








My fall foliage break was extra-colorful this year as our destination was the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. The four-hour drive from Toronto offered rural vignettes of pumpkin stands, cornfields, crows and Victorian homes decked for Halloween. As night and rain fell, we checked into our hotel and curled up with a […]
Lonely Planet named the Jersey Shore a Top 10 U.S. destination for 2014. What’s the big attraction? Lucy the Elephant, of course! Located about four miles south of Atlantic City, Lucy the Elephant has stared out to sea since 1881, making her America’s oldest roadside attraction. The six-storey novelty architecture was built by James V. Lafferty, Jr., a […]
Do you collect diners? I do. Their gleaming lines – reminiscent of old Airstream trailers – inspire dreams of the open road. Their association with travel comes naturally as the first diners were mobile lunch wagons. Often they were old rail dining cars, parked by the side of the road, serving as inexpensive all-night eateries. […]
I often wish I were in Atlantic City. No more so than today, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the new Arts Garage. When I toured the site a few weeks ago, workers were just putting finishing touches to the complex that marks phase one in the creation of a new Arts District in the heart […]
When I arranged to meet my friend writer Judy Colbert in Atlantic City last week, I thought I’d hit Manhattan first. A two-day trip turned into a much bigger adventure when I realized October was the perfect time to cross something off my bucket list: Amtrak’s Adirondack, one of the most scenic rail trips in the […]
After too many years, I recently made a trip home to Winnipeg. In between sorting boxes of my childhood books and looking at old photos with my mother and godmother, I went out with my sister and revisited old haunts. Walking home from Bar Italia on Corydon Avenue one evening, I took these photos. Being […]
The drum is a heartbeat, faster than mine. Apache Crown dancers pace the circle, bodies painted, pine boughs bobbing at their hips, bells the size of tangerines adding an edgy jangle. With cotton sacking disguising their human features, feathers dangling from where their eyes should be, the dancers are eerie, otherworldly. My heartrate rises to […]
The scent of spring lilacs drifts in from the patio. The puff of breeze ruffles the maps and brochures beside me on the bed. Warm evening sun slants into our room at Inn on the Alameda, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two hours earlier, Pat and I had driven the speed limit to get to Santa […]
Once upon a time I spun a globe and declared to my sisters that I would go wherever my finger landed. It landed on Albuquerque which, at the age of ten, I couldn’t even pronounce. Though I did pass through New Mexico on a solo trip around the U.S. in my early twenties, I wasn’t […]
A black cat disappears into a bank of tiger lilies, prayer ribbons stir on a puff of air. On Cassadaga Lake, afternoon sun glints off the water in darts of light that drift ashore like summoned souls. Spirit summoning has been going on for over 150 years at Lily Dale, home to the world’s largest Spiritualist community and over 40 registered […]