Travelling Lore

Oh goodness, these photos are from our layover in Frankfurt on our way to South Africa, which we visited over a year ago.  I truly am just the worst travel blogger.  It's a good thing no one pays me to do these.  I also forgot to bring my travel journal on this trip, so no help there for me, either. As I mentioned, we were on our way to South Africa and decided to try out a different style of traveling whereby we do a long layover so that we can stretch our legs and see another country.  If I remember correctly, at the time we bought our tickets, sometime in late 2017, our long layover choices were only in Brazil, Turkey, or Germany.  Usually we book flights with the least amount of layovers possible, and if there are layovers we usually choose those that are shorter.  However, it seemed like a good opportunity to try something different and to see a country that I had never seen, if just literally for a day. I can't remember...

Gosh, it's been such a long time since I checked in on my blog.  Honestly, it's such a time commitment even though I make no money off of it whatsoever and I sure as hell am not a viral sensation.  The main reason I even blog is for the sake of preserving memories first and sharing experiences with fellow interested travelers second.  Unless I have photos or write things down or something amazed me to the fullest, I have the worst memory for remembering the details.  I often remember the oddest details of our trips and can usually remember the names of towns, but since my husband is our trip planner he has the investment of time on his side for recollection of our travels. That said, I came on here because I want to write about/share a story about some free "entertainment" we witnessed during our excursion to Puerto Rico in January (I can't believe we're in May already!).  Yes, yes, I am way more than several trips behind on this blog, but so it...

Yea, so, it's obviously been a while since I took some time to write about my travel adventures.  The same old story--I am still incredibly behind recounting some past trips (Bali, Singapore, Philippines, Quebec City, Portugal, Spain, total eclipse trip in the USA, Iceland) and now I can add South Africa to that list.  But I loved our trip to South Africa so much that I might revisit that first before I get cracking on this backlog.  In the meantime, here's an Instagram roundup of most of the photos I shared on social media.  Check out my Instagram for photo captions (hint: yes, that last photo is a hyena kill).  I have SO. MANY. MORE. photos to share from my "big girl" camera and I can't wait to check them out.  Stay tuned! Follow me on Twitter , Bloglovin , and Instagram .

In  October 2016  we took the trip of a lifetime to Australia, Bali (Indonesia), Singapore, and the Philippines.  Because I am the slowest travel blogger ever, I am just now putting all of the photos together and revisiting old/recent memories and travels.  Since Australia was our shortest segment of the trip, we hired a guide to drive us around the Great Ocean Road, which was fantastic because it also included some wildlife viewing both in natural, wild surroundings and on a nature preserve, all in a day's worth of fun. My husband, who does a lot of the research for our big trips, booked our tour with Oceania Tours   ( this tour , specifically) after combing through reviews.  Our very amiable driver, whose name I unfortunately can't remember (because, as mentioned above, I am the slowest travel blogger ever, which leads to forgetfulness of details) picked us up at our hotel in downtown Melbourne.  And so we began our drive to the Great Ocean Road...

Mono Lake in California, which is about a half an hour drive from the entrance of Yosemite National Park, is an incredibly unique area in North America.  Would you believe that it's at least 760,000 years old, possibly around one million years old, making it one of the oldest lakes in the western hemisphere?  Absolutely incredible! Scientists have been able to date the lake to at least 760,000 years ago by dating an ash layer to the Long Valley eruption .  However, sediments below the ash layer suggest that Mono Lake could actually be the remnant of a much older lake that also covered parts of Nevada and Utah.  At its height, Mono Lake was about 900 ft deep.  It sits in part of the Mono Basin, which was formed over the last five million years, and has no outlet to the ocean; this lack of an outlet causes high levels of salt to accumulate in the lake, making the water more alkaline . However, now the lake is about 158 ft deep at its deepest point an...

Initially, I was a little skeptical about going to a ghost town.  I'd never heard of Bodie before, it was a long drive away, I didn't think it would be that interesting (I'm not a gold rush history buff), and I thought that it might be too touristy.  Well, once we arrived and got past the initial sticker shock of the entrance fee (our Golden Poppy annual pass didn't cover this Bodie Historic State Park ), I quickly changed my mind about Bodie. Bodie, or "Boomtown Bodie," is a gold-mining ghost town in California that was named after William Bodey, who had discovered gold in 1859 (along with three other prospectors) in some hills north of Mono Lake.  Unfortunately, he froze to death in November of that year, before the town was named in his memory.  Mining started off slowly due to richer finds in other areas of the U.S.  However, the collapse of Bunker Hill Mine exposed a rich vein of silver and gold ore in 1875, which kicked off the boomtown.  ...