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Suitcase Divas: Travel Agent Tips, Tricks & Travel Tales
Join co-hosts Denise and Cheryl as they chat about the journey of life and how travel plays an intricate role in navigating its twists and turns. Whether it's sharing travel tips, swapping stories over a glass of wine or mimosa, or welcoming special guests, there's always something new to explore! Grab your suitcase, pour a drink, and let’s dive into the adventure of life together—because travel makes everything better!
Suitcase Divas: Travel Agent Tips, Tricks & Travel Tales
Day Tripping: Rediscovering Your Own Backyard
Ever feel like you need a getaway yesterday—but without the airport drama, packing chaos, or actually, y'know… leaving town? Same. That’s why we were downright shocked to discover Rob Wallace Park, a stunning hidden gem just 25 minutes from home that somehow managed to stay off our radar for over a decade. (Rude.)
Armed with nothing but leftover snacks from the fridge and a fierce need to escape our home office walls, we set out on an unplanned adventure—and ended up stumbling into pure magic. Picture this: forest bathing with chirping birds, turtles popping up to say hi, and a 70-foot-deep quarry formed by accident (because of course it was). It was equal parts history, serenity, and “why didn’t we do this sooner?!”
This episode is your reminder that peace, beauty, and a little soul refresh don't require plane tickets or perfectly curated Pinterest itineraries. Sometimes, all it takes is stepping outside, being present, and letting nature do her thing.
We’re spilling the tea on what made this park a total win—think accessible trails, clean bathrooms (praise hands!), educational wildlife stations, and tools like AllTrails and Eventbrite to help you find your next local escape.
So, Divas, here's your challenge: what magic might be hiding in your own backyard? It’s time to be a tourist in your own town. You never know what you’ll find… but we’re betting it’s just what your soul’s been craving.
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Hey guys. So I don't know if you can hear the birds chirping or the loveliness that is all around us. We are out in nature. Today we decided to come out to Rob Wallace Park, so it's a park in our city, a local park to us in Concord, or actually we're in Midland, we're in a little town next to our town, so it's a beautiful park. We've've never been here before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was interesting because we needed to get away for the day. We just needed to get out Day trip and we were looking for somewhere to go and you found it.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful weather and it has hiking trails and I was like let's just go get out and be with nature.
Speaker 1:So I say from you it was. So I say how, like, for me, from you it was about 15 minutes and for me it's maybe 20, 25, yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe 25, 30, minutes absolutely is a hidden gem. This park is only about 10 years old, but it is they. They pretty much carved it out in the middle of the forest. It's so like everything, and then of a quarry yes, yeah, um, tell them a little bit more about the quarry because we will have video footage. It was gorgeous down there.
Speaker 1:It's so beautiful yeah, I didn't know that it was going to be here, but it was interesting. So you go to the very back of the park. It's a huge park but spacious bathroom at the beginning, bathroom in the middle of the distance of it and then at the very back of the park is the quarry and, as we're walking, really nice. Adventure trail is what I called it because it's some ups and downs.
Speaker 2:yeah, it had some inclines for sure, and it's a pretty narrow path. So, although we'll get into that later, this park is very handicap accessible friendly, but this particular trail that we were doing was not. I mean, it's nice that they do have the trail up above too.
Speaker 1:Right. So we were walking around the quarry and we saw signs that said obviously don't go swimming. But then it said don't let your pets in there. And we're like, why is that? Because you can fish.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you can fish back, you could you can't fish back there, and they even sell bait here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they had that up front so I wasn't sure if you could. We didn't see fish back there, but so we were talking like what's in the water? Why can't you, why can't the dogs even get in there? Then we kept walking around.
Speaker 2:There's a sign that says immediate drop off 70 feet deep yeah, and what happened, I think, is they were mining back in like the 1800s and they hit a natural spring, and then that's what made this huge quarry which was very interesting, and as we walked around we kind of got on a little bit higher elevation and looking down you can see where it drops off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was really neat drop off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're in finding nemo not the drop off.
Speaker 1:That's funny, but it was, it's. It's beautiful. This park is absolutely beautiful, but it's important. Let's talk about day tripping before we dive even deeper into the park itself, because sometimes, when you want to get away, it's not all about packing there. You don't want to pack everything up, you don't want to have to make reservations, you just need to get out of your own little bubble. I agree, and the fact that this has been here for 10 years and it's 25 to 30 minutes from each of us and we had not been here is just. It goes to show that there are still things to discover in your own hometown. Absolutely, and this is absolutely a hidden gem. It's a nature I know it's like a nature have preserved. Yeah, it is yeah.
Speaker 2:And they make everything very eco-friendly. They have habitats and stuff and even in the little um front office that you go in they have snakes and all different kinds of wildlife around hissing cockroaches and all different kinds of animals and they tell you about the native species around here, and we saw. We saw, I guess, a crane or egret. I'm going to have to do a little research.
Speaker 1:See.
Speaker 2:I said heron is that heron. Oh, maybe, maybe it could have been any of those.
Speaker 1:We are so many animals. But yes, up front, at the very entrance of the park, we're all like the things are. They had signs of types of fish that would be in the water, animals like the frogs. They had a display of what kind of frogs would be around the area. So they're telling you?
Speaker 2:what was the wildlife?
Speaker 1:they would have, which I thought was very interesting. I love those little things when you walk through and you can see the signs, kind of like going to a zoo and reading all the information. Um then we found two amazing things. Okay, we keep jumping back to day, tripping why that's important? We keep getting into this amazing park we are in in love with this park though?
Speaker 2:Yes, I absolutely am. I would highly recommend it. Five stars, eight plus.
Speaker 1:But the most, I would say, beneficial thing about on-the-wim day tripping thing is we picked this what two days ago? Yeah, we just decided to come here, googled, found it and said, okay, low cost, we packed a picnic lunch. So we just actually whatever we had in the house, I didn't go to the store and get anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just did kind of like snacky charcuterie stuff, and we brought a bottle of wine. Shh, we don't say that in the park, just kidding. I don't know if we're allowed to have that. Well, it happened and everything's fine. And then we hiked around and saw all the nature and it was so beautiful the nature and it was so beautiful.
Speaker 2:So there's so much benefit in finding those little things in your town or a nearby town that you might not have seen or that has popped up like this is yeah a fairly new park that we have not been to yet there's also like at the beginning they had a little qr code where it has like this whole meditation thing where you can follow different parts in the park and do a meditation. The other thing that we did just on our own is we decided to do some forest bathing, which is also Shinrin-yoku, which is Chinese for forest bathing, and what it is is you just get in the grass and you feel the grass and you kind of ground yourself with nature and it's very peaceful, right? I mean, we did that and we were listening to the birds and the little fish snapping in the water and everything, and there were so many dragonflies, we saw so many turtles. Yeah, we did.
Speaker 1:Finally, find all the turtles.
Speaker 2:So it was just so peaceful to connect with nature today, and I think we would challenge all of you guys to go out and find somebody. This is a day trip. It doesn't have to be far away, right, right?
Speaker 1:And we've been here for several hours.
Speaker 2:We have been here for several hours and just catching up and walking out and about. We've seen so much nature today and it's so peaceful and I definitely feel happier. And I think that there is. I think we sometimes don't take time for ourselves, and I think it is very we. We continue to talk about how it's good to fill your cup up, refill your cup. You know, give, give back some grounding and some me time, right, right, um, so I, I'm proud of us that we did that today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you feel, oh, I've had an amazing day finding something new that we haven't already seen in our neighborhood. I mean, I call our town, like our city, exploring not far, and just a reminder that you don't know your backyard as well as you think you do, right? Or even if you have, it's been how long we should? Probably you know what. Maybe we should make this a series where we go back and visit all the parks that we did when our kids were little, because our kids are older now and we used to go to the parks all the time we made a comment, we're like how, how did we never come here with the moms group or the moms club with the playgroup?
Speaker 2:and we're like this couldn't have existed back then and come to find out it didn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our kids were 10 11 when this was built, so we were they were off doing their.
Speaker 1:We weren't doing play groups, yeah, so maybe we should go back and revisit and see what's changed, because that's something else you can do in your area. If, especially if you've been somewhere for a long time or, like we are getting in their empty nester phase, yeah, go back and visit the things you did 10, 15 years ago and see what's changed, see what's in its place, because some things have been removed, yeah, um, so that would be something I would recommend doing and maybe that's something we should, because we did explore a lot. We took our kids a lot of places in our town.
Speaker 2:We did especially because usually they were free or cheap well, and this place is beautiful and free and has a lot of different. There's what we didn't mention because, like Cheryl said, we're practically empty nesters. They had two beautiful big playgrounds.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:They had big playgrounds, picnicking area. There's shelters. We're sitting in front of a shelter right now. Everything is so clean. I do not see trash anywhere. Their bathrooms were so clean they do not see trash anywhere.
Speaker 1:Their bathrooms were so clean.
Speaker 2:They had the diaper changing station. Everything around here is so spectacularly clean.
Speaker 1:Yep and just the area, like the grass, being able to sit on the grass and there was rangers patrolling. So from a safety standpoint, we saw several, For as large as this was. How many times did we see rangers?
Speaker 2:Not only the sheriff's pickup truck, but also the golf cart with the guy monitoring around too while we were eating. So very safe, definitely. I would highly recommend this park. It is so cool here. I would highly recommend this park.
Speaker 1:It is so cool here so I'd want to know like what little gems you guys have that you might have forgotten about or might be new. And if you're looking on how to be a tourist in your hometown cause that's something we did as military families and move around when we were stationed somewhere we had to see it first as a tourist cause. You don't know anything and sometimes you forget to do that. Where you're from, you forget to go and do all the things the tourist people come and see your area for, or a visitor not necessarily tourists, but you can go um, follow your, follow the local wrecks and park on their social medias, because sometimes they'll have events or activities that they have going on.
Speaker 2:oh, this uh park also has a Frisbee golf course. Oh yeah, so those of you that like to do Frisbee golf, there's a hole I think, like nine or 18 holes here.
Speaker 1:Another great way to find out what's going on in your area is Eventbrite, which I always forget about until we find, or we have to get, tickets to something that's on Eventbrite and then you put in your area or you put in a topic, and it brings you back to all the things that are going on in your area, and a lot of those can be free. Eventbrite doesn't necessarily mean you're paying for the ticket, because it's just a reservation form that some people platform people use also. So there's meetups, um, oh. Meetup is another one, yeah, because that that's still pretty active. I know that was when we were younger um, and the other thing is all trails.
Speaker 2:I use all trails and that actually shows some of these hiking trails. And the thing I love about all trails is it will tell you how many miles it is, if it's a one way, like an in and out, or if it's a loop trail, it will tell you the difficulty level, and I love that too, because you know if you want to know whether it's a loop trail, it will tell you the difficulty level, and I love that too, because you know if you want to know whether it's easy, moderate or difficult when you're going into the trail. So I highly recommend AllTrails. I use it, I have the app.
Speaker 1:I had never heard of it before, so I was going to say I was just going to bring it up. But I'm glad to see that you know something about it, because I love apps, especially ones that give you the information about distance and things like that, because you don't want to get out there and get on a hike and know that the terrain's not great or the length, the distance, and then get stuck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to come back, or that it's not a loop. Sometimes that's the thing I like loop things where I don't have to navigate from point a to point B and then get back to point A.
Speaker 2:Well and I doubt you can see this in it, but it'll tell you like. Well, you can just screenshot and show it in something. It'll show you like. It says it's easy. It says the whole loop is 2.5 miles. It's really great. It gives you a lot of information. It talks about elevation 91 feet.
Speaker 1:You saw we were hiking up and down all over this.
Speaker 2:There's well, considering that drop is like 70 feet down, that's crazy. It's crazy, right, yeah, but I would highly recommend um this park. It was gorgeous. I love that we committed to do this, uh, this day trip. Oh, one thing I didn't show you, which I don't even think I can get to easily, is we, um, I busted out. My aunt, marianne gave me this really cute little backpack that has like a picnic. It's like a picnic in backpack and it has the blankets, got all the uh, cutlery, plates, napkins. It's super cute. We'll put a link to it so that you can check that out, because that was so cool to have that really was so because I have the.
Speaker 1:I was telling you I have a picnic basket, but that's not really great to carry out when you're trying to backpack.
Speaker 2:It's light, but it has everything. It even has a little cutting board and salt and pepper shakers. It's adorable, so I will post a link to that as well and, as denise mentioned, the park did have really good accessibility features.
Speaker 1:Um, the playgrounds did have accessible swings yes, they did and parent-child swings, which I love. They didn't have that when my kids were little and I think that's an amazing thing. The trails were pretty good. Obviously, the adventure trail I'd say we went on is not accessible, but there was a trail above it that was accessible.
Speaker 1:The terrain is rocky. I wish there was more information on accessibility and I'm going to go back to their website and check it out, because it's important that anyone that needs accommodations, that the type of terrain that you see at parks and trails, is listed, because that makes a difference. It did go from. You could get to the fishing pier that was cemented and then it's a gravelly kind of like what's that shell?
Speaker 2:rocky type thing gravel, right?
Speaker 1:um, yeah, it wasn't all gravel, because some of it was that crushed rock, crush run, I think is what it was called. Okay, something like that would be was out there.
Speaker 2:Um, so manual uh, wheelchairs beautiful out'm putting my hands out the sun Sorry.
Speaker 2:Would have some challenges, so I wish that information was out there listed, but there's definitely some parts are not going to work, but there were a lot that were great, correct, yeah, so I would call this an accessible park for sure. I would call this an accessible park for sure, but it's been a beautiful day it really has. I've enjoyed hanging out with you and talking and being one with nature and doing a little bit of meditation and thinking, and definitely recommend a wellness day, a nature day, getting your steps in all the good things, taking in the fresh air, listening to all of the nature sounds. You can't get that with just being not yet out in nature. You know, right, it is quite magical. Um, just being out with nature, yeah touching grass.
Speaker 1:As the kids say, get out and touch, touch grass. I touched grass today and it was. So. We challenge you guys over the next couple weeks, get out into your, check out your local day trip areas If it's a park, if it's a hiking trail, or do you guys have those like free museums? The little I don't know if I'd call it a museum, but like nature centers, things like that. The little I don't know if I call it a museum, but like nature centers, things like that. We have some of those, like the Great Creek Nature Center. Yeah, we have places like that around. What do you have in your area that you like to go to, or that you used to go to, that you haven't been to in a while? When's the last time you went to a park like this Today?
Speaker 2:Oh, I know Before today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been a hot minute, same. I cannot think of the last time I walked around the park and I really want to make this part of my routine, like maybe not this one because it's 30. But maybe driving to different ones, I don't know, but making it a part. So we challenge you guys to go, plan a local day trip. Or don't plan it, just get in the car and go one day, just when you need to get out.
Speaker 2:But I and go one day just when you need to get out, but I will say just packing that little uh charcuterie board or the little lunchie, and just it's very inexpensive. You know, we, we joke. Um, I saw a meme the other day on my feed that says it's a. It costs about a hundred dollars an hour to go outside like to go out.
Speaker 1:We pulled everything that was in our fridge to like, and when I say don't plan, I'm like we plan this in 48 hours we're like let's get out, let's go.
Speaker 1:We needed to get out of our houses, especially because we work from home and sometimes we get caved in. That's what it feels like. It's just sticking, staying in our little bubbles, right. So this was really nice and we planned it. And we really kind of planned it this morning we said we're going today. And then this morning the techs were like I'm bringing this, you're bringing this, this is whatever we had in the fridge we put together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I'm very grateful that we did it. And what a beautiful park and what a beautiful day.
Speaker 1:It just goes to show that a nice outing doesn't take a lot out of you to get out and go do it. So go out there and explore, have an adventure, or go chill, find some place to chill.
Speaker 2:Yes, just enjoy where you are in your company, and I think that'll do it for today. Guys, be well, bye.
