Most people who travel a lot – especially budget travelers – have at one time or another invested in a guide book. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides are well known names in the genre; less well known are the Moon guide books. In fact, I had never before read a Moon guide until a copy [...]
Posts tagged ‘Surfing’
Because there is SO much in Sydney that I haven’t had time to see, deciding what to do on my last day in this beautiful city was tough. Ultimately, the decision was made for me when my friend, Jane, with whom I’ve been staying, said that coming to Sydney and not seeing Bondi Beach was [...]
Byron Bay, located about 800 kilometers (480 miles) north of Sydney, is the easternmost point in Australia. During its formative years the town was discovered by hippies, who inevitably came for a week and stayed for years, leaving their indelible stamp on Byron Bay’s culture. The laid back, alternative lifestyle that persists to this day [...]
Usually, I’m pretty savvy about geography, but for some reason I thought that Sydney was on the ocean. Whenever I looked at a map of Australia, Sydney appeared to be on the coast – this is such a large country that small maps of it don’t show much detail. Then there are the [...]
All this time I thought I was the only “Kook” in my family. Then my niece, Kelly, sent me this photo of her bedroom wall (probably a bad description, since you can’t see the wall for the photos). In case you can’t make it out, her bedroom wall, which is located in north central Illinois, [...]
After years of working 70 hours a week at jobs I detested, I felt like the proverbial "hole in the donut" - solid on the outside, but empty on the inside. Searching for meaning in my life, I abandoned my successful but unsatisfying career and set out on a six-month solo backpacking trip around the world to pursue my true passions of travel, writing, and photography. 
















