hyper-capitalist, business-centered state. It’s difficult to afford a house. The weather is perpetually perfect here. Small cities…
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British Columbia
When I was about eighteen, I set off with my grandpa and fifty other retirees in a stinky tour bus all Canadian national parks. I’ve also written about the time I toured the US on a bus. Hadn’t I learned my lesson?! The result was a chaotic and unforgettable time. I signed up thinking it…
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Monterey
For our four year anniversary, my boyfriend and I spent the weekend in Monterey. We saw the infamous aquarium, went to the beach, had fish and chips, went hiking at Aptos State Park, and even kayaked alongside otters. Monterey is a beautiful coastal city only an hour south of San Jose. While driving down, you…
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Denver
I was able to connect with Zhenya, a friend I made while living in Samara, in Denver! It was the perfect place to meet up. It’s mild in the summer and an urban center with a lot to do. Zhenya and I spent many late nights talking and eating (she’s a chef!) in Samara, and…
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Boston & New York City
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cute Little Paper Blog (@cutelittlepaperblog) on Dec 8, 2019 at 6:12pm PST This summer I spent a month on the East Coast. As a kid, I had never been to any part of the East Coast. Most trips my family took were to the West Coast…
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Alabama
I’ve been to Alabama twice. It’s funny because people outside of Alabama are like… why? It’s a humid and strangely beautiful place. But I also feel like an outsider the second I step foot there. I don’t feel like I could ever blend in, no matter how hard I try. But I guess another strange…
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Texas Coast
I remember when I met my first college roommate, who is from Houston, and stupidly asked her, “Houston has an airport?” I’m pretty sure she alerted the authorities immediately because I knew an embarrassingly small amount about Texas. Houston is one of the largest cities in the United States. Growing up, I thought Houston was…
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San Antonio
San Antonio was awesome! We’ve been here many times in the past, but it was the first time we flew here as a destination. Casey and I brought our cat there. It was cold and rainy the entire time we were there. That’s becoming my preferred weather. The first thing I did upon arriving was get…
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Big Basin State Park
We had our first visitor to in the Bay Area! My boyfriend and I moved here in 2017 and we never miss “home”. For our first visitor, we wanted to welcome him to our California. It wasn’t the theme parks, or bars, or cool restaurants we wanted to take him to. What we define as…
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Castle Rock State Park
Another beautiful day at a State Park, hunting for mycelium and breathing the fresh air. I think this park is too close to the city because it was quite crowded. Is that just an American thing – a crowded forest?
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Los Angeles
I’ve visited Los Angeles many times as a kid with my family. I knew it for the beaches and Getty Museum, which was a memorable place for me as a kid. I finally got to go back, as an adult. I was in Los Angeles to reconnect with an old friend. She was working at…
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Portland
Some of my best travels happen right when I quit a job. I remember when I quit my crappy retail sales associate job in Austin the day I bought a ticket to Long Beach. And with the latest trip, I quit a job and flew off to Portland that very night. I get so cooped…
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Traveling around the US National Parks
When I was in college and already feeling the wanderlust, I joined my grandpa and fifty other retirees from China on to a Chinese tour bus and visited many of the national parks in the US. Yes. One of those tour buses. The ones filled with obnoxious, throwin’ up their peace signs for terribly staged…
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Colorado
For spring break, my boyfriend and I took a road trip to Colorado. We visited Crestone, Valley View, and Colorado Springs. We also stopped at Zapata Falls and Great Sand Dunes National Park. For this trip, I created a journal that we could both write in. This journal alternated between pages written by my boyfriend,…
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Long Beach
Long Beach is one of my favorite places in LA. I love the colorful horticulture and the perpetual ocean breeze. It embodies every idea of the concept of California. With the perfect temperature year-round and the low-key vibe of the entire city – makes it a perfect place to visit. I had an awesome vegan…
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Brooklyn & Manhattan
One of the best parts of traveling, for me, at least, is all the paper memorabilia that I encounter on the way to the destination. A business card written in French for a French company and a flyer for a French cafe actually in France are things so peculiar and special, especially if it’s a…