The Bloom — travel

Goodbye to a real trash weekend here, two cloudy, rainy, chilly, please-pass-the-down-comforter days that turned Thai food take-out and Netflix into survival gear. Sunday afternoon I was so freaking bored I actually started cleaning out my closets. At first, not much fun and Kimmie Schmidt started calling my name, but buried under the contents of my next Craig’s List ad, I found a box I’d forgotten, and the weekend got epic real fast. It was all my old travel journals, one from every trip I took between the time we went to Utah when I was 13 and the summer...

It’s official: I am obsessed with Iceland. It’s my new travel dream. It started when my friend, Elisha, mentioned that she was thinking about going. I asked her why she’d want to go to a place covered in ice and she said because it wasn’t. Turns out they’ve named everything backward. Greenland has all the ice. And Iceland? It’s green. (Who knew?) And man is it ever all that. I went home and Googled and couldn’t get enough. Try an image search. I dare you. You’ll be packing your bags before you hit the scroll button. Because Iceland is completely...

Maybe it’s the smell of spring in the air or just my winter doldrums reaching their usual April peak of screaming boredom, but it’s time for a road trip. No idea where I’m going but unless I win the lottery, I’m know how I’m getting there: as cheaply as possible! That’s what sucks about travel. It’s so freaking expensive. I went to New York City a few months ago, and that town took a twenty out of my wallet every ten minutes. Not cool, New York. Especially for a girl on a budget. But I love to explore new places, so...

Everybody has one. Mine is a homemade survival kit—a small pouch stuffed with things I know someday some way I’m going to find myself desperately wishing I had when I’m stuck somewhere without a net. Slipped into my daypack, it’s my favorite won’t-leave-home-without-it road trip essential. I see things like this sold for crazy prices considering how little is actually inside. That’s what sold me on making my own—not very psyched to drop $30 on $10 worth of stuff. That’s good taco money. So handmade it is. Here’s what’s inside: A few safety pins A couple of feet of duct...