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 to far-off places. 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. (Now it’s 20 years later and I’ve made it to 84 countries!)
How it All Began
I grew up on a mid-west farm with horses and a dog named Beau. I had the luxury of autonomous adventure — traipsing through our 100-acre woodlands, building forts and hunting for 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 fantastic parents, inspiring travel-lovers who always encouraged my wanderlust soul.
Following my 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 life after 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.
22 years and 72 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?
The Best Two Weeks in Brazil for an Unforgettable Trip
Brazil: Why visit Brazil, you say? Being such an immense country (the world's fifth largest, actually), Brazil has so much to offer. From sensational beaches, street carnivals, world-famous architecture, tiny villages, the exotic Amazon, exciting nightlife (if that's...
More travel, more writing and more daydreaming
I want...More travel. More writing. More daydreaming. Though my mind constantly bubbles with unwritten stories, and I spend significant portions of my days writing, reading and dreaming about the seductive spell of foreign places, I have been negligent with actually...
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.
Hiking in Switzerland: One Week
Switzerland has a reputation for being beautiful, and frankly, it feels a little unfair to the rest of the world. Snow-capped peaks, emerald-green meadows, impossibly blue lakes, charming villages and waterfalls seem to appear around every corner. And then there are...
Winter Adventures: Family Trip to Finland and Estonia
There are vacations, and then there are trips that become family legends. This one definitely falls into the second category. Over Christmas, we packed our warmest clothes and traveled to Finland to meet my sister, brother-in-law, and three nephews—who made the long...
5 Days in Cape Town
Cape Town, South Africa — a city where mountains meet the sea, where penguins wear tuxedos better than your fiancé, and where you can drive from one postcard-perfect view to another while arguing lovingly about GPS directions. Here’s how we spent five unforgettable...