This time last year, Dylan and I spent time planning our 5 year anniversary trip. We planned on checking another thing off our bucket list — visiting New England in the fall. As a basic white girl, I’m an avid fall lover, and I had been obsessing over seeing New England in the fall. It’s always been labeled as the place to be. The place to see the best and most vivid, saturated fall colors. The Kancamagus Highway?? Supposed to be the most beautiful scenic drive in the history of the world (OKAY maybe not the history of the world but you know what I mean). My hopes were incredibly high and it was nothing like I thought it would be.

Halfway down the Kancamagus Highway I literally started crying (not happy joyful tears either). I was so disappointed. I couldn’t believe what I was currently seeing was what people described as the most beautiful place to see in the fall. Was it pretty? Yeah. Was it prettier than Minnesota? Absolutely not. New England is beautiful but it truly doesn’t hold a candle to Minnesota in the fall and I challenge anyone who thinks New England is the prettiest place to visit in the fall to visit Maplewood State Park in Minnesota during October.

I try to keep things pretty positive and lighthearted here, there’s enough negativity in the world without me adding to it, but I have to tell you that I feel so incredibly let down by the community that I was always proud to be a part of, the community of opinions that I used to trust so much and I realize why people are so skeptical to believe influencer and affiliates when they promote literally anything. I’m going to be the one to tell you the truth and I’m gonna show you the real photos (my standard presets will be applied but nothing to completely change what it looked like), not the overedited shit they share online (I visited during one of the most popular weekends you can visit and influencers were sharing photos during the same weekend, time dates included, and they looked absolutely nothing like the locations in real life, it made me sick to see that).

I want to end this with a few light notes (because I got pretty upset there for a minute…):

1. I’m willing to give some influencers the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe New England is the most beautiful place they’ve ever seen in the fall because most people don’t visit Minnesota.

2. Even though I was so disappointed because it was nothing like I thought it would be and nothing like I saw on social media, we still had an incredible trip and we’re already planning a trip back to Boston because Boston was quite literally AMAZING and we didn’t have enough time there.