Carl K

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Well hello there and welcome to my shiny new travel blog! Not only am I a newbie to Travel Blog, but also a newbie to blogging in general, and a newbie to travelling solo too!

So here goes with a bit of background info...

I'm Carl, 26, and from Cambridge, England, here in the UK.

After numerous vacations to the USA... Florida on the promise I'd see "cartoon mice" and New York on the promise I'd see "big apples", what started off as a life-long ambition to see so much more of the land of the free, suddenly on a whim one day became a real opportunity to do so and quickly developed from being another 'regular' vacation, into a mammoth 36 day trip/tour/trek of as many states as I could cram in!

Using a Contiki tour as a starting guide and base, I've added a few bits before and after the tour to extend it to as big as was financially possible!

It's cliché to say that in travelling the world there's often a dream of 'finding yourself', but for me it's actually true.
After having my heart broken into a few more than a million pieces last year by someone I thought I'd be spending the rest of my life with, so little has made sense ever since. In the death of the relationship, more of me died along with it than remained alive, and the past year has been more difficult than I could ever have imagined and would ever be able to articulate here. In being with someone for so long you tend to be unaware of how your own identity is silently and subconsciously merging itself with theirs to become an "us". And so when the shock of being without them for whatever reason comes along, trying to establish your own identity again, for me anyway, has felt daunting, scary and near on impossible.

And so, amongst all of the other wonderful things I hope to achieve on a personal level from this trip, putting the pieces of my heart back together again, and both proving to myself and restoring some self-belief that I can achieve great things on my own, are all some of the main objectives.

Running alongside in being equally as important, are the fantastic friends I hope to meet, the experiences I hope to gain, and the wonderous sights I hope to take in along the way.

I guess life's what you make of it, and for me after much time in the dark, I know it's time to start making it fun again. :o)

So I hope you'll join me and read about my adventures of both inner and outer discovery from my postings here in blog-world! I'll try to update as often as I can. Hopefully as we travel across America in our tour bus, in amongst the sights, adventures, drunken nights out, on-board singalongs and snoozes, there will be time for me to write some musings and details of what's happened and when on my ever faithful laptop. Hopefully by the time I'm home again and my memory begins to fail me on the millions of things I've done, this blog will act as a way of reminding even myself of all that was achieved.

Feel free to comment on everything, and again, I'll do my best to comment back.
...So click on the green "button" below and start reading!