Remember that time I had an epic failure of an AirBnB reservation in LA? And it made me have to re-think an entire months worth of plans? Well, turns out lightning does in fact strike twice on my nomadic luck. After the LA issue, I listened to the universe and made other plans. I spent a week in Cincinnati for work, and another one in Montreal to see old friends after a long time apart because of Covid.

When I was originally planning this trip, LA was the first stop on a rather roundabout tour of a bunch of southern cities. The goal was to make a nice loop to avoid winter for as long as possible. The original plan included: LA, Austin, New Orleans, Raleigh/Durham, Charleston SC, Nashville TN, and then maybe some more after that. But those locations, when spaced at 1-2 months each, were supposed to take me from August 2021 through at least April 2022. I had a plan. And what happens when we over plan? That’s right, the plans go out the window and into the trash!

LA was booked for the whole month of August 2021, and then that fell through. I made new plans, spent some time with my family in New Mexico, and then booked the two weeks up north in Cincy & Montreal. I came back at the end of August and during my travels had decided on Austin TX as my next location, to keep with some semblance of the plan. I found a nice little AirBnB house with a yard in a close suburb (only 10-15 mins outside of downtown) and was ready to move in the weekend of Labor Day for a full two month stay to finally give myself some down time after two months of constant change.

Within the week before that move-in date, three things happened:

I got a call from my AirBnB host in Austin about a horrible personal situation that had come up for her, and therefore the reservation had to be canceled. Not only did that happen, but she also mentioned to me that the Covid situation in Austin was pretty awful and that local hospitals were at capacity because anyone from the surrounding area was coming into town for care. The undercurrent of all of this, to me at least, was the universe striking again and telling me maybe this isn’t the spot for me right now….
My next option had been New Orleans. Jazz Fest had already been canceled because of Covid so the timing of my visit could now be moved around, so I thought that might be next. Buuuut then Hurricane Ida struck and while it wasn’t completely flooded, over a million people were left without power for prolonged periods. Overall, the city needs time to re-build, and one of my biggest reasons for going there got canceled. So now this definitely seemed like another place I had to cross off my list. Universe 3, Victoria 0.
Then lastly, during this week I saw multiple articles calling out Tennessee as the new worst state for Covid cases. Highest number of cases per population, crazy case number explosions etc etc. Nashville had been next up on my road trip list, and voila… more signs that this wasn’t a good idea. Now I was up to losing 4-0 to the universe.

That was a rough week. Once again, my well laid out plans for not just one month, but multiple months of my trip had been derailed. It had been over two months since I packed up all of my stuff and hit the road and every time I tried to make a solid plan that lasted more than a week it was falling apart. As I learned from the events in my first Pivot post, this was once again a time to sit down, breathe, listen to my gut, and find a new door or window to open as what seemed like a whole hallway of doors got slammed in my face.

First and foremost I leaned on my family. I haven’t been “home” / with my parents for this long since I left for college, so it hasn’t been all smiles and rainbows. But it has been supportive. Knowing that I have time to figure out my next move, and that my dog is having a fantastic time learning to be a pack dog with his two cousins, has been great. So as I leaned on them, I spent a week NOT looking at AirBnB and just focused on my job. Then I decided that clinging to whatever plan I originally had really wasn’t working out, and so I should just throw it out and begin again from scratch.

I struck up the courage to try AirBnB once more (am I tempting fate at this point…?), and instead of a specific city, I put in a starter location with my basic parameters (allows pets, certain cost, initial date range with some flexibility, relatively urban area, etc.) and just moved the map around the country to anywhere with a large enough name on the map that didn’t sound totally awful (to me). I checked out the northern west coast, but remembered the currently raging fires. I looked along the south east coast, but then remembered it was still hurricane season so I thought maybe I’d wait for spring for those. The general hotbed of covid plagued southern republican led states with mask mandate bans and overflowing hospitals was definitely out. And I had just come from the northeast with a mind to see NEW places on this trip, meet different kinds of people. So the northeast got saved for later as well.

What is possibly left you ask? Why the entire middle of the country I would kindly remind you. I’m usually a coastal / water loving lady but the point of this trip is to try out new things, so I looked from Vegas and Salt Lake to Chicago and Cincinnati and a bunch of spots in between. Anywhere that had cool looking rentals that were available in my desired timeline I opened up in a new window and kept moving the map around. When I had at least 20 properties picked out I started to narrow down, reading reviews, checking out locations and nearby activities. Once I narrowed it down to around 3 places I reached out to the hosts to double confirm that I was ok to have my little dog Fred with me and sat down to wait.

My final two picks ended up being Kansas City MO & Louisville KY. For some reason the little spot I found in Louisville spoke to me over the one in KC so I decided to pull the trigger for about 2 months and book the rental to carry me through thanksgiving. Louisville has a nice water front along the Ohio River, a downtown area, the rental I found has a backyard for Fred, and I even found multiple vegan restaurants on Happy Cow. Not to mention it’s right in the middle of the bourbon trail, which I am sure my dad will go visit while saying he’s “visiting me”.

I don’t know how this will all turn out, but sometimes you just need to make a choice and see where it leads you. So if anyone has tips, recommendations, or favorite spots in Louisville KY (or the surrounding areas), please drop them in the comments below!

Thanks for coming along on this roller coaster of a ride with me, it has been and will continue to be an adventure!

All photos taken on a first-gen iPhone SE