The three topics I plan on writing about in this blog are the journey of becoming a published author, books and book reviews for adults and children, and travel. Aspiring to become a published author after decades in the business world is a relatively new venture, however, books and travel have always been a part of my life. This is the first of my travel posts and provides a glimpse of my life-long journey.
I grew up traveling. My parents wasted no opportunity to throw my brother and me in the backseat of the car and drive. We literally drove across the country, starting in our home in Texas and making it to Corvallis, Oregon, one summer and Homestead, Florida, another. Much more common were weekend trips to wherever.
My parents were avid skiers, hikers, and scuba divers, and sometimes we kids were fortunate enough to tag along. Summer trips found us climbing Colorado mountains, winter ones skiing down them. In Alaska, we slept in tents on a point-to-point hike and a couple of years later we spent a week on a boat in the Sea of Cortez. While I used to complain on long car trips, my own desire to travel grew with each passing mile.
While completing undergraduate and graduate degrees, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study and research abroad in Greece, England, Spain, Mexico, and Belize. The Belize trip was for my PhD dissertation, and I spent seven months in that wonderful Central American country.
When I met my husband I found a kindred spirit. Within six months of meeting, we were traveling by bus through Chile. I remember how hard it was to travel then, saving every penny of our meager salaries for trips and finding a way to spread a mere two weeks of vacation over an entire year. We managed, returning to Chile and visiting my brother and his family in Germany. We honeymooned in Spain and returned often to this country where we both studied abroad; hiking in the Pyrenees, driving along the windswept coast of Galicia, and basking in the sun in the Costa del Sol. We found ourselves in the bars of Barcelona and lost ourselves in the museums of Madrid. Or maybe I have that reversed.
When we had our son, a whole new world of travel opened. At the tender age of one, still walking like a drunken sailor, he made friends on the playgrounds of southern France and fell in love with Spaghetti Carbonara. A year later he was chasing chickens around a farm in Scotland on a wonderful trip with my husband's family.
He'll be thirteen next month and the travel continues. Last year he asked each of us to write down the top ten places we'd like to visit next, and he compared our lists and ranked our choices. Because of that, we are visiting Norway in the coming months. One last trip I must mention in this overview happened last year. I had the incredible opportunity to visit Zanzibar, where I worked with a local nonprofit on organizational and economic development. Combining traveling with making a difference was extraordinary, and I can't wait to do it again. Future travel blogs will focus on a place or a theme. As with book reviews, some posts will cover travel with kids, while others will explore destinations. I invite you on this journey - tickets are available by signing up below. Happy trails!