About

Outerlands Travel is a new travel site, offering authentic itineraries and inspiration for the adventure-minded every-traveler.

The Origin Story…

Outerlands started as a passion project and creative outlet, as I looked for fulfillment outside of my day job. Between my love of traveling and enjoyment of writing as a diversion, paths converged and Outerlands was born. 

Travel Research is Half the Fun

Obsessively researching upcoming trips has always been half the fun of traveling for me. Whether it’s a weekend getaway close to home, or a 3-week trip halfway around the world, I always try to fully immerse myself and experience a locale for all it’s worth. 

Over time, this has amounted to endless scribbled notes of locals’ favorite places to eat, cultural experiences off the beaten path, you name it.

Friends are always asking me for travel suggestions, and over the years I’ve accumulated an arsenal of tips in Google Doc form, that get shared and re-forwarded as friends’ trips arise.

A Love-Hate Relationship with Travel Blogs

As my husband and I started traveling further afield beyond the “usual” destinations, I had to rely more and more on bloggers for my trip research. There was no sleek Conde Nast article on Indonesia’s Gili Islands. 

This led to one or two bad meals at “recommended” restaurants on our trips (looking back, probably a paid sponsorship), and the more I was stuck scrolling past bloggers’ staged self-photos when all I wanted was authentic reviews, the more my husband got to listen to me grumble about it. He would posit, “well, why don’t you create a site you’d want to read, then?” to which I would reply, “I could never be a blogger” and go back to hate-scrolling.

The Slow Ideation

During a period while I was bored in a work slump, I found fulfillment by planning trips instead. It was over a long weekend in New Orleans with extended family, where idle talk over a table of beignets and cocktails led to them encouraging me to start a blog for fun.

As my husband pointed out, “you already have all the notes that you share with friends and family, why not put them online in case others find them useful, too?”

Hesitantly tweaking some existing itineraries I had made for friends into a website-friendly format, I found myself picking up steam and gaining more creative gratification than I had felt in a long time. Before I knew it, I had leaped in head-first, laying out a website and enthusiastically story-blocking out recent trips. Whether anyone read the site or not, I didn’t care. There was so much fun to be had in writing about what I loved, that the passion project was (and remains) enough. 

And so, here we are…

Outerlands Travel

This site lives entirely as I would write personal recommendations for friends. It’s not to make money or generate clicks, but solely to provide authentic notes and travel tips. And if it helps you learn something for an upcoming trip, or even just daydream about future adventures, amazing! The entire goal is to share travel tips with those who have a similar wanderlust.

Regardless of where you’re from or how you landed here, I so appreciate you checking it out! Please do leave a comment and let me know where you’re from, how you like a page, or any place you’d like to see written up (maybe you’ll inspire the next trip!).

Happy travels!
Christina
Redondo Beach, California, USA