Makena Beach State Park, Maui
Travel books are a dime a dozen, it seems. You can always find information about a place that you’d like to visit, and usually, there are a few good tips. Fodor’s and Lonely Planet books are wonderful when you are serious about a certain area of the world. They will help you find a hotel, book a restaurant or a tour and even find something unique to visit while you are there. (I must admit, one such book helped us to find a little known parking lot in crowded Bar Harbor, Maine when there were absolutely no places to park the car for blocks.) We have many of these books for various places around the world available in our library, so if you are going on a trip, please stop by to pick one up.
There are wonderful “travel” adventure books written by people who have done something very interesting, all in a quest to see the world or a part of it.
Long Way Down, by Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
This is a really interesting book that tells the tale of these two friends and adventurers at heart as they make their way from the northernmost tip of Scotland to the southernmost tip of South Africa….on motorcycles! This is actually their second trip on bikes. The first was in 2004, when they traveled around the “world” on their motorcycles, meeting all kinds of interesting and crazy people along the way. These two journeys were also documented on film. You can find out more about the trips and the books on their website here.
The Voyage of the Northern Magic by Diane Stuemer
This is the tale of a family from Ottawa, Canada (only a short drive from here), who decided to leave for a trip around the world on a 40 year old yacht. The Stuemers and their three young sons gave up their lives back home to have an adventure after Diane Stuemer had a health scare. She documented their trip with weekly articles in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, and later turned the travel adventure into a fascinating book. You can also see more about this trip on this website:
http://www.instantweb.com/n/northernmagic/
But what if you’d like to travel and just don’t have the means to do it? How about finding alternative lodging. There is an interesting new website called CouchSurfing which was started by someone who just wanted to travel, but couldn’t afford hotels. So he put out an email asking for a couch to sleep on while he was visiting and area…..and the response was overwhelming! You can register as having a couch to sleep on, or a someone wishing to sleep over and the site will help to match you up.
What vacation adventure do you want to go on next?
