Traveling USA

The holiday season. It arrives with festivities and departs with similar flair. Goodbye…and please do not return until next year.

Christmas has always been about family, yet in the same context, Christmas has been about the spirit of giving??”in many different ways.

When I say giving, I am referring to a scale of giving; from honest care to its??™ opposite, or shall we say mass consumption and the hoards of consumers, entering shops and browsing online catalogs with as deep or as shallow of pockets permissible.

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Travel is one of the rare circumstances in life that reveals something new about the traveler with each journey.

Often, we begin with a preconceived notion of how we want to approach new experiences; how we want to encounter new places; how we expect to see the unexpected.

Fortunately, travel rarely complies with our terms.

Earlier this year, I was called to ???The Land of the Long White Cloud??? by chance. Instead of visiting friends and staying in the bustling metropolis of Sydney, I flew 9,292 miles to rent a campervan and drive around New Zealand??™s South Island.

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It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in Corte Madera, California, at the closing ceremonies of the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference.

I was working on my fourth glass of complimentary champagne and talking to Matthew Polly, a faculty member and author of the travel/kung fu memoir, American Shaolin.

“Playboy!” I was saying, waving my glass for emphasis. “I don’t think I could even go into a store and buy a Playboy, let alone aspire to write for them someday.”

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Like millions of others, I have been plotting my round-the-world journey and absolute cultural immersion for years.

Sometimes, a lengthy trip just isn’t possible. For various reasons (such as family commitments, financial priorities and other responsibilities), you may end up working the 9 to 5 gig. This means you are given a few fleeting vacation days off a year, often amounting to just two weeks. That’s 14 days out of 365 you can dedicate to venturing into the unknown.

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It’s time now to round-up our favourite links from the week.

Guidebooks are building their online presence says Eric Pfanner. Trouble is, there a little late to the online world.

How do you choose where to travel next? A married couple from Seattle, choose their vacation destinations based on what they fear is fated to destruction.

Justin Sailor shares the 13 points it takes to be a true world explorer.

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