United States travel stories
When I think of Breckenridge, Colorado, I immediately think of skiing, so I wasn't sure what to do when meeting a group of friends there during the off-season. Imagine my surprise to find myself trying my hand at silversmithing/transforming clay into a silver pendant!...
Before I was a travel writer, I was a traveling musician. And before I was a traveling musician, I was a kid from Ann Arbor who just wanted to see what was out there. The thing about touring is that you don't usually see the tourist version of anywhere. You see the...
I had a special link to John Updike, the celebrated writer who died in 2009. I once served as his muse. It happened in 1983 when I was a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and sought an interview with Updike, whose publisher informed me never gave interviews. But a...
It was snowing as I left home. Not sticking but slick and windy and cold. Definitely not ideal roadtripping weather. But my destination is in the so called ?Banana Belt? of the Pacific Northwest, an area on the shores of the Salish Sea where the PNW?s famous rain and...
Chicago had ?A Little Sumpin Sumpin? for me this weekend. I had not traveled to the city since pre-Covid, whereas before I was visiting this beloved city on a yearly basis. The media hype had led me to believe Chicago was out of control and chaotic and I would be out...
Since I was little, I dreamed of seeing the world. I grew up Googling pictures of ancient sites, making plans for when I was going to visit famous cities, and dreaming of adventures around the globe. I was completely wanderlust. My patience ran out by the time I was...
You can take a wide variety of day trips from the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, provided you are willing to drive. You?ll find mountains, lakes, small towns, and mid-sized cities - all with plenty to see and do - within a few hours of the city. You can leave in...
"Bar Harbor, it is going to be" I had finally zeroed in on my Labor Day weekend's destination after much deliberation. A real vacation in-quite some time. The one that won't be clouded with the terrors of the pandemic. Fully vaccinated for a while, I hadn't travelled...
Just like in most of the US, this week Oregon's governor issued a statewide Stay-at-Home order to flatten the Corona virus pandemic curve. Since travel beyond getting the essentials is now strongly discouraged, I chose to exercise my Travel-at-Home option and walk the...
In the summer of 2019, I drove myself and two puppies to Arizona. There were no hard deadlines on this trip, I had no reservations or plans, in fact, I had done little research in advance about my final destination. I had noticed in myself a defiant loyalty to the...
It is only 80 miles long but contains over 100 waterfalls. Eleven of these are over 100 feet high with the 620-foot drop of Multnomah Falls as the most famous and accessible. The vertical basalt walls of the gorge go from sea level to nearly 4000 feet. The Columbia...
Standing miles above sea level, at such an incredible altitude, my gaze is directed past the camera to the striking curve of the Earth. At this point, the air is thin and each step I take is in the direction of less oxygen available than the last. I'm alone, closer to...
