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San Clemente, No Car Necessary

Take Amtrak 1.5 hours north for an authentic beach town vibe.

Halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles is the charming coastal town of San Clemente, CA. Somewhat akin to San Diego in its wholesomeness, San Clemente also boasts beachside ambiance without the pretensions commonly found ...

June Lake's Open for Business

Twenty minutes and a world away from Mammoth.

Even with the unexpected winter closure of June Mountain*, skiers and snowboarders are finding June Lake village to be a welcome getaway – to get away from the crowds of nearby Mammoth. While Mammoth's skiing ...

Urban Retreat: SF's Angel Island

On a recent visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, we decided to escape the congestion of the inner city. If you’ve never visited Angel Island, it should be on your priority list when visiting ...

La Vida Tranquila: A Family's Pursuit of Paradise

Escaping suburban America for the tiny island of Útila, Honduras.

(Originally appeared as a 9/4/12 blog entry at HuffingtonPost.com.) In 1998, I left a boyfriend who admitted he couldn't commit to anything more than putting food in the cat's bowl. We were in our early ...

Mammoth Lakes Basin Bike Path

This paved downhill route through pine forest is fun for the whole family.

This summer marked the completion of 5.3 miles of paved bike path through forests above the town of Mammoth Lakes, California. The clearly marked, two-lane path starts at the top of Lake Mary Rd. at ...

A Week on a New Hampshire Lake

Summer is a great time to visit New Hampshire. In the spring, there are a lot of biting flies and it rains all the time. But once the warm, dry months of July and August ...

San Juan Capistrano: A SoCal Treasure

Just 61 miles north of San Diego up the 5 Freeway, San Juan Capistrano is one of the truly historic sites of Southern California. The town is probably best known for the swallows that return ...

Solitude Is Bliss – Michigan's Northern Lakeshore

A recent trip home to northern lower Michigan afforded me one of the greatest summertime pleasures a Michigander knows: a sunset swim in Lake Michigan. There’s nothing better than finding a secluded stretch of golden ...

Summer in Jackson Hole

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has some of the nicest people on this planet. They go above and beyond to help you. If you need to know where the nearest bus stop is and ask someone, they ...

King's River Rafting: Not Your Average Family Vacation

Originating high in the mountains of central California near Sequoia National Park, the Kings River boasts the largest watershed of any river in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Last year I took the family on ...

A Long Weekend in Sequoia and Yosemite

On a whim, I decided to drive up to explore a spectacular stretch of California natural beauty for a four-day vacation: Sequoia National Park and Yosemite. I hadn’t been to Yosemite for years, and I ...

Down-home Door County, Wisconsin

The original French explorers and fur trappers who came upon the treacherous waters separating Washington Island from the mainland of Door County, Wisconsin, called it “Doors of Deaths.” Today, the waters do sometimes delay campers ...

"See Rock City": Chattanooga

When Leo Lambert first discovered Ruby Falls, he described it as being “like discovering God. At first it is very dark, scary, and uncertain. You don’t know what lies ahead.” Venturing through caverns nearly a ...

La Jolla Sea Caves

Weathered from a 75-million-year-old sandstone cliff in La Jolla are seven sister caves. Like many other seaside caverns, these, too, have been used by pirates. Only the cargo they smuggled was human. California’s eight-year-gold rush ...

Christchurch, New Zealand's International Antarctic Centre

In February 2011, Christchurch captured world headlines when New Zealand’s second-largest city was jolted by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, flattening downtown buildings and claiming 181 human lives in its debris-laden wake. Though parts of downtown ...