Hole In The Donut Travels

I admit it. I sometimes carry the definition of travel to extremes. Hole In The Donut’s theme is “the inner and outer journey.” The outer journey – basically everything that has to do with travel – is broad enough to allow me to write about destinations, attractions, events, accommodations, and travel industry news.
The inner journey [...]

Last month, as I drove back home to Florida from my annual holiday trip to Illinois, I stayed a few days with my dear friends, Tom and Patti. They live in Atlanta and it is a great midway stopping point. Their house always feels like home to me and frankly, I hate to leave. Heck, [...]

My friend, Mary Jo, sent me this video. How absolutely delightful! I bet you can’t watch it without giggling:

If only I could be more like this dog, I’d be a lot happier during my annual Christmas trip home to Illinois.

Snow on the Outer Banks of North Carolina? Not a regular occurrence, but it’s been known to happen.
Three inches of snow in one day in Las Vegas, where they normally don’t get more than a half inch during an entire winter? Now that’s a bit strange.
But when I heard it snowed in Malibu yesterday – [...]

I groggily emerged from my Dad’s guest bedroom around 8:15 this morning, after having slept less than four hours.
“If  you want to go grocery shopping today, you have to be ready by nine o’clock because there’s a snowstorm on the way,” Dad announced.
For the past week I have been driving through horrid weather, dealing with [...]

Brrrrrr. I repeat. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr. I’m at my Dad’s house, freezing my butt off. Overnight it dropped to 9 degrees. The cold temperatures, coupled with a stiff wind off the river, made it difficult to keep the house heated to much more than 70 degrees last night. I slept under a mountain of blankets. The high [...]

So, I’m on the road again. Headed north. Which is crazy, because I hate the cold weather. But my entire family lives in Illinois and I travel back home for Christmas each year, so it is what it is. This trip, however, has presented a few challenges.
Things started to go wrong while I was still [...]

I had lunch the other day with a friend of mine here in Sarasota who is a real estate agent. I’ll call her Suzie (for reasons that will become obvious, I’ve changed her name). Midway through lunch she began to tell me the story of a situation that occurred with a new client last week. [...]

I have long said that our values are out of whack in this country, that we covet material things to an unhealthy degree and spend needlessly in a futile attempt to feel better about ourselves. It seems I am not alone in this belief. Reverend Billy, along with his mock-religious Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, has [...]