We’re kicking off 2017 with a fun post! The blogging community has a couple of awards that are bestowed from blogger to blogger, one of which is the Liebster Award (which we received in 2015). This year we are excited to have been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award!

We would like to send a huge thank you to Amalia at Little Foot Adventures for nominating us. We love reading Amalia’s blog and learning about her travels, and she has visited some great spots that might inspire you as you consider your vacation planning! We really enjoyed reading her Versatile Blogger post, so be sure to check that out as well.

The Versatile Blogger award is a communal effort of sorts where you share some fun information about yourself and then spread the love by nominating other great travel bloggers. Specifically, there are a few simple rules:

• Share seven things about yourself that your readers might find interesting. It can be whatever you like!
• Thank the person who nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award and include a link to their website/blog.
• Nominate other bloggers for the award and include links to help your readers discover them.

So without further ado, here are seven things about us that you may not know!

1

ADAM: It took us about 5 months to write the first post on this blog. We launched the site in June of 2014 but it wasn’t until November that we actually wrote the first post. It wasn’t that it was hard to write the post, we just had trouble setting aside time to write content.

STEPHANIE: Our blogging efforts started just after Adam and I got married in 2011. We had a wedding website and a custom URL that we converted into a bit of a blog about our honeymoon trip. We visited Australia for two weeks, and since it was expensive to call home we would update daily with information about our adventures so our friends and family would know we were still alive! We loved the blogging process, and it was a great hobby for us to do together, but it still took until 2014 before we got serious about producing regular content.

2

ADAM: We love taking food tours when we travel. They provide a lot of insight into the culture and signature dining options in the city- and they help us find places we can go back to on our own after the tour!

STEPHANIE: The best meal I ever had was in Istanbul after traveling through Asia for three weeks. I took a redeye from Ho Chi Minh City to Istanbul, and I was completely exhausted and so very tired of curry and rice and fried spiders and all the foods that defined my meals during that trip. I had a simple breakfast of fresh bread, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, olives, and coffee that provided both nutritional and spiritual nourishment at a time when I really needed it. Sometimes simple and fresh makes for the very best meals.

3

ADAM: We struggled coming up with a name for the blog, but decided on Road Unraveled because of the way it tied into our desire to help people learn how to take awesome trips outside of their comfort zone. We also chose it because the name didn’t have any Google search results… at that time. Unfortunately, there was a video game that came out about 3 months after we launched our website that included something called ‘the road unraveled ship‘ so now we get all kinds of garbage search results from that. Funny and slightly annoying at the same time, I guess!

STEPHANIE: Road Unraveled has a bit of a mascot in our pet guinea pig, Trogdor. We adopted Trogdor in 2014, the same year we launched our blog. While international travel is a bit beyond his reach, he loves a good road trip! We often take him with us when we visit family in Boston.

4

ADAM: We love attending Tennis events around the world and we keep an eye on both the ATP and WTA calendars each year to see if any tournaments might fall within a date that aligns with our travel planning.

STEPHANIE: One of my favorite hobbies is knitting. I learned how to knit when I was seven, and after years of making only scarves I knit a matching hat, scarf, and mitten set to wear when I attended the presidential inauguration in 2005. My ancestors were Norwegian, so I think my love of knitting might be biological!

5

ADAM: We have Road Unraveled cards! We always enjoy meeting other travelers when we’re on the road and we like to keep in touch afterwards- you can never have enough friends around the world! Instead of digging for a pen and paper to exchange contact information, we thought it would be fun to make cards to give out. It’s been a great way to help us connect with new friends we meet along the way and it spreads the word about our blog.

STEPHANIE: My only claim to fame is that when I was in high school, Justin Timberlake dedicated a song to me on the radio. I attended a conference in high school, and he was a guest speaker… and I didn’t know who he was (I wasn’t really into boy bands… oops). When he realized I didn’t know who he was, he introduced himself to me, and the next morning when they played the latest NSYNC song he said he wanted it to go out to his friend Stephanie who didn’t know who he was. Embarrassing at the time, but a good story now!

6

ADAM: I’m originally from Portland, Oregon and I grew up in the Great Pacific Northwest of the United States. The northwest has beautiful landscapes, fun cities, and incredible people – it definitely deserves to be added to your travel itinerary if you’re looking for places to visit in America. Make sure to visit in the summer- the weather is beautiful that time of year.

STEPHANIE: Although I am originally from the Boston area, I wasn’t born there. I was born just south of San Francisco, California. I also lived in Boulder, Colorado for a while before settling in Massachusetts for most of my childhood. I have also lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (where I went to college), Washington, DC, and Chevy Chase, Maryland.

7

ADAM: I’m a big fan of guitars and I started playing the bass when I was 11 years old. I have a nice collection of basses and even a couple guitars and I enjoy a good jam session when possible.

STEPHANIE: I’m an instructional designer (which means I create in-person, online, and social learning experiences for adult learners), but I fell into my career field completely by accident. I moved to DC after college with the goal of working on Capitol Hill; I thought I would work my way up until I was old enough to run for president of the USA. I applied to a temp agency to earn money while I interviewed, and my first placement was in the education department of a nonprofit. It took about two weeks before I realized professional development was a perfect fit for me- it balances creativity with decision science, which I love.