The Long Way Here

Long before I had a passport, I was already planning life around the next road trip.

Horse-show highways

I grew up on a horse farm showing hunter/jumpers. Weekends meant loading up and driving to horse shows in different states; after school, I would cross the state just for a lesson. Travel was not something I saved for vacation—it was simply how life worked.

PBR weekends & city detours

Later, I fell hard for professional bull riding. I started traveling across state lines to meet up with my PBR friends. The event might have been the reason for going, but exploring each new city became just as important. Without realizing it, I was learning to build a trip around a passion—and then wander beyond it.

A career built for the road

When I graduated college in 2007, I took my first travel therapy contract in Missouri. From there, I spent the next decade taking contracts in different cities and states, usually staying three to nine months at a time. Even my time off became part of the adventure: I took road trips to explore whatever was nearby or crossed state lines to visit friends. By 2017, travel had shaped both my career and the way I saw the world.

2013: the trip that changed everything

In 2013, one of my best friends and I left the United States without return tickets. For three months, we traveled through New Zealand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Laos, and Thailand. That was when I caught the travel bug—the serious, rearrange-your-life kind.

From band trips to a much bigger map

After that, music became another reason to go. I traveled to see some of my favorite regional bands and always made time to explore wherever the show landed. These days, the concerts are farther apart and the map is much bigger: I travel the world chasing history, strange little detours, unforgettable food, animal encounters, and the places that make me say, “Well, we have to stop there.”

Where DIY Meets Wanderlust

The DIY half of this story started with a stubborn need to be unique.

First: clothes, shoes & anything too ordinary

I began embellishing my own clothing and shoes because I did not want what everyone else had. Once I had a place of my own, that instinct spilled into home décor.

Then came the 1930s house

I bought a house built in the 1930s and got very hands-on—tiling, painting, decorating, and slowly adding character while making an old house feel unmistakably mine.

How I travel now

I am not a luxury-travel influencer, and I have graduated from hostel bunk beds. I look for places that are clean, comfortable, interesting, and reasonably priced—then happily splurge on a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There will be history, oddities, memorable food, and, whenever possible, animals. I share the beautiful parts, the travel fails, and the honest details I wish I had known.

Why this blog exists

DIY & Wanderlusting is where those two instincts meet: go somewhere unexpected, then come home and make something no one else has. It is part itinerary archive, part honest travel diary, part project notebook—and always permission to take the weird way.

Go somewhere unexpected. Come home and make something unmistakably yours.

Follow the weird on Instagram: @diyandwanderlusting