Arriving at the Dead Sea in Jordan earlier this month, I wasn’t prepared for the starkness of the landscape. Conjured up images of the Dead Sea in my mind were of two varieties:

an exotic, remote, and barren desert landscape with an inhospitable lake of water stretching out for miles.
a smiling and slightly accented vendor in any one of America’s super-sized malls rubbing dark brown Dead Sea mud onto the back of my hand, extolling it’s many virtues.

Neither version prepped me for the actuality of the Dead Sea – the region’s bare landscape was the very element lending beauty. And as far are remote is concerned…not so much – it’s a mere 45 minute drive from Amman, Jordan’s capital, and surrounded by a handful of significant religious biblical and Islamic pilgrimage sites.

Here’s a fun fact you may have never known – when you push a car out of deep sand, you can actually fall on your face once the car starts moving.
Fun fact.
I’m all for women power – ra ra, equality, ra ra – but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that there are times men come in handy. Instance number one when it’s nice to have a man around?
When you’re on Fraser Island (on Australia’s East Coast) and your huge 4WD vehicle is mired deep into incredibly …

So there I am, a year ago today, sweaty, sand is in every single possible crevice of my body, the cake I bought completely melting all over the makeshift table, and yet the moment is precisely right as twenty-four backpackers serenade me with the Happy Birthday song in six different languages.
We were all on a three day camping/driving/sandy adventure of Fraser Island, Australia (more on that tomorrow) and as my luck would have it I was hitting the quarter of a century mark. Birthdays on the road are a …

Images of Christmas traditionally evoke thoughts of a toasty log cabin with a flickering fire and cup of hot chocolate all while the snow quietly falls outside. Perhaps there’s even a twinkling Christmas tree nestled in the corner. Well, that’s not the case in Florida -it was 82 F here last week (about 60 F now)– but, you know, at least it is winter here!
Last year I found myself in the Southern Hemisphere for Christmas – Australia to be more exact. The sun was baking down outside and it was, …

We head back in time today to the east coast of Australia for a flashback to my questionably successful attempts to learn how to surf. Now, this post is not intended to startle and confuse my loyal readers, but at the time I skipped over a few places along the way when the blog got too behind real time.
So, we rewind the clock and land back on the sunny and incredibly touristy east coast of Australia to the surfing town of Byron Bay. I am game for just about …

Umm…can we pull over for a sec? I have to go to the bathroom…
That auspicious start to a 20 kilometer round trip bike ride then turned into a little personal torment by the presence of my old friend from the developing world, travelers’ diarrhea. We visited Krka, Croatia yesterday and noticed that the only other thing you can possibly do to pass time in Skradin is biking out to, Bribirska Glavica, a site with really old archeological ruins that sits up on a 300 meter high plateau. That sounded great …

Sorry to disappoint with no new hair picture….none of them are very good – I just dyed it though so once the color dulls down I will post one…maybe tomorrow.    ;)
*********
I have to admit, Milna is a bit different than I first imagined. The town is tiny, but it is actually a bit of a tourist hub for a part of the day.

Small cruise ships pull up into the harbor around late morning and about 40 or so older tourist come crawling off of the ship like ants and …

The trip to Cinque Terre is entirely for the five-hour hike that hugs the coastline and took us from the water’s edge to cliffs high above the sea, and then back down again as we passed through the five small towns. Cinque Terre is unapologetically spectacular. Some backpackers I meet scoff at the tourist beat – and Cinque Terre is definitely on the tourist beat, but to miss this gem would just be an atrocity. Even Helen loved Cinque Terre and she shuns the sun with full on red-headed …