Guidebook for Rock-Climbing Families
Climbing routes and much more make this book an excellent resource for climbers of all ages My husband is a former rock climber, so we have shelves full of climbing guidebooks. I don’t ever look at them, because they are way out of my universe. When he and I first met and he enthused about [...]
Guidebook Takes You to the Top
Boulder author hasn’t met a summit he didn’t like — and he wrote a book about his favorite fifty plus a few The names of Colorado’s 54 fourteeners — peaks of at least 14,000 feet in elevation — are emblazoned on T-shirts, sweatshirts, neckerchiefs and water bottles. Some have technical routes, requiring ropes and real [...]
‘Post’ Reporter Compares Travel Guides to Italy
Denver Post reporter Ricardo Baca, who usually covers Colorado beats, spent a month in Italy last summer, heroically hauling around nine travel guides to compare them in situ. Today’s travel section feature called “By the Books” is his compare-and-contrast commentary. Since the whole idea behind guidebook series is consistency, you can extend a similarity between [...]
Book Stirs Up Debate About Travel Writing
Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson is a self-styled exposé about the real state of travel writing and the magazines that publish travel features. He “reveals” the link between publications’ reliance on revenues from travel advertisers (airlines, hotels, resorts, car rental companies plus entire cities, regions or countries) [...]
Plunging Dollar Makes US a Bargain Destination for Others
When any country’s balance of payments is so out of balance that one end of the economic seesaw seems mired in the muck, imports are expensive and makes travel to other countries expensive. The plunging dollar has put all but the most well-off American travelers in the unaccustomed situation of having fewer affordable options. On [...]
Antarctic Adventures Aboard ‘Berserk’
I was invited to be a guest blogger by my friend Rosemary Carstens who maintains an elegant quarterly E-publication and an equally elegant blog, both called Feast. She covers travel, art, food and books, which are passions we have in common. I wrote a review of Berserk, a wild tale of three mismatched shipmates (boatmates?) [...]
Help with Frequent Flyer Programs
In Boulder, CO, where I live, one of the growth industries is life coaching. If you engage a life coach, you pay him or her help you analyze your life, set goals and, theoretically, achieve them. I’m quite happy with my life, thank you — except when I am trying to use some of my [...]
"1000 Places to See…." Author on Tour
Patricia Schultz, a television producer for The Travel Channel and author of 1000 Places to See Before You Die, is coming to the Boulder Bookstore on November 28 to promote her new book, 1000 Places to See in the USA & Canada Before You Die. Not coincidentally, she produces a television show bearing the same [...]
New Colorado Guidebook
Colorado’s Classic Mountain Towns by Evelyn Spence, just published by Countryman Press, is a well-written guide to seven popular mountain destinations — most of them wonderful 19th-century mining, ranching and railroad towns that are now significant ski and summer resort communities, plus Vail, opened for the 1963-64 winter and the only “new” resort featured in [...]
Vicarious Travel — by the Book
I bought my copy of The Best American Travel Writing 2006 a few days ago, as I do every year. There’s always a prominent guest editor’s name on the cover of this anthology. This year, it’s Tim Cahill, following Jamaica Kincaid (2005), Pico Iyer (2004), Ian Frazier (2003), Frances Mayes (2002), Paul Theroux (2001) and [...]
