Posts from — January 2009

Though it’s less than an hour south of San Francisco and hour west of Silicon Valley, the stretch of Highway One along the California coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz seems oddly remote. The drive passes windswept beaches, foggy canyons, and solitary lighthouses, but only one or two small towns.

Although sunbathing is likely to be out of the question, nature conspires to make this stretch of wild seaside particularly attractive in late winter. If your timing is right and luck is with you, you could score the California coast wildlife trifecta: elephant seals, gray whales, and monarch butterflies.

This is pup time at the 4,000 acre Ano Nuevo State Reserve elephant seal rookery. Visitors are greeted by a cacophonous symphony of squealing, grunting, and roaring elephant seals on ranger lead guided walks through the elephant seal breeding grounds during the breeding season (December through March.) The males battle for mates on the beaches and the females give birth to their young on the dunes. The elephant seals are unperturbed by humans, so the guided walks get remarkably close to these huge animals. [Read more →]

I made it to 68, but this is almost as much about how fast you can accurately type as it is about how many countries you can name (typing isn’t my strength).

How about States?  How many can you name in 10 minutes? I missed Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Apparently my grade school drills nearly overcame my poor typing skills.

Island Magazine’s 30 best undiscovered beaches of 2007 (hey, where’s 2008?)has me pouting–I’ve only been to two. And 2006 wasn’t a better year for me–I’ve only seen two of those. Clearly, I need more beaches in my life.

The Brothers Bloom the movie

Anse Takamaka

I’m a freelance travel writer with an inexplicable fascination for travel lists.

I write grocery lists that I leave behind when I go to the store, and to-do lists that languish, forgotten, until time has rendered my cryptic (and messy) scribblings baffling. I’ve never been accused of being organized, so I don’t know why travel lists appeal so much to me, but they do.

I love the thrill of satisfaction (”I’ve been there!”) when I see a place I know and love on a travel list, but more than that I love the seductive mystery of a place that I have not yet been.

I have several “list” travel books–1000 Places to See Before You Die, or Lonely Planet’s massive coffee table book, The Travel Book—that I keep around to flip open to random pages in restless moments. This is the stuff of grand daydreams.

In this blog, I list lists, write about places I’ve been, and wallow in open, unadulterated travel lust for the places I have yet to see. It’s a long road and life is short.
Talk to me. What travel lists do you keep? What’re your best and worst listings? What’s on your life list and what’s yet to come?