My credit card company emailed me my year-end report. It featured a bar graph with my different expense totals throughout the year, outlining where I tend to spend and over spend. As I went over the chart, I noticed modest bar heights for gas, groceries and shopping. However once I came to the travel bar, the bold rectangular block resembled that of a skyscraper to the moon. Clearly this is the area of life that I devote the most money to and I have the bar graph to prove it. As part of an informal travel resolution, I decided this year that I wanted to try and cut down that travel bar on Continue Reading
My Packing Secrets: Dos and Don’ts of the Practice That Connects All Travelers
It is a strange process and yet one we have grown so accustomed to for travel. We either love it or hate it. Packing is a task that never shies away from opinions. How one man or woman packs is different from the next. For me, packing is a welcome activity, a sign that travels are imminent. You are forced to consider what you must have with you and what you really could stand to lose. What you carry with you and how you go about carrying it says a great deal about the self. A messy bag tells a tale of the person carrying it. An orderly and lightweight bag details another traveler’s story. Continue Reading
Getting More Out of Travel for Less: How I Travel on a Pauper’s Budget
When I looked back on my travels in 2012, there was a lingering question on my mind. How in the world did I afford all of that travel? While some of those trips were press trips, the majority of those travels were my own, out of pockets that I don’t have. The thing about being a freelance travel writer is that you must travel to have things to write about to keep your work going. In the process, you are spending money just to keep up your job. I have to be quite resourceful to continue my travels with very little cash coming into my bank account. For those that want to travel in 2013 but Continue Reading
Fort Smith, Arkansas Wishes You Were Here
I am standing with one boot in Arkansas and the other in Indian Territory. Such a positioning back in the 1800s wouldn’t have been the safest of perches, especially for the traveler just passing through town. Fort Smith, Arkansas has long found its identity destined to its positioning in the world. This small settlement sets up on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. It grew up as the area’s first frontier fort and served as a key point where Federal marshals rode out of the United States and into Indian Territory. The Wild West was just over the Arkansas River. Standing where I am in Fort Smith Continue Reading
For Auld Lang Syne, My Favorite Postcards from 2012
The Scottish poet Robert Burns supposedly penned the song many of us hear around the closing of the year, Auld Lang Syne. It is widely debated however whether Burns actually wrote the song or liberally borrowed from a folk song. Regardless it is a song about togetherness and recalling the days that have gone by in the year with auld lang syne meaning old long since or for old time’s sake. When I’m not traveling, I often feel like a great deal of time has passed since I last explored new lands and uncharted waters. However looking back on 2012, I realize that the stationary traveler’s Continue Reading
Travels With Grandma: A Lesson on Respecting Elderly Travelers
I’m waiting on a plane to Branson with a group of those with white hair and walkers. Mostly I see gentle smiles and kind eyes, those eager to get to Branson. I also see lots of confusion. So often I complain about the fatigue of travel. As a twenty something looking at lot of eighty somethings I recognize just how ridiculous my complaints are. The gate agent gets on the intercom saying, “I know a lot of you haven’t flown in a long time or this is your first time flying so listen up to how we do things around here.” This is air travel at its most confusing, when you haven’t flown in decades or Continue Reading
Inside The Chocolate Box in Switzerland
My eyes are transfixed on a faucet flowing with chocolate. A man dressed in head to toe white creates a chocolate Santa. Ever so nonchalantly, he occasionally dips his tools into the free flowing chocolate foundation to create the eyes, nose and buttons on good old Saint Nick’s suit. The air perfumes in the scent of a freshly broken chocolate bar as employees shuttle about this cocoa heaven with trays of ample samples. A truffle hot off of the presses finds its way into my hand and quickly heads for my mouth. And from the minute this piece of chocolate hits my tongue, I am on another planet, Continue Reading