I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin — and after all these passport stamps, Wisconsin is still where I call home on purpose. People are always a little baffled that someone who travels for a living chooses to live here, but I love this beautiful state. The people are kind, life is simpler, and getting anywhere in my city takes ten minutes. Plus, the brutal winters give you so much more appreciation for the other three seasons. I save the chaos for my trips and keep the peace at home. (Wisconsin is also the reason I created Camp Lola Whiskey, but that's a whole other story.)

My parents started taking me on international trips when I was young, and my first big one beyond Mexico was Venezuela at twelve. I started learning Spanish around then, stuck with it all the way through college, and I'd argue that one trip quietly rerouted the entire trajectory of my life.. 

The cliché but true response is that every trip changes you a little. I think you come home slightly different every time, whether you notice or not.

But the one that rearranged my whole life was Colombia in 2021. The pandemic was winding down, the group travel company I'd booked with canceled my trip, and everyone had thoroughly scared me out of going alone. So I did the completely rational thing: I found a stranger in a Facebook group and told her that if she came with me, I'd plan everything. She thought she was getting the deal of the century.

Somewhere in Colombia, the light bulb went off: wait. I could make this a job.

That canceled trip and that stranger-turned-friend are the whole reason this company exists.

Spontaneous detours are the reason this company exists at all — but my favorite is Bogotá, 2021. My travel buddy didn't want to go out for dinner, and I was hungry, so I set off down the street alone. Which, if you've heard anything about Bogotá at night, is exactly what the internet tells you not to do.

Halfway there, a group of Colombians called to me from across the street asking what I was doing. I said I was going to dinner. They said, “come inside — we're having a party.”

Anyone with half a brain cell would have politely declined. I peeked inside, thought “why not,” and spent the entire night dancing, eating, and toasting at a quinceañera with a Colombian family I'd known for 30 seconds. It's still one of the most fun, most random nights of my life.

And I often think, what if I hadn't taken the detour?

I hope you come home a little different — I'm not sure it's possible not to. Travel hands you perspective you can't get any other way: a deep appreciation for the places you visit, a surprising new appreciation for home, and some big questions about how you're living and what actually matters to you. Those questions are your best souvenir. Keep them.

I used to be one of those insufferable carry-on-only people. (To everyone I bragged to: I'm sorry.) But when you travel for weeks or months at a time, there comes a moment when you desperately need the thing you don't have, in a place where you can't buy it, and then the smugness wears off fast.

Now I check the bag. All of it. My stuff comes with me, my stress stays home, and I regret nothing.

A tiny restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal. It was so simple: tapas, prawns I still dream about, and an entire pitcher of sangria to myself. I floated out of there convinced I'd just eaten the best meal of my life.

By the time I got back to my room, I had full-blown food poisoning. It got ugly.

But I generally refuse to let travel get the last word, so on my second trip to Portugal, I marched back to that same restaurant and re-did the entire meal, just to give the memory back its happy ending. No regrets. Possibly the most Type 2 meal of my life.

A Shewee. (Google it. I'll wait.) I've been in far too many sketchy bathroom situations to travel without one, and it has saved me more times than I can count.

Did I recently have an incident with it in the Kenyan bush, mid-safari? Yes.

But overfilling your Shewee while trying to outrun a pride of lions beats being eaten alive in the Kenyan bush any day of the week. I will die on that hill.