We took our first electric roadtrip as a family last weekend, as the children got Columbus Day (and the preceding Friday + the following Tuesday) off. We headed to Guntersville, Alabama on Saturday, where my parents live by the state park. But first, we stopped at a Nissan dealer in […]
travels
York, England
As the girls sang “Welcome to Old York” to the tune of the similarly-titled Taylor Swift song about NYC, we started our 1 day in what would become one of my favorite cities visited in the world. We came by train from Edinburgh after returning the car. Then, about a […]
1,612 miles along I-20 in a new Tesla
A couple of weekends ago, I gathered with several friends from high school for a weekend of kayaking on the Hiwassee River like we did last year before we all turned 40. While riding back with my friend Jim Bob (who’s my most car-knowledgeable friend…I tell people he’s “pooped while […]
Driving to St Andrews
On Tuesday the 5th of July, I walked a mile in the rain to Hertz and rented what was supposed to be an automatic Audi but ended up being a manual shift Kia. So, my first experience driving on the left side of the road would be with a stick […]
Edinburgh, Scotland
On Monday, we began our second day in Scotland with hopes of touring the Palace of Holyroodhouse, but the Queen was there, meaning no tours were to be conducted. So, we walked to Edinburgh Castle and saw the prisons where (eventual) American POWs were kept during our Revolutionary War. Did […]
our first day in Scotland
I thought we’d never see this sign. We arrived at the Atlanta airport in the early afternoon on July 1, intending to fly Delta to JFK around 5pm, but they evacuated our plane right after bumping me to first class, so we caught another plane, where I again got bumped […]
Netflix is what keeps strangers’ semen from my hands
This weekend, I had a professional conference at Amelia Island, Florida, and I was talking late one evening with a friend’s husband who travels a lot, and he was saying he carries disinfectant wipes with him when he’s on the road, so that he can wipe down hotel remotes when […]
the Hadrian’s Wall walk
Last week, we completed our much-anticipated walk from the Irish Sea to the North Sea along Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, and it was the second life experience (the first one being going to war) I’ve had which I can now describe with the phrase, “I probably wouldn’t choose to […]
Nashville
I learned about an event in the backyard of one of my favorite writers a couple months ago and decided we’d go to Nashville for Memorial Day weekend. The problem was that I had to spend a week at Camp Bullis outside San Antonio (Air Force training) and half a […]
Hiking the 5-mile trail to the Len Foote Hike Inn with children
At Amicalola Falls State Park in north Georgia, you can hike the approach trail to the Appalachian Trail, or you can veer off the approach trail and go 5 miles up to the Len Foote Hike Inn. Given my training for the Hadrian’s Wall walk this summer, we decided to […]