I’ve always been a cloud gazer.  When I was younger, I spent my lazy late summer afternoons on my back in the grass, looking upwards. Sometimes with my sister, sometimes alone, I’d lie there for hours at a time, keeping watch as dogs and fish and automobiles disguised as clouds wandered across the sky.
As I grew older, clouds became less magical. They became distractions, something to look at out classroom windows, indicators of wind or rain, and metaphors of anxiety or foreboding in any number of Victorian novels. Lately, though, …

Cultural stereotypes are one of the most persistent facts of life. No matter where you’ve been, and no matter how true or untrue they may be, the beliefs that Italy has the best pizza, Switzerland the best chocolate, Japan the best sushi, and America the best burgers will continue to follow you wherever you are and niggle at your brain. Well, today I’m here to tell you that one stereotype is true: France has the best honeymoons.
After a spectacular wedding in our home state of New Hampshire, my- gasp!- husband …

There’s a lot to hate about road trips: hours and hours seated in the same position,  the possibility of flat tires and overheated engines, the threat of being squished by a careless trucker, the constant quaffing of caffeinated beverages and the subsequent frequent need to pull over and pee. And from the perspective of plane travel, road trips are slow; automobiles take days to accomplish what hours can in a 747.
But I love road trips, and I have ever since I was old enough to drive a car myself, when …

Zion National Park was only a few hours drive from our last camp at Cathedral Gorge State Park.  We were concerned we wouldn’t find a camp site, even though it was Sunday.  It’s summer, and all the reservation campgrounds were spoken for.  It was early afternoon already, but luckily we drove right in to South Campground and got a site.

We set up camp and decided to drive the park.  Unfortunately, the long road that gives access to many of the points of interest was open to the shuttle buses only.  …

So it’s been a couple months. You’d think I would have already gotten over the inevitable feeling of reverse culture shock, and we’d be on with life, right? Well, apparently not.  Even after two months of being at home, with friends, and being busy, Morocco seemed to invade my brain once more.  I was shopping in TJMaxx (one of my favorite shopping haunts) and out of the blue I was reminded of my host sister, and how much she would have loved some of the shirts and bags I had …

It was my eleventh day in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands and my first day of vacation.
Despite the tempting white sands just a few [hundred] steps from my tent cabin at the Maho Bay Camps, I simply hadn’t had enough time to take much advantage of them. I was, unlike 99% of the tourists here, on a work trip, and my days were spent running around organizing a laptop pilot in three schools with my new job, Waveplace, while simultaneously coordinating and executing the first ever One Laptop Per Child …

July 31st
In our travels of the west, we are seeing amazing works of art made possible by Mother Nature.  From rock formations that are millions of years old to spectacular sunsets, it’s hard to not be filled with a spiritual feeling when witnessing these masterpieces.  This feeling was most powerful for me at Cathedral Gorge State Park in Nevada.
The only reason I picked this park was because it broke up the drive to Zion National Park.  I saw it in my atlas and after looking it up online we decided …

There are a lot of sights in this world which are beyond staggeringly impressive, and yet when you walk up to them in real life, it’s a slightly ‘meh’ moment…You know what I mean?!
You have seen so many photos, postcards, film-sets etc featuring them, so when you eventually see them for real you feel like you have already been there or almost as if you expect them to be bigger and more impressive than they really are. Think of any tourist booklet of Australia for example (I love …

Yosemite National Park, covering over 750,000 acres, was established in 1890.  Here you can see topography that is millions of years old.  What does that mean for the Go Girl traveler?  Amazing landscapes, waterfalls, hikes, and photo opportunities.
Just to remind you, we are traveling with dogs.  Most national parks allow dogs, but you are very limited in your movements.  Yosemite is best known for its waterfalls, which are almost all accessed by hiking trails.  Dogs are restricted from the trails, but we enjoyed a lovely driving tour through the park …

by Lisa
Okay, I’m lost.
The thought came as a grudging admission, and I was annoyed with myself for even admitting it.  I stood, completely alone, in the middle of dense underbrush, trying to figure out where I was, where I had come from, and where the trail had gone.
Ahead of me, the hiking trail I had been following in Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona, became non-existent – or rather, it was still there, sort of, but it was now clear to me that this “trail” was not a trail so much as it …