For twenty years, I worked as a librarian in an elementary school but finally decided to get serious about travel writing and devote all my time to it. Now, I travel the world and write all about it. I can't imagine a more fabulous or fulfilling job. I write a regular travel column for two regional, Central Kentucky magazines and contribute regularly to other magazines and online travel sites, such as The SavvyGal, A Luxury Travel Blog and The Vacation Gals. I'm an avid reader and stay active with Yoga, Pilates and Zumba classes. My favorite place in the whole world is a beach - any beach. I have been married for 34 years and my husband is my favorite travel companion. I also rely on him for his excellent photography skills. We have two grown children and the best grandson in the world. Slowly but surely, we are visiting all the places we have dreamed about. Hopefully, the next one will be the one you want to read about!
I’m writing this article in a luxurious, five bedroom beach house on Tybee Island courtesy of Tybee Joy Vacation Rentals called Quit Yer Crabbin’ that is just a couple blocks from the beach and is so huge and elegant, we could live here forever. The two of us are rattling around in this huge house, never even using the expansive upstairs.
We are here to cover the annual Tybee Island Pirate Fest and we …
One of the most important things I learned when I was in South Beach, Miami for a day recently is that if you are “in the know” you call it SoBe. If you find yourself in SoBe for a day and you like to shop, eat and lounge on the beach, here’s what I did to give you some ideas.
You have some choices when heading to SoBe from another part of Miami, but …
Before we arrived at lovely Navarre Beach, we stopped at a Publix grocery on the way to pick up drinks and snacks to stock the fridge in our condo. We stopped before we got to Navarre because the last time I was there several years ago, there was no grocery store. You had to drive to nearby Pensacola or Gulf Breeze if you wanted to pick up groceries.
As we pulled up near the bridge …
I vaguely knew there were barrier islands off the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas, but for years our family beach vacations had been to Pensacola, Florida where my grandmother lived. We rented a beach house out on Santa Rosa Island and enjoyed the beautiful white sand of the Florida Panhandle.
But when we heard from a friend that Tybee Island, Georgia was beautiful, secluded, and only a 10-hour drive from Lexington, Kentucky, where we …
I received an invitation to visit an all-inclusive resort the other day and I carefully saved that email as I thought why, yes, I would love to visit an all-inclusive resort. Because they are completely wonderful in every way.
Located in beautiful, tropical locations like Mexico and the Dominican Republic, all-inclusive resorts are often described as a cruise on land and it has been my experience that they are very much like that. When …
Drive South across Alabama.
Now just keep on driving you are totally out of road. You should see the sugar-white sand and crystal green water of the wonderful gulf coast area.
You have arrived in one of the loveliest, quietest and most family-friendly destinations in Alabama. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Alabama are so close together they are considered one beach area, and you won’t have any idea when you cross from one to the …
Strewn like three bright, emerald colored jewels in the Caribbean Sea, the three U.S. Virgin Islands of St. John, St. Croix and St.Thomas provide a variety of activities for the tourists who stream off the cruise ships daily. Watersports, shopping for duty-free items, or just lounging around on the beautiful beaches are all possibilities.
But we were there to snorkel.
The crystal-clear water of the many coves and inlets of St. Thomas provide the perfect …
There is no water anywhere in the world quite like the Caribbean. I have been to beaches all my life but the first time I saw the incredible, innumerable shades of blue and green that make up the Caribbean I was truly amazed. Sparkling jade, dark and mysterious emerald, clear turquoise, pale blue topaz – it’s a whole jewelry box of colors. Diving into the Caribbean is an experience like no other, with jewel-bright fish …
Until I went on a Caribbean cruise recently with a bunch of girlfriends I always thought “duty-free” was just another excuse to get all those vacationers into the shops to stuff their shopping bags full of items that could be had back home for roughly the same price. I learned on this trip that I was completely wrong.
This time, because some of my girlfriends were actually going to the pre-port shopping talks I have …
I lolled back in my pool side lounge chair, opened my eyes, glanced out at the navy blue strip of ocean I could view through the railing slipping silently past as we cruised to our next gorgeous Caribbean port, and lazily mulled over whether to apply more sunscreen, move into the shade, or possibly just go visit the soft serve ice cream dispenser.
Then I checked out what my girlfriends were doing. One was deeply …
It’s the Spanish moss you notice first. Draped over the live oak trees which fill the many squares in Savannah, Georgia, it hangs in ragged festoons from each of the branches. It creates a mood. A relaxed, sultry, southern mood. A Savannah mood. A pleasant mood that you can enjoy for your entire stay.
Savannah is the largest city in Chatham County, Georgia but still feels like a small, sleepy Southern town – and the …
My husband and I woke up to a gray, cloudy day in Victoria, B.C. but we didn’t mind. The last time we were there, we only had half a day to tour, so we were thrilled to have a whole day in this beautiful city perched on Vancouver Island, off the Pacific coast of Canada.
Because we wanted to see as much as possible of Victoria in a short time, we booked a tour with …
In the middle of the little town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, there is an ancient banyan tree that is massively huge. It has spreading, winding branches that fill the little park where it’s located. It’s quite impressive and was the largest tree we had ever seen.
But it could have been gobbled up whole by the huge redwood we were gazing at in the middle of Muir Woods. Soaring high above our …
