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Naomi Chen I Hiking & Adventure Travel

@always.chasing.adventures

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✨Inspiring you to break out in 2026
🌿Hiking & travel as therapy
✈️Spontaneous trips & real stories
🩷Follow for nature, courage & healing

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Something’s got a hold on me …. I got a good feeling, yeah.....
It’s travel euphoria 🇪🇨 🇵🇪 🇧🇷

I’ve been putting together a South America trip for my birthday, built around two volcanoes in Ecuador & a little taste of Peru & Brazil.

Spillin' the tea:

My private Ecuador mountaineering expedition is BOOKED!
The expedition is to summit both Cotopaxi & Chimborazo, my first glaciers!

In Quito, I hope I get to meet this overachieving Finnish mountaineer: “You badass, impulsive Goddess-haired creature of the Northeast, relative to California, what the fuck are you made of?” 😳 + 🏃‍♀️

Peru and Brazil flights are also BOOKED!

Why? Because I’ve never been there, and it’s time I hangout w/ this built like a Fiat 🚙 crazy Brazilian muthufuckah: “You're such a Mega Beast that I’m too intimidated to hike with you.” 🖕🏽+ 🤘🏽

I’m working a second job to fund this exciting 2027 trip.

But before I get anywhere near Cotopaxi & Chimborazo, I still have one big mountain objective to end my 2026: Cactus to Clouds to Cactus, also abbreviated as C2C2C; it's San Jacinto in Palm Springs.
It’s another step into more challenging mountain objectives before I move into glaciers & high altitude in Ecuador.

However….
My left knee flared up recently, juggling two jobs, one of which is physically demanding, plus my mountain training.

So yep….
The only thing holding me back is my left knee.
Eat a bag of dicks, left knee!

….Wait ✋🏽
I’m sorry, left knee. I sayeth what I don’t meaneth.
Please don’t pack up my quad and leave me.

#solohiker

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A Burn on the Bay paddle board rave with @paddleboardingsd on Mission Bay! 🌊🔥

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✨💛✨

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A little reminder to myself: just because you’re kind to everyone doesn’t mean you’ll always get that kindness in return.

And honestly, it hurts when you’re someone who leads with love, loves big, gives people grace, and genuinely wants the best for others... only to have that love rejected or met with something that hurts.

But I don’t want someone else’s behavior to change the way I love.

I’ll keep being kind. I’ll keep giving love. I’II keep choosing grace.

It’s taken me until last year to learn that loving people doesn’t mean abandoning yourselt in the process. I’m TIRED and learning that I don’t have to keep trying to be understood, keep defending myself, or keep going back to people who push me away.

I don’t need everyone like me. I don’t have to keep proving my heart.

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is let go, set the boundary, and choose yourself.

I’m finally giving myself permission to do that. And I’m learning to trust that when I let go of the people who aren’t meant for me, I make room for the people who are. 🩷

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From work to wilderness!

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Congrats to our Best Pic Givaway winners @createdone @always.chasing.adventures & @iamkarenc
🦙🏆🏆 🥇🦙

What amazing pictures and a magical day! 📸
A huge thanks to our partners @stellarbrew_coffee @ridge_merino & @blacktieskirentals for providing some amazing drinks and swag for our winners!

Our girls were very full after a full day of snacks from our happy hikers. 🥕 Stay tuned for our Labor Day Sale launching tomorrow!
🏕🦙

#trek.sierra #llamalife #trekwithus #easternsierra

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golden sunsets, good friends & nothing else 🌅✨

#goodenergy #sunsetvibes #viralreels #sandiegoliving #friendship

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soaking up the last rays of summer 🍋

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summer ‘26⁩⁩

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Here’s to more sunsets, more music, more adventures, and more time on the water. 🌊 🌅 🏖️

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The older I get, the less I need.

Give me water, a sunset, and a little room to wander.

On the eve of my birthday, we set out with no real plans, no destination, and honestly no idea where we were going. Just watching the sky change colors and going wherever the current took us.

Sometimes the best gift is a quiet reminder that you don’t need to have the next chapter figured out before you begin it.

Just three friends chasing a little adventure and finding exactly the kind of peace my soul needed before turning the page to a new decade.

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This trip to Taiwan has been one of the hardest journeys of my life. In 2015, I came home because my father passed away. Ten months later, I returned to visit my widowed mother, and while I was there, she was in a car accident and passed too. I left Taiwan not only grieving, but feeling like “home” no longer existed for me.

For years, I’ve longed to come back to visit my siblings and their families, especially so they can meet Turbo. But my heart just couldn’t handle it. The grief was too heavy. The thought of returning to a place filled with so much love and loss at the same time felt unbearable.

Last year, I even started planning a move back to Taiwan with my children so we could finally build deeper relationships with my siblings and connect with my motherland. But with logistics for 3 schools we ran out of time. So I started trying to find another way to come home… one that maybe hurt a little less. And I did, but it wouldn’t get me back until Feb 2027, I was so excited!

Then a phone call on a Tuesday changed everything. My oldest brother passed away.
And suddenly, the very thing I had feared most became reality again another funeral, another goodbye. Even if my heart wasn’t ready to come home, I had to come anyway.

This week has been beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. I can’t believe it had been over 10 years since I’ve seen my family. The nieces and nephews I remembered as teenagers are now grown adults with careers, responsibilities, and lives of their own. Being surrounded by family again filled my heart in ways I can’t explain… but I won’t lie, it has also been incredibly heavy, emotional, and hard.

Grief, distance, time, and loss change people and relationships in ways you don’t always expect. I think part of me hoped coming home would heal something inside of me, but instead it reminded me how complicated love, family, and pain can all be at the same time. I’m learning that what once felt like home can change, and accepting that has been one of the hardest parts of this journey. Without my parents here, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more homesick… or more homeless at the same time. Right now my heart just feels so sad and tired. ❤️

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