When can you let down your guard when you travel? In your hotel room? At passport control? Never?
The tea was hot, the cream seemed fresh as I shared my digestives with Alec, the terrorist. I’d been waiting for him in the Dover tea shop for twenty minutes, and now we sat huddled at the table, [...]
Originally written for Westminster College’s Travel Writing class, Fall 2006
The sharp pork, corn, and chili aromas from tamales filled the air as the tour group stood in front of Los Angeles’ Union Station looking over at Olvera Street. “Let’s meet back at El Paseo at 11:30 for lunch,” said Janice, our guide. “El [...]
Originally written for Westminster College’s Travel Writing class, Fall 2006
“You can fall in love at first sight with a place as with a person.” Alex Waugh
This isn’t the Greece of my 2006 calendar. The Greece of island beaches, Melina Mercouri swimming in her underwear, little white houses with blue roofs, Zorba dancing with his [...]
Originally written for Westminster College’s Travel writing class, Fall 2006
I had our 25th wedding anniversary all planned out. Tom and I, our three sons plus a girlfriend, would head off to Ireland for two weeks, rent a van, shop, research our family tree, visit megalithic dolmens and the Cliffs of Moher, eat big Irish [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
I always thought it would be ideal to live six months of the year in one place and the other six months of the year in another place. I’d have a trailer down in Tucson for the winter and I’d have a summer cabin in a lovely northern, [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
Blueberry season is almost over in Nome. It hasn’t been an easy berry-picking season for us Nomeites with weeks and weeks of rain. You could hear it in the murmurs at the post office, you could see it in the listless faces on Front Street. We
were teased [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
It’s been a quiet week in Nome. The sun’s coming up closer and closer to lunchtime now and it’s risky business walking downtown. We got a little bit of snow and then it got cold, the powder blew away, and a slick hard film coated the entire [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
As you read this, I’ll be unpacking in an apartment in Anchorage. And while the family is looking forward to malls and Kentucky Fried Chicken for six months, my heart tells me we’re doing the wrong thing for winter. We should have stayed put in Nome. “But [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994
On my mother’s recent visit, she asked me when the mail would arrive at the apartment. “We don’t have home delivery,” I said. “No home delivery?” she said, as if I had said Nome had no food or water. “You mean you have to go down and [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
I’d like to think that Captain James Cook was the kind of guy who gave some serious thought to the names he gave Alaskan geographical features on his voyage here in 1778. I’d like to picture him considering the ambience, the weather, and the personality of the place, [...]
