Hi! I'm Ashley

Solo Travel Expert & Professional Writer
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Following the Path Less Traveled

Along with traveling, my passion is helping others  discover the undiscovered and experience their travel dreams. Everyone — regardless of age, income, sex, or family status — can travel around the world. Really. Even you.  

I followed my dream to experience the world when I was 24. After quitting my job in advertising, I spent 10 years traveling through six continents and 54 countries, immersing myself in the world’s most unique and captivating cultures.

How it All Began

I grew up on a mid-west farm with horses and a dog named Beau. We didn’t lock our doors at night, and I had the luxury of autonomous adventure — traipsing through our 100-acre woodlands, building forts and hunting strawberries. My town offered little in terms of ethnic immersion, but my family spent weekends in Chicago and vacations sailing through the Florida Keys and beyond. College breaks found me cruising to Cuba, the Bahamas, and one epic circumnavigation of Cape Horn, South America.  I’m lucky to have parents who are fantastic, inspiring travel-lovers who always encouraged my wanderlust soul.

Following the college years, I honed my writing skills at a Chicago advertising firm, but I was restless and soon learned that climbing the corporate ladder and cubicle life was not for me.

So I left.

Countries

Cities

Continents

blog posts

The Travel Addiction

I flew to India with my best friend and crisscrossed Asia for a year drinking chai in India, tackling cliff walls in Thailand, and SCUBA diving on the world’s most gorgeous reefs. We taught English in Cambodia and Vietnam and helped rebuild tsunami-devastated Koh Phi Phi island. Tasting the thrill of foreign countries was astonishingly addictive.

But I wondered…how could anyone return to normal lifeafter these experiences?

So I kept going.

Between returning to the States for brief interims, I lived and worked in New Zealand, Australia, and South America. I rode trains across China, sailed through the Pacific Islands, taught English in Peru and had crazy adventures and misfortunes in Latin America, Asia, Mexico, Europe and Central America.

Fifteen years and 56 countries later, my wanderlust remains insatiable. It lies dormant for brief periods of “life happening,” but my yearning for learning languages and cultures, discovering new cities and cuisines, and living a life far from ordinary is always in the foreground, even if faintly.

Global Dreaming grew in part as a way for my mom to stay on top of my travels and has since spawned into a passion for sharing adventures, advice, travel wisdom and a love for helping others discover the path less traveled.

Travel encourages a profound understanding of the world, and the incomparable opportunity to learn about ourselves.

There are no excuses. The world is an awesome, soul-stirring gift — go discover it.

Recent Travels

What have I been up to lately?

Those days when you hate traveling

Those days when you hate traveling

Traveling is a huge part of my past and my experiences shaped me into the person I am today. But – there are those days when everything seems to go wrong, days when I’m almost ready to throw in my travel towel and scream that I hate traveling. Sometimes, traveling just kind of sucks.