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Discovering Hidden Gems

We’re a married, age-gap couple with a passion for exploring the U.S., one road trip at a time! Our travels focus on national parks, scenic drives, and hidden gems, with detailed itineraries to help you plan your own adventures. While we cover destinations across the country, we have a special love for Southern California, Las Vegas, Florida, and our current home base—Dayton, Ohio.With a background in hospitality and tourism management (B.A. & M.S.) and experience in hotels, theme parks, guided vacation sales, and special events, we bring both industry expertise and firsthand travel experience to our content.Follow along as we uncover the best weekend getaways, off-the-beaten-path spots, and foodie finds across the U.S.!

Featured Post

Discount Travel Secret: What’s going viral is actually one of the best budget trips

Discount Travel Secret: Hi Reader, Trips that are getting a lot of attention right now do not always have to come with the biggest price tags. This week, I’m sharing budget friendly ideas from Montana and Wyoming to California and Florida, including a one day Yellowstone itinerary, a cheaper place to stay near Santa Barbara and Solvang, affordable San Francisco food spots, and a free Disney World transportation option. And with Yellowstone having such a big moment lately, it is also a fun...

Discount Travel Secret: Easter Experiences Hi Reader, Happy Easter weekend! This week I have some discount travel tips for popular Easter travel experiences: 🎢 🎟️ Attractions 🎢 🎟️ Santuario de Chimayo Santuario de Chimayo is a historic pilgrimage site in New Mexico with over 300,000 visitors a year, mostly during Holy Week (this current week), leading up to Easter Sunday. Built in 1813, it's a National Historic Landmark! I actually have never met anyone else that's ever been or ever heard of...

Discount Travel Secret: New and Updated Blog Posts! Hi Reader, I have been VERY busy overhauling our website this year, so this week I wanted to share our blog posts that got major overhauls since I last sent an update in mid February! For the future, I'm thinking of sending updates every 6-8 weeks or so in larger batches like this (the last batch had 21 new posts) to share these posts. So, here are 5 new and updated blog posts that I hope you love! The Perfect St. Augustine One Day Itinerary...

Discount Travel Secret: Spring Travel Tips Hi Reader, This week I have another great mix across the entire country from Arizona and Nevada to Florida and Missouri. I wanted to specifically focus on some popular Spring Break destinations and travel styles that tend to be cheaper than others! 🎢 🎟️ Attractions 🎢 🎟️ Silver Dollar City (Branson, Missouri) This is one of the nicest theme parks I have ever been to outside of Disney parks. Branson is a great, affordable destination to visit in the...

Discount Travel Secret: Route 66 100th Anniversary + National Parks + KOA Campgrounds Hi Reader, This week I have another great mix across the entire country from Arizona and New Mexico to Florida and Indiana. 🎢 🎟️ Attractions 🎢 🎟️ Indiana Dunes National Park One Day Itinerary I love taking day trips and weekend getaways to national parks because they are just so cheap to visit. An $80 annual pass gets you and everyone in your car into national parks and all 400+ parks that are part of the...

Discount Travel Secret: Save on Transportation, Lodging, Attractions, and Dining Hi Reader, I thought I'd change up the formatting a bit to match a little bit more to the Discount Travel Secrets Insider Series teachings. Just to refresh your memory, I always break everything down into the 4 different sectors of the tourism industry: transportation, lodging, attractions, and dining. Anything you do when traveling will fit into one of those 4 categories. So, I decided to highlight 1 thing from...

Discount Travel Secret: Things We're Doing This Year To Save Money On Travel Hi Reader, So last week's survey was conclusively, inconclusive 😂 There was an even split, so I will continue sharing discount travel secrets from both angles: how to travel better for less on epic bucket list vacations how to found lesser-known hidden gem vacation destinations/attractions that are just naturally cheaper So in that spirit, I thought I'd give a little bit of a run-down of some basic money saving...

Discount Travel Secret: Bucket List vs Hidden Gems Hi Reader, This week, I want to hear from you. When it comes to discount travel, what are you actually looking for? Are you trying to visit the big, bucket-list, iconic destinations, just without paying full price? Or… Are you perfectly happy skipping the “must-see” hotspots and focusing on lesser-known, affordable hidden gems that are unique, interesting, and often way less crowded? There’s no wrong answer. They’re just very different...

Discount Travel Secret: New and Updated Blog Posts! Hi Reader, I have been VERY busy overhauling our website this year (and will hopefully be done by the end of Q2), so this week I wanted to share our blog posts that got major overhauls AND our BRAND NEW blog posts that have been published so far! Forewarning, there's a lot... But I also deleted about 65 other blog posts in the process 😅 So, here are 21 new and updated blog posts that I hope you love! Southern California The 10 Best Chinese...

Discount Travel Secret: Deals To Look Out For This Week! Hi Reader, This week, I want to talk about a new weekly post I’m adding that I think is going to be really helpful if you’re trying to get better at spotting travel-related deals on your own. But first, a quick note about the Facebook group announcement from last week. We ran into some technical issues with scheduling everything, so none of that content actually went out yet. The good news is that everything is definitely officially...