Welcome, Fellow Travelers!
Greetings, fellow travelers! We’re Linda and David, two people with a passion for travel, who are always searching for ways to do more of it. We enjoy exploring off of the beaten path and spending time in a particular destination in order to connect with local people.
Asking a resident about their favorite places to eat, where they hang out in their free time or a do-not-miss local experience has led us to some truly memorable hidden gems that we never would have discovered on our own.
We learn so much more from interacting with people than from reading a guidebook or searching on Google. Staying in one place for a week or two rather than a different venue every night helps us feel right at home and more immersed in the community.
We have lived in northern Michigan, just outside of Traverse City for more than thirty years. We’d love to introduce you to this magical corner of the world that we call home.
We also look forward to sharing our favorite international destinations and memorable travel experiences with you. We’re here to support you in creating fabulous vacation itineraries and memories of your own.
Meet Linda
While a freshman at Michigan State, I made up mind to travel to all 50 states in the U.S. I graduated with a degree in Parks and Recreation, and spent the next few years roaming around the country.
I landed some great summer jobs in Yellowstone, Glacier and Kings Canyon National Parks, and spent a summer leading backpacking trips in the Blue Ridge mountains. I learned to ski one winter at Heavenly Valley Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe. I was hired on for seasonal work at nature centers and environmental education camps.
I also worked as a waitress, a maid, and in mall department stores. I event spent a miserable six weeks at a call center as a solicitor. Lodging included shared apartments, dorms, cabins, tents, and yes, more than a few nights sleeping in my car.
I loved this nomadic life for a time, but grew tired of saying goodbye to new friends every few months. I finally decided that I was ready for a permanent mailbox and a telephone number. (This was in the days before cell phones) And so I returned to MSU to earn my teaching degree.
Only after I settled back in to the college routine did I take out a map to survey my journeys. I actually thought I had covered the contiguous 48 states, only to realize belatedly that I had somehow missed South Dakota!
When I first started my teaching career, I had never been out of the country, had never had a passport, and had little money to go out and see the world. I knew that I wanted to travel, but had few ideas regarding how to go about it. So I was absolutely thrilled when one of my third graders told me that her family was going to visit her grandparents in Taiwan over spring break and that I was invited to accompany them.
I got on the phone immediately to thank her mother for offering me this incredible opportunity. Imagine the awkward pause right before her mom managed to say, “We never invited you.” I apologized profusely for the misunderstanding, and learned a valuable lesson about taking my students’ comments to heart!
As luck would have it, my student’s father had a work conflict come up shortly before their scheduled trip, and the mom was up for company while flying to the other side of the world with her two daughters still elementary school. This time, the invitation was extended for real.
Off to Taiwan I went, and I was completely blown away by a culture so different from mine. I could neither read nor understand a single word of the language. As a result, I was fascinated by all of the things going on that I could not understand. And with this first international trip, my wanderlust soared.
After I met David, we traveled to Hawaii and to Alaska twice. South Dakota has still eluded me, and so a trip to Mount Rushmore and the Badlands remains on my travel-to list!
I am an outdoor enthusiast and animal lover. Visiting the wintering grounds of the monarch butterflies in the mountains of Mexico and close-up encounters with the wildlife in the Galapagos are among my favorite travel experiences.
Meet David
David grew up on a farm where he fed and watered cattle and sheep before school and baled hay afterward. Long hours operating and maintaining farming equipment developed his mechanical abilities and a life long love of hands-on work.
After moving to northern Michigan, David become active as a real estate agent and became a licensed general contractor.
David has always been fascinated by architecture. His long involvement in construction and real estate drives his interest in the cathedrals of Spain, the mountain chateaus of Switzerland, and the haciendas of Mexico. He is intrigued to see how different people in different regions of the world create their homes and communities. We work at combining my passion for nature with his passion for buildings whenever we can.
Thanks so much for joining us on our adventures. Travel on!
We love getting to know our travel destinations, and we are always seeking to engage with the local community and its residents. We recently created a guide describing our favorite ways to connect with local people during our travels.
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