I am Stacey Reid - Travel Blogger and I love to travel!

Welcome to my website; Stacey Reid - Travel Blogger

When I was a child, I had a huge affinity for geography and in school when we would learn about all the geological features, I loved seeing a hill and understand why there was a hill. When I saw a cliff, I understood the process that made that cliff. Driving from one location to another was always fun and exciting because I saw geography.  

Today, a lot of my personal trips include a geological spot to explore. Be that a waterfall, a unique beach, outcropping, fossils or whatever that is stunning to the area. Because geology is basically nature's history, I naturally started to be drawn to the history of Mankind and the exploration of ruins, historic buildings, modern buildings, art and everything else.

For most of my life, my travel was few and far between. The thought of travel was always hopping into a plane and going somewhere far away. It was hard to even consider this as an option because this type of travel is very expensive. Even further from consideration was travelling in my own region. It wasn't until things like Facebook and Google that was invented that travel locally was something that could be considered; that there were places, many places to see and explore and so much of it was within driving distance of my home.

 

My wanderlust was born!

And add to the fact that I was about to die, I needed to travel as much as I possibly could.

 

I was born with multiple heart defects that were impacting my life. I was in my mid-40s and I was finding that it was becoming harder and harder to climb the stairs or just to shop for groceries. I delayed having surgery for decades simply because the type of surgery I needed had a death rate/failure rate of 45%.

 

YIKES!

I had chosen to wait for the medical profession to come up with better techniques to fix my deformed heart.

 

They finally did. Survival rate was now at 95% and I really couldn't wait anymore. Still fearing that I would die on the operating table (because I have other issues that are unfixable), I needed to give my wife as many happy memories as possible; I started to plan trips. Many trips.  Many, many trips to all the locations that I could possibly find.

With the power of determination (and some credit to Google), I explored the map and found natural wonders, hiking trails to more natural wonders, cheap and free historic sites and museums, unique places to eat and see and so much more. I never realized that a trip in my own back yard had so much to see and be awe-struck.

 

My wife (bless her) would come home from work and I would have an evening trip planned. There were weekend trips each weekend. When she had time off, we would be exploring the province each and every single one of these days. I took thousands of pictures and we explored thousands of places (literally, thousands) in the year prior to my surgery. I had seriously hoped that I created so many memories for her just in case things went bad.

I never realized that in doing this for my wife, I was creating memories for me. On the operating table, the anesthesiologist was trying to put me to sleep and, in an effort to keep me calm, she asked me to focus a good memory.

I couldn't.

I could not think of one good memory to focus on because I had created so many wonderful and positive memories with the love of my life, that finding just one was impossible.

I obviously survived the surgery. We still have our desire to explore and now that I am as fit as a fiddle (or more like a cello because I put on a bit of weight since then), there were even more places to explore because of my improvement in health.

I love to travel and love sharing these experiences with my wife. I love seeing old things, new things, unique things, weird things, fun things, anything.

I love to share these opportunities with you and you will discover that there is so much that can be done near your own home. You only need to hop into your car and follow the map and memories are yours to be made.