Coming to California? Don’t know anyone? Don’t worry, let’s Meetup!
Meetup.com is an online social network found in New York back in 2002. It was made for people in different places in the US (and perhaps in other countries now) to meet and share common interests. You can find groups on anything you can think of… seriously anything! You want to learn to knit? go white water rafting? go skydiving? learn to cook? you will find a Meetup group for any of these and a thousand more activities. I discovered meetup.com when I moved to Los Angeles twelve years ago and I wanted to find a hiking group in the city. I remember doing a search on Google and Meetup came up so I filled out a profile and within days I was contacted by someone that wanted to start a backpacking group. To this day, some of my closest friends are from that first trip that I took with my first Meetup group. Today I belong to about twenty different groups. It just becomes addictive! although I don’t do activities with all of them, I always have options. If you have nothing planned for the weekend but want to do stuff with others, just get on Meetup.com and you will find plenty to fill up your schedule!
In the recent past I have done activities in canyoneering, backpacking, hiking, and most recently rafting. For an outdoors lover like me, this is a great way to find tons of activities that I can join every single weekend (and weekdays too). I happened to look in there today and I found 308 meetups just in the groups that I belong to and that are planned for the rest of this month alone.
I usually do a fun activity for my birthday so this past weekend I decided to join the Mix Professionals meetup group to go on a camping/rafting trip. We were around 65 people sharing a beautiful campsite right by Lake Isabella near Kernville, CA. The organizers Anna and Dee, the proud parents of a four-month old, organized a weekend full of fun activities including camping, hiking to the beautiful Nobe Young Falls and the trail of 100 Giants (Sequoia trees), rafting the Kern River, cooking great food, star gazing, and even karaokeing. We had a blast!
Click on this video link to see a fun video from our rafting outing made by Pepe, one of the group members.
I always recommend meetup.com to anyone (singles, couples, groups) wanting to meet new people and share their hobbies with others. It is also a great way for tourists to find fun and very affordable activities while they are visiting a new city or town. Try it out!!!
Looks like fun!