A Girl Named Eve

I'm devouring the book,   Go Your Own Way . It’s a collection of travel essays by a very diverse group of women who travel abroad solo. The stories are as unique as the women and the places themselves. Julianne Balmain in Wolf Pleasures purposefully travels unaccompanied in New York City to follow her own whims in search of a perfect breakfast, while Holly Morris chases wild boars through the jungles of Borneo in Snake Eyes of Borneo . Traveling abroad alone can be a dream or nightmare. Stephanie Elizondo Griest is reluctantly alone in Abandoned in Uzbekistan when her travel companion takes off and she has to wait for her visa to clear. But Alexia Brue breathes a sigh of relief when her clingy travel buddy decides to join their college friends on the Eurail in French Laundry . Even though we are by ourselves, we are never really alone thanks to the kindness or insistence of strangers. In Resisting Florence , Lucy McCauley declines an invitation from a kind stranger ...

In August my family and I took an unforgettable cruise to Alaska.  I took from that vacation several ideas for travel articles and have since written about my adventures in articles such as  How to Avoid Overspending While on a Cruise . One of the most memorable things we did was zipline in Skagway, Alaska. I wrote a travel article about it on AC,  Ziplining in Skagway, Alaska . I had been wanting to zipline with my husband and sons for some time and I'm glad we finally got a chance to do it.   The guides were young men from Oregon who took the  Alaskan Marine Highway System  to spend an adventuresome summer in Alaska. One guide called Smiley seemed to have a smile that emanated from his bones. He looked so blissed out, it was hard to image he'd ever had a parking ticket, or gone through any sort of trauma, or disappointment in life. I expected to find that sort of happiness from a  Buddhist  Monk not some 18 year old. I made a mental note to...