For our tenth anniversary, I asked my partner what they actually wanted — not a dinner, not jewelry. They said: somewhere we’ve never been, somewhere that feels like a story we haven’t told yet. We chose the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, and standing at the edge for the first time, watching the canyon’s layered reds … Read more
The school year ended and I sat in an empty classroom for twenty minutes just listening to the silence. Then I went home and looked up flights. Teaching summers off exist for a reason — and that particular search landed me at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, staring into a chasm so vast it genuinely … Read more
The week my company went fully remote, I opened a map and asked a question I’d never seriously asked before: if I can work from anywhere, why am I still sitting in this apartment? My finger landed on Portugal almost immediately, tracing a coastline that seemed to go on forever — and I quickly realized … Read more
I spent fourteen months putting money into a travel fund that everyone else called frivolous. When it finally had enough zeros in it, I spent about forty-five minutes looking at destinations before I bought the ticket — because honestly, there was never really a question: it was always going to be the Grand Canyon’s South … Read more
After our youngest left for university, the house got very quiet very fast. My partner and I looked at each other over dinner one night and said, almost simultaneously, “So… where do you actually want to go?” Portugal came up within about thirty seconds — sunny beaches, centuries of history piled into cobblestone streets, and … Read more
After two years of looking at the same four walls, I made a list of every place I’d told myself “I’ll go when things settle down.” Then I started at the top — and the Grand Canyon was right there, staring back at me. What I didn’t expect was how much where I slept would … Read more
Three weeks after my relationship ended, I did the only thing that made sense: I booked a solo trip somewhere I’d always wanted to go but had been waiting for the “right time” to visit together. That place was Lisbon — and standing alone on a sun-warmed cobblestone street in Alfama, listening to fado drift … Read more
My father worked for 38 years saying he’d travel when he retired. He retired and then kept finding reasons not to go. I watched that happen and promised myself I wouldn’t do the same thing — which is exactly why I finally booked that flight to Arizona and stood at the edge of the Grand … Read more
