What The TBEX Road Trip Is All About

I guess it’s time to explain a bit about what this whole TBEX Roadtrip site is about.  Wait, no.  Let me take a step back and explain why we even need a website in the first place!

Travel Blog Exchange 2009.  Masterminds Kim Mance of GoGalavanting.com and Debbie Dubrow of DeliciousBaby.com created this conference to bring together travel bloggers from near and far for a day of discussion.  Following the ever popular BlogHer conference, this year TBEX’09 will be held on July 26th in Chicago.  And that got me thinking, which led to one little post and some tweets on Twitter about taking a road trip from Seattle out to Chicago.  Soon after that original thought, Kelly took the idea one step further.  What if we threw a few travel bloggers from Seattle into a car and made it a ‘live media event’?

And so, what started out as my simple quest to be cheap and have others share the cost of fuel, has blossomed into The Travel Blog Exchange 2009 Road Trip, or TBEXRT for super short.

Our main goal is to have fun and see a slice of country most of us usually fly over.  Our lack of knowledge of some parts of the USA became evident at one planning meeting (held in a coffee shop, Seattle-style) when none of us had a clue what goes on in places like Iowa.  Or South Dakota.  Actually, anything past the Rockies was a mystery, I’m sorry to say.

All the better reason to get out and see it!  And if we’re going to head out into the Great Unknown, we might as well take the opportunity to let others come along virtually if they so desire.  That is what you are now checking out thanks to the wonders of the Internet.

We have some simple plans for this site before and during the trip.  First, we want to make the trip interactive through this site and our individual Twitter accounts (tied together with the hashtag #tbexrt).  We want to hear from you about what to see and do along the way.  You can do that by responding directly to tweets from any of us or by posting comments on this blog.  We already have posts up covering such important topics as: What To Do In Iowa, Places To Get Beer and What’s In Your Road Trip Kit?

Second, we REALLY want to make this interactive.  If you live along our path and would like to show us around your neck of the woods, drop us a line!  The Internet is so much better when you step back from it for a moment to meet people in real life.  And if you wouldn’t mind lending three weary travelers a small plot of Earth in your front yard where we can pitch a tent for the night, we’d love to hear from you as well!  Think of it as a short term CouchSurfing meets Twitchhiker but with tents.  TentSurfTweeting just didn’t have a good ring to it, though.

As with any good travel bloggers, we’ll be posting photos and video along the way and we’ll have a map with all kinds of up to minute details.  We’ll be tweeting, of course (@kag2u, @nerdseyeview, @pwcarey and #tbexrt) and presenting daily updates as we prepare for and embark on the eight day trek to Chicago.

In a nutshell, that’s it!  If you would like to follow along with the blog, it’s easy to subscribe with this link.  And check out the itinerary page to see if we’ll be passing by your place.  If so, drop us a line!