2012: A Year in Photography

2012 was a busy travel year for me. I visited all seven continents, 18 countries and flew over 150,000 miles. I was exhausted for much of the year, but on the upside, I came away with some amazing photos. I made some great strides as a photographer in 2012. I improved my mastery of Lightroom …

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2012: A Year of Travel by the Numbers

As 2012 comes to a close, I thought I would give an overview of my last year of travel. Rather than giving a month-by-month summary of everything, the math major in me thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers I racked up this year. This was an especially intensive year of traveling …

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Why It’s So Hard To Visit The North Pole

6-year-old Claire asks: Why haven’t you gone to the North Pole? Then you could see Santa. Claire, you ask an excellent question. While the North Pole is high on the list of countries I want to visit, visiting the North Pole isn’t easy. In fact, it is probably the hardest country in the world to …

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My Most Memorable Hotels of 2012

For the second year in a row, I’m posting the list of my most memorable hotels of the past year. As before, this list isn’t necessarily a list of the “best” hotels. I don’t go out of my way to find hotels to review and I’m not a hotel reviewer. I don’t have a checklist …

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The Quest For The Perfect Bag

UPDATE: I have posted an update listing which bag I purchased and how it has held up after 9 months of travel. Whether it is a suitcase, a backpack, a duffle-bag or a rollaway, your travel bag is probably the quintessential item for travel. No matter where you go or how you travel, you have …

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The Time I Almost Got Eaten By a Bear in Katmai National Park, Alaska

I promised my grandmother before I went to Alaska’s Kodiak Island that I wouldn’t go near the bears.  Unlike most tourists to the area, the bears weren’t really my thing.  There were so many other reasons I wanted to head to Kodiak, the impressive Kodiak bears just weren’t part of the equation I assured her. …

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Landscape of Grand Pré

Landscape of Grand Pré UNESCO World Heritage Site

From the Landscape of Grand Pré World Heritage inscription the Landscape of Grand Pré: Situated in the southern Minas Basin of Nova Scotia, the Grand Pré marshland and archaeological sites constitute a cultural landscape bearing testimony to the development of agricultural farmland using dykes and the aboiteau wooden sluice system, started by the Acadians in …

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Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites

Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site

From the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites World Heritage inscription: The Stonehenge, Avebury, and Associated Sites World Heritage property is internationally important for its complexes of outstanding prehistoric monuments. It comprises two areas of chalkland in Southern Britain within which complexes of Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial and funerary monuments and associated sites were built. …

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Photo Essay: 20+ Photos of Amazing Egypt

Photos of Egypt: Pyramids, Sphinxes, and more

Egypt had long been a place I was eager to visit, it was high on my travel bucket list during my previous two years of traveling the world. The Pyramids of Giza and the other Egyptian ruins are some of the most ancient remnants of human civilization. Visiting Egypt didn’t disappoint. Despite a rather negative …

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