Lyd's Travel Newsletter - January 2025 Issue

Happy New Year!! Let's Get This Year Started!

Author

Lydia Copeland
January 06, 2025

Welcome to the Quarterly Issue of My Travel Newsletter! in this issue I share what I’ve been up to in my travels! and a preview of some weekly newsletter topics too!

In this season’s newsletter you’ll find:

  • Recent & Future Travels 📍

    • Fall Appalachian Road Trip 🍁

    • Food Festivals!!! 🍽️

  • How I am Getting Ready for This Year’s Travels ✈️

  • Upcoming Travel Skills Tuesday Topics

  • Travel Thoughts 🌎 Planning Travels for 2025

  • New News🎉 

    • IN-PERSON Events & Podcasts

Recent & Future Travels

What a year! I packed it with travels to Vancouver, Seattle, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St Augustine! This fall season I squeezed in one more kinda big trip, one I’ve been planning for 2 years … A Fall Hiking Road Trip! We visited THE Great Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg, TN, Atlanta, GA.

Over 6 days we explored many hikes, overlooks and waterfalls through Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina! Checkout this post for our Itinerary, photos and activities from our trip! 🍁

Last year I was so tired of missing Food Festivals, so I signed up for their newsletters to get tickets. I am finally getting to go to these! 🍽️

I got tickets for Tampa Food & Wine, Charleston Food & Wine and Miami South Beach Food & Wine! I am so excited to enjoy foods from local restaurants and my favorite brands PLUS learn about some new ones!

Here’s my blog post from the St Pete Savor Food Festival! The weather was perfect on the waterfront while we enjoyed so many amazing foods and drinks!

Here are the Other Food Festivals on my Radar with their links to check them out! ⏬

Hot Tip: Sign Up for the food festivals email newsletter to be notified of ticket pre-sales, event updates and even parking tips! Their email newsletter will be your secret in 🕵🏽‍♀️

Getting Ready for 2025 Travels

I am so excited for this year! I wanted to share some travel tips on the things I’m doing to manifest it all! To travel you need (1) Money (2) A Destination (3) Identification! Here’s my hacks for all 3

  1. 💵Travel Fund - I auto-draft money from my paycheck INTO my travel account. I don’t see it until I’m ready to plan a trip. This makes it much easier to save for travel.

  2. ⛷️Travel Activity Bank - ANYTIME I find something fun to do, or a restaurant I want to try or a new place to visit, I add it to my Apple Travel Guides. In no time you’ll have a city with tons of things you want to do ready for you to take a trip!

  3. 🙋🏽‍♀️Passports - Does your passport need renewed? I tried out the new online renewal process and was AMAZED at how much easier the process was!

I got mine back in a WEEK. Love the upgrades they did too!

Travel Thoughts - Planning 2025

I’ve finally cleaned up my travel goals for 2025. I love having a lot of ideas but to make them happen we have to get them organized. Here’s what made the cut!

  • 🚂Train Trip - Last year I started planning a train trip across Canada - Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Banff/Calgary, Vancouver - something packed with cool weather and wildlife

  • 🦎South America - My boyfriend is from Ecuador, hoping we can plan a 2-week trip and even add Argentina and Peru

  • 🧖🏽‍♀️Mexico Gulf Coast - I had an amazing time enjoying Playa Del Carmen and the Xcaret Parks over 2 days, I’m excited to go back for more!

  • 🎨Caribbean - I’m thinking Curacao and/or Puerto Rico because we have family friends there!

  • ☕️We are also eyeing up trips to Tokyo, England, Scotland, Ireland and France.

These in addition to the Food Festivals I have planned will give me an amazing travel year! I’m so excited to share it with you!

“I believe we should all have access to travel. Travel doesn’t just take us to a new location, it gives us access to careers, education, culture and understanding. All things we are all worthy of, We All Deserve to See the World.”

Lydia Copeland

New Travel Skills Tuesday Topics

I really like having a quarterly “travel recap” separate from the weekly “travel tips” issues of this email newsletter. I have some AWESOME Travel Skills Tuesday topics planned!

  • ✈️Picking, Earning and Using Travel Rewards

  • 🏨Navigating Picking & Using Hotels

  • 📦Planning a Trip to Vet Moving to a New City or Country

  • 📍Building Your Travel Activity Bank

I also made those PDF Travel Guides and love how easy they are to share! So far I have “Using Money Smartly” and “Free Travel Tech”. Stay tuned for more of these too!

New News

My personal goal for 2025 is to do more IN PERSON Events for my Blog, Newsletter & Handbook so I am on the hunt for travel events and festivals! send me your favorites.

In February, I’ll be attending the Adulting Queen’s Sippin’ Sunday LIVE Event! Amber will be bringing us together on the challenges (and solutions) of adulting PLUS giving away SIGNED copies of my Travel Skills Handbook! We “met” through her amazing adulting podcast and even got to meet up on our travels!

I’m also super excited to be a guest on some more Podcasts! These have been my favorite way to meet and connect with other travel bloggers and content creators! Here’s the Link to Watch & Listen to the ones I’ve been on! Look out for one more coming soon!

Thanks for Reading! I’m Wishing you a full and peaceful season! Feel free to reply to this email to contact me or request any blog topics!

Keep Traveling & Pouring into Yourself - XOXO - Lydia

Additional Travel & Life Resources

Here is my main blog page, LydsLifeSkills.com, full of all of my blog posts! Use the tabs in the headers to find the blog post subjects that you love like travel, career and finance.

I love being organized when I travel so I’ve decided to share my FREE Travel Planning Template via GoogeSheets! This template has an itinerary that automagically creates a spend review for your trip! it also includes travel packing and to-do lists. Upon opening, select “make a copy” to save it to your google account. Each newsletter will have link to get your copy, so lookout for updates!

You can also follow me on Google Reviews and Trip Advisor to see my reviews of the attractions, hotels and restaurants along my travels and at home in Tampa, Florida.

By Popular Demand! Here’s my Week Planner Worksheet Download, I built this to give me peace and keep me focused on my goals each week. May you have a wonderful week with it, filled with many achievements✨

Lyds Life Skills Weekly Planner Version 2024.pdf422.13 KB • PDF File

Travel Planning Handbook & Giveaway

I had a hard time learning the basics of travel, so I’m committed to helping others gain the skills and resources to travel. In 2023, I published my Travel Planning Handbook, “An Introduction To Traveling: The First Step of Many Around the World”. I wrote this Travel Handbook to inspire people, especially people of color, to travel and learn the travel skills needed to become a confident traveler! In it, I cover essential travel planning guides, travel processes and tips on how to travel!

Thank You For Subscribing to My Newsletter! As a Subscriber, You are entered into a Quarterly Giveaway for my Travel Planning Handbook! The winner will be selected 2-weeks after this newsletters release.

You Can Also Buy Your Copy Today! Thank you for Supporting my Blog & Newsletter by Grabbing a Copy!