I come from a long line of travelers. My grandmother went everywhere there is to go except Antarctica and that's only because people weren't allowed to go there in her day. My parents took our whole nine-kid family on yearly summer car vacations, inspiring my life-long love of road trips. They did their share of trips as a couple, too, traveling with the Mustang Camera Club to South America, the Middle East and many European destinations. As kids began to grow up and leave home, Mom and Dad started replacing them with foreign exchange students from Mexico, Sweden and the Philippines. That led me to spend a summer in Mexico and then a year as an AFS student in Italy's Piemonte region. More recently, my travels have included a year driving the perimeter of the U.S., three trips to Turkey with excursions to various European countries, and several road trips to, in and around Texas. I spent the summer (or winter depending on your point of view) of 2009 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, taking a nice long break before moving on to the next phase of my life. In October of 2009 I visited a brother on Long Island and then took a couple of weeks to drive from Texas to my new home in Portland, Oregon. Demands of work and a slim bank account are keeping me in place right now but I'm saving my pennies and hoping to go to Syria and Jordan in the spring of 2011. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

The little guy on the camel is my dad pictured here with the rest of his family in Egypt in 1928 during their trip around the world.

As with many people who like to travel, I'd love to find a way to make the travel pay for itself. I keep journals of all my travels both to help me remember details of the trips and as a source for some future book of travel essay that I can only hope will pay back some of the many dollars I've handed out to airlines, hotels, and gas stations. You can find the on-line versions of those journals here.

I also read. As a long-time bookseller, I felt compelled to attach lists of suggested reading to my travel journals. I've worked as the travel book buyer for Elliott Bay Book Company and I spent five years working at Wide World Books & Maps where I had to learn about maps and gear as well as keep current on all the latest travel guides and literature. In these lists, I've tried to stick to books that I have used or read myself so you're getting first-hand opinions here.

Over the last seven years, I've written a number of travel-related articles for Wide World Books & Maps' e-newsletter and website. I've added a few of my favorites of those articles to this site. It's a miscellaneous collection of topics travelers might find interesting. I'll try to update them periodically with new editions of the books I've recommended or the latest in gear from WWB but I may miss some things. Please contact me if you see something you need better information about.