*Important: Looking Back on My Past Three Stops*

I have a confession to make. Over the past few weeks, I've begun to experience a minor burnout along my travels. It's not that I haven't been enjoying seeing new places and going on adventures-it's that I've been severely limited in my ability to go on them. After my trip to Hawaii, I have been to South Bend (IN), Fort Wayne (IN), and Xenia (OH). Over the course of the time I spent in those locations, I basically only had one fun experience-that being Thanksgiving day.

Instead of exploring their downtowns and visiting the various attractions each town offered, I spent most of the time holed up in the YMCA, because the cold weather was constantly throwing new obstacles in my adventure. Occasionally, I would just be really cold and I wouldn't be motivated enough to go check things out, but sometimes the weather literally made it impossible for me to have an adventure. For example, on Tuesday, December 2nd, I woke up excited to go visit the National Musuem of the Unites States Air Force (NMUSAF) in Dayton, OH. As many of my readers know, I'm a big aviation enthusiast, and going through the museum was completely free. However, it had snowed heavily the night before and when I woke up the next morning, the museum was closed for the entire day-AND Tuesday was my last day in the area. In addition to the poor weather, I had also made a series of poor choices in the places I decided to visit. South Bend, Fort Wayne, and Xenia just don't have a lot going on in the winter.

Now I want to be very clear, I was not hating the trip or having a bad time in any of these places. The cold weather gave me the chance to do some much needed reading, it allowed me to play some video games, and it also allowed me to put a little more thought into my blog posts. However, even when I was having a good time, I always had the looming feeling that I was wasting my time. The entire point of this trip is to explore and see new things. To find what makes each states-and even town-special. If I'm not doing that, I really am just wasting my time. While I was totally able to handle the cold weather-it just wasn't fun.

With all this in mind, I have made an alteration to my plans. I will still be traveling the states until May-as originally planned, but when I make it to Buffalo, NY, I am going to take a train to my Mom's house in Washington and we are going to spend the Christmas season together. Once I take the train back to Buffalo, I am going to head down south and that is where I will spend the rest of the winter. When the east coast begins to warm up again-or at the very least the snow melts-I will drive back up to Pennslyvania and explore the east coast as it should be explored.

I don't want to end this post on a bad note, though, so I will say this. My next blog post will be on Canton, Ohio. And while I still had a little trouble with the weather there, I was able to get out and do more things. After visiting Canton, I feel like I may have found the spark again and will be excited to share my time there with you when that post comes out.

Inside the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, IN

Pictures from my time exploring the cathedral