Welcome to Chasing Coastlines!
Hey there! We’re Caroline and Chelsea and we’re so happy to welcome you to Chasing Coastlines, an expression of our shared love for adventure, exploration, family and friendship. We are best friends who have been meaning to do this, well, for a long time. Having just emerged from the years of having children at home, we’re excited to finally be starting out on this new journey, sharing the many things we have learned from all that this beautiful world has to teach and the joy that comes from getting to learn it alongside your family.
Who are we?
Best friends, whose relationship spans decades back to the same North Carolina small town in the 1980s and 90s. We attended the same preschool and, as small towns go, the same elementary, middle and high schools. We even extended the party to our college days in the 2000s and then to marriage and motherhood in the 2010s.
Our shared love of travel was born in a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a set of printed MapQuest directions in hand and a Rand McNally road atlas open on the dashboard. In college, we embarked on our first self-guided road trip up the east coast of the United States with little clue what we were doing, but a whole lot of excitement and Mountain Dew fueling our journey.
Since those days, our opportunities to travel have carried us both together and separately to many places around the world. We still love nothing more than getting to see parts of the world together, with our kids in tow.
Why Chasing Coastlines?
We hope the name of our site inspires just the kind of travel that we love – the kind that seeks to know the real heart of a place. Authentic experiences over checked tourist boxes and deeper connections both to the place you’re visiting and the people you’re visiting with. We want to be after just that kind of travel and, if that interests you, we hope you’ll stick around.
Why together?
Having a good friend who loves what you love just makes it better! We have been so fortunate to have one another through every important life stage. Clearly, we don’t like to be alone. Even though we now live thousands of miles apart, we love nothing more than to leave each other hours of messages detailing our plans for our next adventure. Our husbands are eternally grateful that we have each other to bear the burden of hearing all of these details. We hope our powers combined will mean a little less of this kind of effort for you.
What to expect on Chasing Coastlines
When you visit us, you should expect to find useful information and travel inspiration, stories of wins and fails, and a space of encouragement for adventuring out of the ordinary. Because we are currently living on two different continents, there should be a lot of fun information coming from both sides of the Atlantic (and maybe an island or two in between!).
We’re so glad to be here. We hope this will be a useful and fun space for you to come to feel inspired and empowered to take on the travel world with your family. Now, let’s go!
Check out our first posts on the blog…
