If you're a family like us, or you just want to travel with a little more luxury, is it still possible to afford to travel for months at a time? We show you that it is.
We were told this would be the most amazing salmon run in 100 years, but nothing prepared us for the incredible sight of British Columbia's Adams River teeming with thousands of crimson red Sockeye salmon thrashing and heaving their way upstream. Millions of salmon return to their spawning beds in the Adams River each year. Fighting their way from the Pacific ocean, the salmon swim 400 kms (250 miles) upstream, all to lay their eggs and die in the river they hatched from four years before. After all this, only one of 4,000 eggs lives to be an adult. Those that survive make their way to the Pacific, where they live until they repeat the cycle and return to the river four years later. It's not fully understood how the salmon navigate back to their river of birth. The photos are from the salmon run in 2010, which saw over 100 million salmon. This was the single largest salmon run of this century, dwarfing ...
Chiang Mai's Buddhist temples are some of the oldest in Thailand. Open to the public, they're great examples of Thai architecture, and a wonderful way to see true Thai culture and history.
Doi Suthep can be seen from almost anywhere in Chiang Mai, clinging to the mountainside close to the summit of Doi Suthep hill. Doi Suthep temple was built under King Geu Na in the late 14th century.
It's believed that striking the bells will bring good luck.
Legend holds that the temple's site was chosen by a sacred white elephant charging through the forest. King Geu Na ordered the temple built where the ...
Some days, like today, when I need some inspiration, I like to take out my travel quote collection.
Hopefully, they give you a smile, or even inspire your adventure.
1. Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen. Benjamin Disraeli
2. When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in. D. H. Lawrence
3. Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. Cesare Pavese
4. No matter how you travel, it's still you going. Jeff Goldblum
If you've got a burning desire to outdo everyone at your next family reunion, TripAdvisor's TripWow may just be the slideshow for you.
TripWow's free, and much more than your boring PowerPoint style slideshow. Admittedly, it's pretty over the top, but you can create a flashy mashup of your travel photos online in just a few minutes, complete with maps and music.
The process is pretty simple. Go to TripWow, and choose your slideshow theme, photos and music. You can use your own music, if you prefer, and grab your photos from your computer, Picasa or Flickr.
Once your slideshow is done, you have the option to share on Facebook, by email, Twitter or MySpace (really? MySpace?).
When Charles and I first started our travels, we lived the typical backpacker's lifestyle, staying in hostels and eating out every night. Now that we're a family of four on the road for months at a time, we find we need more space and privacy. As a family, we use vacation home rentals whenever we stay somewhere for more than a night or two. They're cheaper than hotels, and have a ton of space and amenities (and personality!) that hotels don't offer. We've rented vacation homes with gourmet kitchens, amazing swimming pools, and top quality linens at far less than half the cost of a hotel. During our side trip to Disney World, we decided to stay in Kissimmee, Florida. Kissimmee's a short 20 minute drive to the Disney World resort, and offers a big variety of homes for rent. We thought a Kissimmee vacation rental would give us some peace and quiet, but be close enough to Disney World to make it an easy drive. We splurged a bit for an awesome four bed, three bath townhouse in Kissimmee's Club Cortile with all the bells and whistles (pool, tennis courts, movie theatre, high speed internet) for $590 for six nights, including all taxes and cleaning fees.
Every once in a while I get it into my head that I'm an adventure sports person.This is kind of the equivalent of Elmo entering a mixed martial arts cage match. Possible? Maybe. Wise? Probably not.I love all the so-called adventure sports: kayaking, snowboarding, rappelling, windsurfing, scuba, and so on. It's a one-sided relationship. I love them, they kick my a**.In the last few years, we’ve seen paddle boarders of all shapes and sizes on almost any body of water we visit. It looks fun, serene, and above all, fairly easy.Charles and I decided to lose our stand up paddle boarding (SUP) virginity in Hawaii. Given that stand up paddling (Hoe he’e nalu in the Hawaiian language) originated in Hawaii, Oahu seemed like a great place to start.The theory is simple: You stand upright on a specially designed paddle board (a very stable, modified surfboard) and use your paddle to...
I'm in love with shoulder season travel. I'm talking heart going pitter-patter, light-headed, happy just at the thought of it, in love.
Before I get ahead of myself, you're saying just answer the question, woman, why don't you: What is shoulder season?
Shoulder season is not off season or low season. Shoulder season falls between high season (Christmas and New Year in most of the world) and low or off season.
What are the best parts of traveling shoulder season?
- it's cheaper than high season, and you have better luck negotiating prices
- crowds are thinner
- prices are lower than high season
- attractions and restaurants are still open
- weather is usually good (though you usually run a higher risk of bad weather than high season)
- lots of daylight hours
- locals can be more relaxed and friendly, as the influx of tourists has eased