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I’ve flown alone with three kids under six, pregnant with a fourth. I’ve backpacked with a tribe. I’ve done all night bus trips with a toddler and a nursling, solo. I’ve road tripped with 11 kids under 15, tag team with a girlfriend. We’ve bicycled, RV’d, flown, road tripped, camped, walked, bused, trained, ferried… you … Read more »
Having just come back from another great trip, I’m reminded again of the richness of Europe and the gifts it keeps on giving to any traveler willing to seek them out. I went to France on assignment for three mid-size, nationally-distributed magazines, and set to work almost immediately. It’s amazing how profoundly engrossing traveling and learning can be, especially when you have the added incentive of a contract for a story that must be delivered. … Read more »
“Good writers — travel writers or otherwise — make real and tangible a world that some readers have never inhabited. Just look at the great draw of the bizzaro worlds of “Harry Potter” or “The Hunger Games.” What turns travel writing into an ethical question that sets it apart from sci-fi or literary fiction is that travel writers take real cultures and erect them for readers who trust them to be loyal and accurate. But … Read more »
“Marrying into a culture is a strange pinnacle of interaction. All of these travelers and travel writers think they’re so “extreme” because they visited this place or that place or ate this or bungee jumped off that, but — in my experience — there is nothing more challenging than truly learning language and culture to the point that you can have a genuine relationship with your mother- and father-in-law. That is some crazy … Read more »
I’m an avid reader. I’ve long made it a practice to choose books that followed my journeys. It’s a wonderful way to add depth and richness to my own experiences and observations, and to see the world through more eyes, more lives, than just my own.
Last summer I found myself on parade of bumpy bus rides … Read more »
“Movies are used by cultures where they are foreign films in a much more primitive way than in their own; they may be enjoyed as travelogues or as initiations into how others live or in ways we might not even guess. The sophisticated and knowledge able moviegoer is likely to forget how new and how amazing the different worlds up there once seemed to him, and to forget how much a child reacts to, how … Read more »
Cost/day: $100
What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen lately? Fulford Cave sits in a national forest near Eagle, Colorado. It’s huge! The entrance is an awkwardly-angled pipe, but once you’re past the uncomfortable wiggle down the aluminum ladder, the cave opens up into several enormous rooms, passages and even a waterfall. I climbed and explored for around … Read more »
Our family has a long history of making memories instead of collecting things. We love to give gifts, don’t get me wrong, but most of them are little homemade things, or gifts of self in some capacity. Perhaps most precious are the gifts of time and of memories.
We didn’t get a honeymoon. I had back … Read more »
“For the personal, subjective nature of [travel] literature has always been one of its chief and most endearing elements, no matter how often some readers and critics through the ages have tried to eliminate it from all travel accounts as undesirable, or have failed to find it except in those published after the supposed rise of something called “romanticism.” Even in the eighteenth-century critical conflict over the personal and objective in travel literature, as well … Read more »