celebrating books & the literary lifestyle
On spring break vacation, I started reading a long, epic book, but this book is so long and so epic (I’m really building the suspense on this one) I need a lot of time to process every page and every chapter. Thus, I have thus resorted to multi-booking and am updating my spring reading list with short reviews as I go, while I read and enjoy the epic book slowly.
So today I’m going to tell you about our spring break cruise!
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I just returned from a summer road trip where – thanks to the S.S. Badger – my family visited Michigan and Wisconsin without driving through Chicago, and enjoyed long, sandy beaches and massive water parks during the same vacation. For me, vacation = reading so I can also recommend two books today while reminiscing about my fun travels.
Continue readingI want to share my favorite travel books. These are the books I browse through over and over to plan and dream about vacations.
If you read this blog often you already know that I love planning vacations. And because the actual vacation usually includes driving and/or flying, and relaxing, vacations and BOOKS go so well together.
Related post: My four book vacation.
Most recently I wrote about trips to Jamaica and Memphis.
I love reading travel books, and this is one of my favorite sections in the library; I always have a couple of books borrowed from this section! But these books I’m listing below, I actually own, and I use them again and again.
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Back around the turn of the century (wow!!) I traveled to Memphis often because my hometown BFF lived there. (And she still does, more on this later.)
But I hadn’t been there for about 20 years (again, wow) so I invited myself along while suggesting that my mom finally make her pilgrimage to Graceland.
And by the end of the trip, I found myself to be just as big of an Elvis fan!!
We traveled with Timi’s Tours out of my hometown. You may know from previous posts that I love planning my vacations and obsess over every detail. I will admit, however, there were some nice things about having someone else do all of this for me.
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I don’t have a book review for you (yet) because I’ve been caught up in a slower, epic read that I will hopefully tell you about soon; and I recently spent a lot of my time watching all 10 best picture nominations (yay for CODA!).
Because travel planning is my other hobby besides reading I want to share my experiences and recommendations from a fun trip we took in March to Jamaica.
We went to Kingston and Montego Bay, very different cities, and together they made for a great vacation.
Continue readingTo feel like you are on another planet without leaving this one, plan a stop at Great Sand Dunes National Park.
This magnificent and fun destination was the third stop of our Colorado summer vacation.
Some related posts:
Stop 1: Mesa Verde National Park
The 4 books I read on vacation!
Great Sand Dunes can be experienced in one day but I would recommend staying in the area overnight because the weather is so volatile it is good to have some extra time.
For example, when we arrived late afternoon it was raining with an impending storm and it rained all night, but we did get a few hours in the next day before we were chased out by another storm, which come so quickly in this area. Also if it is not raining, the sand will get really hot so you probably want to be there during late evening or early morning.
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This post is number 2 in a series of 3 about my family’s summer vacation. My other hobby besides reading is planning vacations. Click here to read about our first stop, Mesa Verde National Park.
Durango, Colorado was a fun stop between the two National Parks we visited this summer. It’s a vibrant and beautiful former mining hub with so much to do!
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This is #1 of a 3-part travel series on my family’s summer vacation, on which I also read 4 books!
Mesa Verde National Park is a lesser visited national park, which was fine by me with some of the other national parks getting slammed with visitors this summer.
Located in Southwest Colorado, Mesa Verde -also a World Heritage site – is the only U.S. national park that focuses on culture; its lands include hundreds of cliff dwellings where the Pueblo people made their homes hundreds of years ago. Many of these dwellings can be viewed and even walked through. It is incredible to think of the skill and construction that went into these and especially because the dwellings have lasted so long.
This park also has jaw dropping views but the dwellings and other historical artifacts provided something “extra” especially for my kids who can only appreciate scenery for so long.
Prior to visiting, I was confused about how to approach this park, so hopefully I can explain some things here to help you maximize your own trip if you decide to go – and you should!
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After visiting Jamestowne last summer, I became interested in the even earlier Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida, “America’s oldest city.”
My family enjoys traveling to historical places, and I love the beach, especially the Atlantic, so I expected this would be a great spring break destination for us. The famous city also checked the fishing (my husband) and ghost tour boxes. We stayed at the perfect campground, and there was so much to do in the area we could fill up several more trips with activities. St. Augustine exceeded our expectations!
We traveled in our motorhome, and I realized I had never been in Georgia before, having always flown to Florida and therefore never had the “experience” of driving through Atlanta…I’m not sure how soon we’ll be doing that again!
Continue readingAfter four amazing days camping at Virginia Beach, which I already blogged about, we moved on to the “Historic Triangle” to immerse ourselves in American history (with masks and social distancing).
The Historic Triangle includes Jamestowne (first English settlement), Yorktown (site of Revolutionary war battle) and Colonial Williamsburg (a living history interpretation of the colonial town).
We stayed at Anvil Campground which was conveniently located to all of these sights (Yorktown was the farthest, at about 20 mins) and lots of restaurants etc. I’ll talk about the campground more at the end in case any readers are RVers as well.
I had no idea how to approach all of these activities and locations including BOTH Jamestowns with only two full days in the area, so I did my research and did my best to plan it out. It worked out OK (mostly)…so I will share our experiences and what I learned:
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