(I am reposting this blog from 2 days ago because the earlier slideshow link did not connect. So Sorry.) The last time I was on an African safari was over 50 years ago in 1973. As a 20-year-old farmer’s daughter, I was gobsmacked, of course. So many animals in the plains of Tanzania and Kenya…Read more »
Category: Travel
Africa 50 Years Later: Part I, South Africa
In February and March 2023, I returned to the heart of Africa for the first time since I departed Liberia in 1973. Much older, the second time around from my 20-year-old naive farm girl self, I wondered how I would feel or what I would think. I traveled to new countries I had never been…Read more »
Costa Rica, Can’t Stop Going Back
What’s the connection between electrical converters, tap water, and toilet paper in this blog? Seeking to escape the cold December weather of the Northwest, I visited Costa Rica for the fourth time. Each visit resulted in making new Tico/Tica friends. This time, I stayed in one location for a month, only venturing out a couple…Read more »
Pay It Forward
We have opportunities to be kind, be helpful, or pay it forward. Often it is not calculated…just a spontaneous gesture. In my travels this past year I have met many interesting people. This is a story of one lovely woman I met on one my transatlantic flights. I sat next to a 50 + year-old…Read more »
Borrowed Water, Buying Time
I grew up on the farm in Nebraska learning that the water we used was given by the clouds that rose above us. It filled our wells and nurtured our stomachs with the food it provided. My dad monitored our rain gauge regularly to manage our livelihood. We all need water and, surely, we have…Read more »
Professional Tourist OR Global Citizen?
One thing I’ve learned as a writer, our readers are interested in our qualifications. I never paid much attention or tallied how many countries I’ve traveled over my lifetime. However, when I wrote my first book, it was a question I was asked in my book proposal about what qualified me to write about living…Read more »
African Women Taking Charge
It had been over 5 decades since I lived, worked, and traveled in Africa. Now, 50+ years older, I returned as a tourist with my goal to experience the people and culture and not focus on a bucket list of seeing the big “FIVE”. (I did, however, have the Rwandan Gorillas on my list that…Read more »
Sunrise Sunset 2023
As the sun’s rosey glow brought us 2023, much has happened in our lives and around the world and I have many things to share with my readers. But as the sun sets on this December, I want to end with some photos I’ve taken through the year. Some I have written about and others…Read more »
Curiosity, Commonsense, and Courage
I’ve been classified as crazy, stupid, or just a wonderment to many who know me. Some of my choices may have seemed foolish and maybe even daring, but in my seventh decade of life, there was always a method to my decisions – a trilogy of sorts: Curiosity, Commonsense, and Courage. Curiosity I continually wonder…Read more »
Gorilla Doctors of Rwanda
Click on any highlighted area for more information. All photos for this blog are from the internet. I have always been skeptical of habituating wild animals to humans. I’ve seen the damage this has done to the bears in the National Parks in the 60s when I vividly remember traveling in Yosemite as a 12-year-old…Read more »