There was to be no vacation this year. It just wasn't in the budget. There isn't any money in the budget for a staycation.

Fortunately, through the grace of God, I was able to combine three of my loves - travel, community service and work with this recent trip (July 24 - 27) to parts of the country that I had never seen before.

I, along with journalists Kym Backer, Upscale magazine, Rodney Thrash, St. Petersburg Times, bloggers Christie Crowder, The Blog Rollers Media and Twana Yvette, Twana Tells and General Motors rep Araba Dowell participated in the OnStar Good Samaritan Road Trip to the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego. We loaded up in two Buick Enclaves and drove from Atlanta, Ga. to Albuquerque, NM.

But this wasn't a sightseeing tour, we stopped to volunteer a few hours at three nonprofit locations: Bay Area Food Bank in Theodore, AL (www.bayareafoodbank.com), Hope CDA in Biloxi, Miss., (hopecda.org) where we helped rehab a home, and our last stop Mandy's Special Farm in Albuquerque, (www.mandysfarm.org).

We used the OnStar turn-by-turn directions to arrive at our locations. The Enclaves were also equipped with wi-fi through the service of AutoNet so, we could work and post our reports along the way. OnStar also provided us each with a FLIPHD Slide video camera to record our travels.

The video below is from Mandy's Farm where we helped plant a garden. The second interview on the tape is with Kym Backer of Upscale magazine.

The idea for the community service project belong to Markeisha McCall of OnStar.