Full Disclosure: I received a complimentary tour from GetYourGuide in exchange for this review. These are my opinions about the experience. Yours may vary. Clichéd songs about New York blast over the intercom as I board a bright yellow boat. I’m not completely certain what I have gotten myself into on a Sunday night in New York. We set sail to the screechy voice of our guide telling us about what we are seeing and what we will see. I somehow drown out the background noise and get lost in New York at night, all while sipping on cheap champagne. This is the life. What is Continue Reading
San Antonio, Texas Wishes You Were Here
There is something about the human condition and the underdog story. Whether it is a sport’s team cast as the underdog, the team without any chance to win or a historical tale without hope on paper, being stacked up against the odds and fighting back romanticizes a world that at times can seem very far from romantic. I rise early to see Texas’ ultimate underdog, the Alamo. Rain is starting to drizzle, hence the tourist ponchos making an appearance. I turn the corner and in the truest of underdog fashions, the Alamo lends those feelings of being inadequate. The small little façade of the Shrine Continue Reading
A Different Kind of New York: On Finding The Glamour in Small Town Travel
I’m on the street where my 95-year-old Grandmother grew up in the middle of Nebraska, a street to nowhere for most travelers. When I asked a local in town what should I see in this hamlet of York, Nebraska, she offered up the name of a restaurant called Chances R. They are known across I-80 for their classic fried chicken and mashed potatoes soaked in gravy. This is not glamorous travel. I’m not scaling the Great Wall of China or strolling Parisian streets while chomping on a baguette. Instead, I’m taking a weekend trip to the middle of nowhere, where few live and even fewer stop for a Continue Reading
Rocky Mountain National Park Wishes You Were Here
I picnic at Hidden Valley in Rocky Mountain National Park, a scene similar to that on the bottle of the brand’s ranch dressing. Only I have fewer vegetables. A simple sandwich always tastes better outside in fresh mountain air. I hear something just beyond my perch. It’s a brook babbling, almost on cue. The scene is laughably perfect and I guess in many respects what you see on that bottle of ranch dressing. I’m spending a few hours at Rocky Mountain National Park simply because I can. When you live in Colorado all of your life, you sometimes forget people come from all corners of the Continue Reading
Photographing Uncertainty and Beyond at Caddo Lake in Texas
Travel is fraught with uncertainties. You might think you know what to expect, what you will see and when you will get there, but in reality, you never know. The process is similar to dominoes. If one element falls through or there is a missed connection, all expectations and thoughts of certainty fall at the same time. It is uncertain, much like the borders between Louisiana and Texas at Caddo Lake. The lines are truly muddied, where islands, swamps and bayous make up the division. On my road trip, I decided to leave the state of Texas in a state of uncertainty. I made my way to the Continue Reading
The Texas Gulf Coast Wishes You Were Here
Vacations aren’t always pretty. Destinations can fail short of our expectations. We imagine how these settings will look and when they don’t fit the imagination, we can feel like paradise has been lost. My high expectations for cute and quaint met the opposite somewhere along the Texas Gulf coast. Rather than accepting defeat, I swore to find the details of the vacation I wanted, beginning with the towns of Rockport and Fulton. They are the type of towns where you don’t know where one begins and where the other ends. Like a collision of the beach town variety, their march toward one another is Continue Reading
Risking Life and Love for Texas Barbecue at The Salt Lick
“Take me to Texas,” I said. I wouldn’t be the first to utter such a demand. I can only imagine what this request would mean for a fourteen-year-old orphan from Mississippi in the late 1800s. This was Bettie Howard’s predicament. She just wanted someone to take her to Texas. Bettie would find her transport in James Howard, a surveyor rolling through Mississippi. She made him a deal. She wouldn’t promise to love him, but if he married her and took her to Texas, she would bear his children. It’s not a deal you hear everyday. I feel bad for poor James for a moment. This woman was seemingly Continue Reading