Traveller of the Month: Kris from Nomad by Trade
Welcome to Traveller of the Month! On the first Tuesday of each month I’m passing the mic over to a fellow travel blogger to share their travel wisdom and stories with you. Without further ado, meet October’s Traveller of the Month: Kris!
And if you missed September’s featured traveller post, check it out here!
Please introduce yourself, Kris! What’s your travel story?
I’ve been traveling for as long as I can remember. My parents road tripped all over the US with me and my siblings when I was a kid and I’d visited 40 states by the time I graduated high school. In middle school, I got to go on a student ambassador trip to Australia and followed that up with two more trips through the same program.
Thanks to those experiences, I was absolutely hooked on international travel and have a goal to visit as many other countries as possible. In the past, my travel has been very fast-paced (thanks, lack of vacation time in the US) but I recently had a baby and am planning slower, less itinerary-driven trips now because everything takes longer and is more unpredictable with a baby.
When did you start your travel blog and what sort of stories do you share there?
I started Nomad by Trade in 2017 to write about my work and personal travels. At the time, I was on the road for business almost every week Monday-Friday and had an endless amount of material. I started out with a journal style of writing, but very quickly realized that that was only interesting to one person – me (well, maybe my mom too) – and shifted more toward proper articles.
Because I couldn’t get enough blogging, I started a second niche blog about my home state of Michigan, called My Michigan Travel, in 2021.
What do you do when you’re not travelling or writing about travel?
I love pouring my creativity into other hobbies. I do all kinds of crafting – sewing, crocheting, scrapbooking, and more. I have ideas for about 7 novels in my head too, but the odds of me ever getting around to writing them are very slim.
If you had to sum up your travel ethos in one phrase, what would it be?
Just go. Even if you only have a couple of days or a limited budget, find somewhere new and check it out. Don’t pass up an opportunity to travel because you never know where life will take you in terms of health, time off, or finances or how destinations and attractions might change.
What is your most unique travel moment?
By far the most unique thing I’ve done on my travels was taking an impromptu helicopter ride over a small Kentucky town on one of my work trips. I was traveling with a group of coworkers and one of them kept chatting with this couple in the hotel lobby. It turned out that the husband was in town flying a helicopter (which was parked out on the hotel’s lawn) over power lines to check them for the power company.
We all became casual travel friends and at the end of the week, he took three of us up for quick flights around town. It wasn’t all that scenic (think lifeless winter landscapes), but I know nothing like that will ever happen to me again – and it was free!
How has covid impacted your travels?
It had a big impact on my work travels. I used to be on the road every week, hopping all over the US, sometimes to exciting places like Lake Tahoe, sometimes to other less touristy places. Then, overnight, that all ended. The company I was working for at the time kept extending the travel pause out one quarter at a time, but it eventually became clear that even if we did resume travel, it would never be like it was before covid.
At the time, I knew my travel days were limited because I was getting married and planning on starting a family very soon. But I definitely wasn’t ready to give it up yet, especially without a chance to mentally say goodbye to that life. Even for personal travel, it’s given me the constant fear that things will get canceled.
When we took our first big international trip since covid hit, I wouldn’t allow myself to get excited about it until the morning we were leaving for the airport. Before, I used to think of it as, “I *am* going to London in two weeks.” Now, it’s more like, “I really hope nothing goes wrong because I’m planning to go to London in two weeks.”
What is still on your travel bucket list?
New Zealand is my dream bucket list destination. I had always wanted to go there for my honeymoon, but getting married during covid meant that it wasn’t an option since their borders were still closed. Almost every day, I daydream about going there and I’d love to do it while my baby is still young enough to fly for free because those flights are expensive.
If you could live abroad, where would you live?
My first choice would be Canada (does that count as abroad?) because of how close it would keep me to family in Michigan, but I’d happily give up everything I own if I could live anywhere in Europe or English-speaking countries. I’ve spent countless hours trying to find a way to leave the US permanently, made even more desperate by my desire to raise my baby in a better society, but I appear to be stuck here permanently.
How do you see your travel life changing in the next 5-10 years?
Having a baby is going to have a massive impact on the way I travel in the next 5 years. The amount of research I had to do for a simple weekend flying to another state was exponentially higher than a “normal” trip for me. We’ll have to travel more slowly and look for different kinds of activities along the way, but I’ve been dying to show my baby the world since I found out I was pregnant.
Ten years down the road, travel will still be largely defined by kids’ needs, but I like to think things will be a little bit easier with older kids and not having to haul around diapers and wipes everywhere.
How do you keep your wanderlust up when you’re stuck at home?
It’s honestly perpetual. I’m a constant day dreamer, always seeing new places I want to visit and thinking of how that could fit into my vacation time and budget. I have an awful hobby of randomly browsing prices on Google Flights because I apparently like to mentally torture myself with dreams of trips I’ll never be able to take.
Where would you recommend someone go on their first trip out of your home country, the US?
For someone leaving the US for the first time, I’d recommend going to England. It’s a great starter trip because there’s no language barrier, there are loads of things to do, there are many shared cultural touch points, and tons of things an average American will recognize from TV and movies. The time change isn’t too bad from most parts of the US and the flights (at least from the eastern half) aren’t too long either.
What is the best weekend trip you’ve ever been on?
In February 2020, my friend and I went to Disney World for a crazy girls weekend and (we didn’t know it at the time) one last hurrah for life as we knew it. We did crazy things like wake up before dawn to get to Hollywood Studios to secure a spot in a virtual queue to ride Rise of the Resistance, visit all four theme parks in one day, consume every sugary snack at Epcot, and take silly pictures all over the property.
What food instantly transports you back to a favourite travel memory or place?
In Ollantaytambo, Peru, my now-husband and I stopped in a little cafe for a snack and to kill some time before our train to Machu Picchu. I ordered a bowl of sopa a la minuta, which is slightly tomato-y with beef and noodles. It was incredible.
I haven’t been able to find an exact recipe, and it appears that that cafe no longer exists, but I’ve made something close a few times back home and it takes me back to that little town every single time.
What travel moment are you most proud of?
It didn’t occur to me until years later, but I still think the bravest thing I’ve ever done was getting on a plane to Australia with 41 other students and 4 teachers I barely knew at the ripe old age of 11. I was painfully shy back then, so going off on a 2-week trip to the other side of the world without anyone I knew was a big deal for me.
Lastly, where can we find you online?
Blog: www.nomadbytrade.com | www.mymichigantravel.com
Twitter (X): https://x.com/nomadbytrade13
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/nomadbytrade | www.pinterest.com/mymichigantravel
Instagram: www.instagram.com/nomadbytrade | www.instagram.com/mymichigantravel
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nomadbytrade | www.facebook.com/mymichigantravel
Thank you for joining my Traveller of the Month series, Kris! Head on over to Nomad by Trade to follow along on Kris’s adventures with her growing family and stay tuned for November’s Traveller of the Month!
