Were it not for the fact that my family lives in Illinois I would never go there. I believe that every person, place and thing has a unique frequency. As we interact with other people, places and things these frequencies come into contact with each other. Sometimes they resonate with one another and other times they are completely out-of-sync. In my case, my frequency is completely out-of-sync with the entire State of Illinois. The moment I enter Illinois my energy starts to ebb. I become more sedentary. I gain weight. It’s as if a heavy, dark blanket has been thrown over my head. This is always such a gradual process that I’m usually not aware it’s happening – at least not until I leave the State, and then I tend to immediately forget it ever happened. This time was no different. I knew I wasn’t feeling one hundred percent when I hit the road this morning but I had no idea what was wrong until I crossed the State line into Indiana. Within a few miles my head and neck stopped hurting and I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

Purple wildflowers in rural Illinois

If this was an occasional occurrence I would credit it to coincidence but it happens to me every single time I visit. It’s a shame, really, because Illinois has its own special beauty: mile after mile of verdant farmland; country roads lined with spectacular wildflowers, like these purple daisies I discovered on a walk one day last week; clean rivers that attract boaters and fishermen; birds and wildlife; virgin prairies that Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been back in the States for 16 days but there ain’ t been no grass growin’ under my feet, as they say. I spent two whirlwind days in Sarasota, drove a day and a half to North Carolina, spent three days on the Outer Banks performing such delightfully entertaining tasks as cleaning my house (which had been shut up for more than eight months), drove two days to Illinois and since then have been enjoying a wonderful reunion with my family. I’m finally beginning to settle back in but nothing feels real yet. Let’s face it – I don’t have a job and don’t want one. I have no desire to get sucked back into the traditional (or even non-traditional) job scene. What I want to do is find a way to make money through my writing and I’m hard at work doing that. I’m writing the book I’ve always talked about and I’m working on several articles for submission to various magazines. In fact, one of the Yoga magazines has asked me to submit a short synopsis of an article that I pitched to them.

Although I had tinkered with the idea of heading to the northeast to see the fall colors after my family visit, it looks like that won’t happen because of other obligations – I have to be back on the Outer Banks next week to oversee the removal of trees in front of my house in order to open up the view to the water from my living room. Then I may have to head down to Key West to oversee the rental of one of the apartments in a house I own there. I could let this get me down but that would be ungrateful of me. I’ve had an opportunity that most people only dream of – to travel the world for six moths – and I won’t lose sight of how fortunate I am. So I’ll be on my way back to the Outer Banks next Tuesday morning.

In the meantime I thought I’d share some of my packing secrets, since so many of you have expressed amazement at how I was able to travel for six months with so little luggage. For anyone considering a trip around the world my first advice is to Read the rest of this entry »

My niece, Gina, got married last Saturday. I know it’s been said a million times before, but I can’t help myself – it seems like just yesterday she was a tiny infant and I was holding her in my arms. It is almost inconceivable that she’s now graduated from college and is a married woman. And a beautiful young woman she is!

Before the wedding in the Bride's Room

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Take heart, all ye devoted fans who have written that you are in withdrawal because you no longer have my blog to read over morning coffee. I have not left for good – I only took a short break. While I absolutely loved writing about my travels and sharing my photography with you, it was an incredible amount of work. At the end of each day I would return to the hotel with 200-300 photos, all of which had to be downloaded from the camera to my laptop and individually named. Then I had to choose which of the day’s photos I would use and resize them for the blog. Only then could I begin to write and upload the articles and the photos. That doesn’t even take into consideration finding an Internet connection, which was sometimes the biggest challenge of all. There were several nights during my trip when I did not get to sleep at all and many others when I only got two or three hours sleep. So I took a much needed week’s rest from writing and taking photos.

Not that I have been sitting around since I coming home. I arrived in Sarasota, Florida late last Wednesday evening and spent two days opening a mountain of mail (a laundry basket heaped to overflowing), balancing checkbooks, doing laundry, trying on everything in my closet in search of clothes that fit me (an exercise in futility, since everything was WAY too big for me and had to be donated to the secondhand store), getting a new cell phone, and figuring out how to get an Internet connection with no cable (we have a satellite dish) and no landline phone. On Saturday I left Sarasota and drove to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to check on my house and pick up Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting at the airport in Lisbon, Portugal, waiting to board my plane. This trip has been a wonderful adventure for me over the past six months. I don’t know why I was so driven to do it; I only know that it was extremely important for me. Perhaps I was feeling my mortality and wanted to make this trip while I thought I still was capable of doing so. Perhaps I just needed to go look for my true path in life. I can’t say that I’ve found my path along the way – yet. But I feel I am close.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I never made it back into Lisbon, nor did I get to the UNESCO World Heritage town of Sintra, just 30 minutes from where I was staying. Frankly, I needed a rest, so I gave myself permission to just lie on the beach for nine days instead of playing tourist right up to the last possible moment and wearing myself to a frazzle. I did, however, have an amazing experience in Portugal. Several days ago Read the rest of this entry »

It may be unfair of me to pick three words that define all of Portugal, since I only visited a tiny part of the northern coast, so I’ll say that the following three words define the coastal resort areas of Portugal:

Sunny: Practically perfect weather, mid-eighties during the day with gentle breezes and in the 70′s at night. Sleeping with the doors and windows flung open. Read the rest of this entry »