PracticallyFit: Backstreet's back!

Whoa 10 days of being a road warrior throughout the northeast and I am spent! Sorry if I went off the radar without notice, but sometimes you just need to turn it off! We did and it was so worth it. So welcome back readers, or more appropriately welcome back to me. Now it's back to work this week, the beginning of our kitchen demolition, & a return to the blog world. However, not without a little write up/reflection of our fantastic, but crazy trip!

We, well to be politically correct Colin, had a great trip planned for us. He does all of our trip planning. First off Colin LOVES trip planning & second of all he works at a computer whereas I run around with patients all day and do not have the luxury to look up restaurants in Maine & get paid. So nonetheless Colin planned what on paper looked like a fantastic trip to the northeast. Full of hiking, kayaking, running, great restaurants, phenomenal craft beer, & a tour of Maine/Vermont. This trip looked like the ideal mix of good food & drinks with the added bonuses of adventure & activity. Great way to prevent gaining the lbs while traveling. Yea great unless you get rain, freezing cold, & a mountain of speed bumps in your plans to derail the activity! Literally, remember the picture of the Griswold's from Vacation in my "On the Road Again" blog? That is what this vacation turned into. All jokes aside we got dealt a bit of a crappy hand with weather & other travel issues, but we did make the best of it & turned it into an amazing trip!

Wedding #1, beautiful Julie & some of my Kappa girls

When life throws you lemons you make lemonade, right? That's exactly what we did and for a Type A person like myself sometimes this can be a very stressful task. We had a plan, a great plan, however you can't control the weather or people's houses being sold (we'll get there), so we had to make the best of the hand we were dealt. This trip came about due to 2 of my close friends getting married on back to back weekends in the northeast. To sum up the trip: it began with our plane getting delayed and not arriving to Boston until 2AM the first night. My bag got lost, which led to no sleep because we had to go back to Logan to get the bag. Colin's grandmother's house (our place of stay the first few nights) got sold right before we left, found alternative places to stay which led to strange encounters with awkward B&B owners. Rain, rain & more rain, which caused us to eat, drink & eat some more. Whale watching cancelled, rescheduled but still no whales. Immense fog & rain in Acadia. Heard Acadia has some of the most beautiful views in the country, maybe next time?! Different bed every night & cold & wet the entire 10 days. That pretty much sums it up. And don't confuse my sarcasm with negativity.....

"View" from the top of Cadillac Mtn in Acadia Nat'l Park

While the paragraph above sounds like Clark & Ellen Griswold were running our vacation, as the plan slowly fizzled day by day Colin & I said screw it! No more plan, we will do whatever we feel like! I definitely was a little bummed about not hiking, running or kayaking but you know what? For the first time in a LONG time I chilled out! I got 2 runs in during the 10 days (in between rain fall), and I let my body rest! We ate great food, including so much lobster you could barf & sampled every craft brewery in the Northeast! AMAZING! 10 days of lack of structure did not kill me, neither did lack of activity. We conformed to the surroundings & had a phenomenal time with each other.

Allagash brewery tasting!

Being flexible is not one of my strong points, never has been. But this trip allowed me to feel that it is possible to be flexible and not die. The old saying "you can't change the weather," was the motto during this trip and it was true. So what if all the trails are closed in Acadia, you can still enjoy the ride with your significant other & appreciate the surroundings. This trip was a sign from somewhere that I needed a break! Prior to the trip I had been working my regular full-time job, a couple weekends, was/am seeing several patients privately, & was still keeping up the regular work out routine! Talk about spreading yourself to thin. No wonder my passion of blog writing took a backseat these past couple weeks. The universe was definitely saying "Ashley slow down, you are going to hurt yourself." If the universe doesn't intervene I don't slow down, so thank you world!

lobstah rolls! yum!

Now after the 10 day road trip it is back to reality. I am back into a kitchen renovation (which obviously is having complications), work, private patients, exercising & life in general. No more weekends working though I took the hint that I needed a break. Although I'm back to the real world (really happy to be back too :) )I am trying to keep in mind how flexible I was on that trip & how life didn't unravel in front of me. Maybe feeling stressed & trying to plan everything isn't the right thing all the time? Maybe I need to take a piece from my own blogs and be practical about what can be accomplished in 24 hours? Things will always find a way to get done. Practical & flexible.......that's my take away from our crazy but amazing trip to Maine.

Check out some of the pics below of our chronicles through New England! Side note, you may notice my outfit is the same in about every picture, no these weren't all on the same day. In fact I was freezing and that was the best I could do.