When we first arrived in India, we stayed in New Delhi, the planned city the British built in the early twentieth century to be their capital in India. We were near Connaught Place, designed to be...
When our guide Sudhir mentioned the “aha” moment, our cynical brains said, Oh, yeah? We arrived at about 10 am, late enough for most of the smog to have burned off. The air was terribly...
Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesia, which Todd and I visited in October 2015, was permeated by smoke. Parts of Indonesia get hazy every fall as farmers burn their fields (an ancient practice...
We saw lots of dogs and cats on the street in Asia, but they were not pets in the American sense. Most of the cats on the streets of Jakarta looked scrawny, and many had oddly short tails. At first I...
Jakarta, a city of around 10 million people, has a couple of central districts where tourists like to stay, namely Kota (the old Dutch quarter near the harbor) and the area farther south around the...
Jakarta was our first stop in Indonesia and our first Asian city, and many people seem to think it’s a dump. But I liked it. One of my favorite things about Jakarta, and Indonesia in general...
At the last minute I emailed Emma Healey of Money Can Buy Me Happiness to see if we could meet while Todd and I were visiting Christchurch. I knew her from the Blog Brilliantly group on Facebook, but...
We spent two and a half days in Wellington, and what I remember of the city is a swirl of sights. Our location was ideal, just one block from Cuba Street, in a building that used to be the Hannah...
Todd and I toured the Hobbiton film set while we were staying in Hamilton, a quiet city south of Auckland on the North Island. We drove down winding roads (on the left!) until we saw the sign for...
A Pegalic Trip for Seabirds I’m not sure how long I’ve dreamed of seeing an albatross. Probably not since I first read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but still a good long...
Visiting the Daintree Rainforest was one of my goals on our trip to Australia. I briefly considered scheduling a bus tour and then decided we should spend a night or two in the rainforest. So after...
Diving for the first time since 2007 was much easier than I expected. The Refresher Course at Denver Divers I was nervous that I would have to relearn everything, so it was a nice surprise to...
Our six-month trip began in Sydney, and we’ll be spending about two weeks in each country until we arrive in India, where we’ll stay two months beginning in December. It’s a long...
Two weeks from today, Todd and I will arrive in Sydney! And the Monday after that, I will do my first restoration project abroad, in a park in Sydney with a group called Conservation Volunteers. They...
In June 2011, my husband and I sold our house and most of our belongings and set out for the West Coast. We packed what we thought we needed in our red Prius. We planned to begin in Missoula, head...
I used to view events on the plains during the nineteenth century as a simple conflict between whites and the few remaining Indians, between settlers and the people who already lived there. My visit...
Sometimes when I drive from Denver to Kansas City, I wonder if I will be doing this drive when I’m eighty. The high, flat plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas tend to bring out the...
I had an interesting conversation the other day with a woman who went to Pakistan in the mid-2000s to do research for a novel she was writing. Her advice to me was, “Don’t go. It’s...
I stood on the corner, adjusting my tripod to get a level shot of the “Choo-Choo” sign gleaming over Terminal Station in Chattanooga. It was Thanksgiving week of 2012, and I was talking...
One thing I love to do when traveling is visit art museums. It tells me something about a city I can’t figure out any other way. I find that public art, which tends to be large and blocky or...
Even though the start date has been pushed back to October (or even later, though I hope not), we are still forging ahead with planning our trip to Asia. (We are starting in New Zealand, or NOT ASIA...
As my husband and I plan our trip to Asia, I worry that my back will go out on the road and I’ll be struggling to pull my small suitcase and wear a backpack with all my camera gear...
I’ve driven from Denver to Kansas City so many times that I need to vary the routine any way I can. The last couple of years, I’ve been taking the southern route toward Quivira National...
The Frisco Native American Museum on the Outer Banks is a place of disjointed memory and reconstruction of the past. There are so many artifacts—and their accompanying signs—stuffed into a relatively...
The Navajo Nation Zoological and Botanical Park is the only zoo I have visited that did not sadden me. Located in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo Nation, the zoo is dedicated to...