September means it's time for another birthday surprise trip! For every birthday, instead of presents, Cameron and I gift each other a surprise trip. We have some rules for the surprises, like distance away and budget, but other than that it's pretty much up to the surpriser what they would like to plan. Cameron outdid himself this year.....

A lot of people have been asking now that we finished all 50 states if we are still roaming around, and we absolutely are, but our recent trips have a bit more intention to them...

If you read the Banner Birthday blog from earlier in the year, you would have seen Cameron mentioned that he would return the favor in September for my 30th. And that he did! 

The countdown has come to an end for my 50 before 30. I had started a bucket list back in 2012 when I went to college that contained the item "hit all 50 states before turning 30." I won't lie, back then I chuckled to myself thinking it would be neat if I could, but it wasn't until I met Cameron and he too shared a passion for travel and new places, that I started taking it seriously.

​If you don't know the origin of the Camera Couple, we started this blog back in May of 2016 to highlight the cross country road trip we were going to take. We had only known each other a year and truthfully didn't know what to expect. But as our time together grew, so did our love for finding new places, new states, photography, and each other. Pretty soon our whole life revolved around traveling and in 2022 Cameron accomplished 50 states and I had hit 49. That left only one, with exactly one year to do it. It was cold. It was gray. It was magnificent Alaska. 

Well... It's been a little while, but your favorite Camera Couple is back at trying to catch up the world on their travels. Living and working on the road is a wonderful time, but it does leave a lot of room for "I'll get to that later..." aka these blogs.

This week on the Camera Couple: Rose has a work meeting up north and the couple have plans to camp in the last two states they have left in the northeast. Will Rose get to meet her coworkers in Portland, ME for the first time? Will the couple get to camp in Delaware and New Jersey? Or, will it be the last time we see one of the key members of the Camera Couple crew? ​Cue ominous music... 

The summer saga continues as we packed up to head out on the road once again! While we love visiting up north, we hadn't hit any new states in a long time. I am still working on my 50 before 30 bucket list, so it was time to tackle a few newbies. This time Michigan and Wisconsin were our new states, bringing the score to 36/50 complete. The route consisted of Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio then home all in two weeks.

It's been a while since you've heard from us! The Camera Couple has been BUSY this summer as we tackle our new remote life on the road. In all of the job changes and trip planning chaos we haven't had much time to catch everyone up on all our fun adventures. So here we go! 

Happy 4th of July to all our awesome Camera Couple readers! This is one of our favorite holidays of the year! Why? Because we met on the 4th of July back in 2015. I'll bore you with our love story some other time though.

This year we headed out for some camping in West Virginia to Camp Creek State Park. 

Since our first work trip up north turned out so well, we decided to give it another shot after a whopping one week recovery period. That's right, the weekend after we got back from our three week trip to Maryland and Massachusetts, we headed down to South Carolina for another weeklong trip to three more state parks.

So, the big news we've been eluding to is that Rose finally got her remote job! We can officially run around like the nomads we want to be without worrying about making it back to the office on Monday morning. What better way to celebrate than a big ol' trip up the coast!? ​

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Living in North Carolina with relatives in Maryland and Massachusetts, Virginia has always seemed like a "drive through" state for our travels. But this weekend, we decided to give the Old Dominion its due and head up to Goose Point Recreation Area. 

Who needs electric and water hookups!? This weekend, we're putting the new trailer to the off-grid test at Lake Norman State Park in North Carolina.

Another holiday camping adventure had arrived! This time, we were headed back to Hamilton Branch!

In the fall, we took a weekend visit to the park and absolutely loved the campground (if you missed that blog, you can read it here!). So, when the SC state park system did their 25% off deal, I snatched up our amazing waterfront site again for Easter weekend. We were heading down Thursday night and didn't have to leave until Monday! And the weather looked PERFECT for camping.

It might have been only 2,306ft, but we were determined to get to the tippy top of Stone Mountain.

The greatest feeling in the world might be heading back to work on a Tuesday knowing that you only have to make it until Friday again to go camping. It was a quick turn around for us. After a great trip to Georgia, we were headed back to the lake, but this time to Sadlers Creek State Park.

We're back! After a few restful weeks and celebrating Cameron's 30th birthday with family we were headed back to our home away from home. Every year since we got our little Coleman (R.I.P.) we have headed down to Georgia to Elijah Clark State Park around Cameron's birthday.

For the fourth weekend in a row, it was time for another camping trip. This time, we were headed to nearby Lake Wateree State Park in South Carolina! And was it pretty...

When we started out this year, I made it my goal to book as many trips as I could for free weekends. Cameron and I prefer to be away from the world in our camper whenever we can, so I filled our calendar with little trips at the beginning of 2021.

This weekend it was Poinsett State Park. It was 2.5 hours down in South Carolina, which normally is nothing, however my work had a spontaneous vaccination distribution pop up, and I ended up getting out of work fairly late. Turned out Cameron also had a long day, so we were not as well packed as we normally are to just roll out after work.

After we "accidentally" bought the new trailer, time was of the essence. We scheduled a trip months in advance for the very next weekend! How were we to know we'd end up buying a trailer!? 

That week, we got a quick rundown of how the trailer works, we brought it home on Wednesday, loaded up all our stuff on Thursday, and set off for our next camping adventure on Friday. It was an action-packed week, but we got it done. 

Next stop: Croft State Park in good ol' South Carolina. 

So, we had a plan. Obviously, we like camping, so we've been talking about upgrading our little trailer for some time. The deal was to spend the year doing tons of research, looking at dozens of trailers, and making heavy payments on our trailer and MAYBE upgrade in the fall of 2021. Well... things change.

Sadly, it was time for the final campground stop of the trip (insert crying face). It was such a fabulous journey thus far, and we were excited for our final stop at Lake Hartwell Sate Park.

Hotdogs roasting on an open fire.
Jack frost nipping through your tent.
Yule tide carols being sung by the shore.
And folks dressed in shorts and flops.​

This year, we decided to do Christmas on the coast in lovely Edisto Beach State Park, South Carolina!

It's here!! Our biggest trip of the year! Christmas was a little hard to plan family visits due to COVID (still), so we decided to keep it simple and safe by roaming to some new state parks for two weeks! If you're one of our 3 readers, you probably remember that last year we went across the country and hit Texas. We had so much fun camping for the holiday season, it only made sense to do it again.