Category Archives:Adventure

I am always on the hunt for a good deal, especially when it comes to traveling. It’s partially how I’m able to fund my trips on a writer’s salary – I know where and how to look for ways to make my trips cheaper. A lot of people think that travel writers get to go on tons of luxurious, amazing trips for free, but the reality is that most of us travel writers are regular traveling stiffs. And quite frankly, I would prefer to organize trips myself and travel on my own, rather than be told where to go and what to look at (not that I don’t appreciate press trips, because I do! Hello PRs!).

One way I’ve recently taken to making travel cheaper for Husby and I is using coupon and daily deal websites. You know the ones. They are famous for offering half-price dinners at fancy restaurants, dance classes and cheap hair and dental treatments. These sites usually offer a certain number of coupons, which are only given if a base number of people buy them.

What you might not know is that many of these sites also offer travel-related deals. One further, you can find them all over the world.

Groupon river adventure. Photo: Groupon

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The first thing that someone might think of when they think of Yorkshire (besides sheep) are the windy dales and fields of green, studded with enormous rocks. These rock faces are wonderful for rock climbers, bouldering enthusiasts, and anyone who likes watching these athletes from terra firma. Three crags have become favorites weekend destinations for our family: Brimham Rocks, Great Almscliffe Crag, and Birkhead Crag.

Almscliffe Crag. Photo by deannanmc

In my husband’s words, “Brimham Rocks looks like Stonehenge by way of Dr. Seuss.” The rock formations at Brimham Rocks are as surreal as anything in Oh! The Thinks You Can Think! Our favorites include Dancing Bear, the Watchdog, and the Anvil, all of which have been carved through the process of glaciation. Brimham Rocks is the perfect nature outing regardless of season: fresh and green in spring, rolling hills of purple heather in the summer, stunning foliage in autumn, and icy silver mists in winter. Folks with families should be careful; while there are a lot of rocks that are perfectly safe for little ones to scramble on, there are hidden drop-offs and high ledges so always pay attention.

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Like most ardent travelers, I have a bucket list. It includes everything from very specific activities (kiss an exotic man at the top of the Eiffel Tower? Check!) to really overarching travel experiences (Visit South America. No check yet.). One of the items that’s been on my list for years was to visit Stonehenge, that strange stone circle that nobody can quite figure out what it is or where it came from.

Photo: Megan Eaves

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As long as your European experience remains in the tourist sector, where everything is served to you by tip-hungry minions, you’ll be spared the rigors of European grocery stores. But stay a little longer, or venture beyond your guide’s solicitude, and you’re in for a rigorous experience: European Grocery Shopping.

The American grocery store seems consumer heaven, with its wide aisles and inexhaustible supply of every conceivable wish. Immigrants have been known to burst into tears upon first walking into an American grocery store (or, read some PCV’s impressions of returning).  And at the triumphant climax of your shopping experience, a strapping lad from the local high school cheerfully puts your purchases in a bag for you, “Double-bag, Ma’am?”. Well, mes amis yanquis, put such memories out of your mind when you enter a European grocery store.  These emporia are modestly-sized and likely to have some varieties of most of the things you want. But you’re in boot camp –  don’t expect to be coddled.

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Launched yesterday, WildJunket is a brand new travel magazine…for the digital age. Released only in digital format, WildJunket can be downloaded on iPad or other tablet devices, or just to your computer.

Courtesy image

The brainchild of fantastic travel writer and generally awesome person, Nellie Huang, WildJunket covers adventure travel and exotic locales with the aim of:

“Inspiring readers to travel light and travel far.  As an advocate of active travel and environmental awareness, we encourage readers to travel beyond the conventional trail and seek out extraordinary experiences – while keeping our environmental impact to a minimum. “

A worthy goal to be sure, and one that – if Issue #1 is to be any indication – WildJunket achieves very well. Read More »

In 2008 my husband and I decided to have “Maui Christmas.” Since no trip to Maui would be complete without heading to the summit of Mount Haleakala, we headed to Haleakala National Park. When we stopped in the gift shop, I noticed a small but thick blue book on the stand: a National Parks Passport. I’ve been to national parks before but somehow never noticed this item; maybe I just don’t spend enough time in gift shops. Anyway, I asked my husband if he had one. Not only did he have one, he had incurred some serious parental wrath as a teenager because he temporarily misplaced his and nearly lost ten years worth of stamps. “I thought you would think it was dorky…” he said.

Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo by deannanmc

Hardly! Well, maybe a little, but I didn’t care. I immediately bought one for myself and began the process of collecting stamps on our travels across the United States. The National Parks Passport is divided into regions from New England to the Pacific (with a separate section for the National Capitol Region) and each has a corresponding color. At every National Parks designated spot–a park, a monument, a place of historic interest, etc.–there should be a stamp pad (color-coded to the region) with a dated stamp at the guest services. You stamp your book and go on your way! Easy enough.

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If you’ve been following travel news in the past couple of days, you might have heard about an awful incident that occurred during a motorbike experience through Peru. Organized by an adventure travel company based in Bristol, England, the idea was for teams of two or three to drive a mototaxi through Peru for charity, crossing the Andes Mountains and ending up along the country’s north coast.

Photo by Flickr user winkyintheuk

I have a special interest in this particular journey because two people very close to me were participating as a team, and the last time I saw them before they left, there were jokes-a-plenty flying around (only half-kidding) about not getting themselves killed.

Unfortunately, someone (from another team, not my friends) did suffer an accident that left one team member dead and another seriously injured.  Read More »

With the new year comes an excuse to plan new travels. Not sure where to go in 2012?  Be inspired by the tripwolf Travel Trends 2012. These are the top travel destinations picked by the tripwolf team; where we want to go this year (and think you should, too!)

Colombia - by suzanitadz on tripwolf.

Colombia

Lose your predjudices and start packing – Colombia is attracting more and more travelers, inviting them on a journey through time and breathtaking landscapes.  tripwolf blogger Elena was in Colombia and stayed with a foreign family.  She spent three months in Bogota learning among many things, how to cook local cuisine (see her post on the tripwolf German blog, “Culinary delights from Colombia.”)

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Here is the final installment of our piece celebrating all of the PCV’s who have volunteered over the past 50 years.  My goal was to provide any potential volunteers (even those who didn’t think they were potential volunteers) with important information they might not find elsewhere.  Thanks to PCV’s Brian, Burch, Elizabeth, Vincent, Dustin and Josh for volunteering again to answer my questions.

Photo by ozziebackpacker

In this post, the questions pertain to reintegration – describing the most influential moments of their trips, how they changed, and how each one of them understood reverse culture shock upon returning home…and more of course!

Read part one here on how to join the Peace Corps, and part two for more information on what it’s really like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer!

How did you pay for day to day expenses, like food? Were you given a stipend?

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It was just after we boarded the little rickety train that connects the ultra-scenic seaside town of St. Ives with the mainline rail from Cornwall to the rest of England that the conductor came over to inspect our tickets. Where we headed today, he inquired, squinting at our little orange train tickets. London, is it? Oh, I’ll be back over in a minute to tell you what’s happening.

Three days of fish, sea air and a small blast of sunshine in Cornwall had left us pretty blissed out, but the tone of the conductor’s voice could mean only one thing: some kind of delay. And the fact that workers were striking across Britain yesterday only upped our suspicions, which were confirmed when he returned a few minutes later to inform us that not a single train had passed through the tiny station at St. Erth, where we were meant to connect to our train back to London’s Paddington Station, for the past four hours due to some signaling error. It would be an hour’s wait at St. Erth and then a change of train in Plymouth to get us home.

Photo: Megan Eaves

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