planning tips and tricks

  • Rental Car: How to Guide

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    A few weeks ago, B and I went and visited the North Cascades National Park, via the Spokane, Washington, airport. Upon landing, we made our way to the rental car desks. As you can imagine, the rental car section of the Spokane, Washington, airport is not particularly large. The fact that it took us a…

  • How to stay safe while traveling

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    Traveling can be a scary concept, but that doesn’t mean you should do it. This post highlights tips to help you stay safe while traveling. But first: Know that things can go wrong anywhere The world can be a scary place. And with the bombings in London, Paris, Rome (the list goes on and on),…

  • Sahara Desert in Morocco after a rare storm

    Preferred Sites for Planning a Trip

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    We may not travel full time, but we sure spend a good chunk of our free time planning our next trip. For every week of actual travel, there are months and months of planning. I can scarcely remember a time when the internet did not play a big role in that planning process. Below are…

  • Old Town Warsaw

    Poland Do’s and Don’ts of Travel

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    Last year, R, C and I did a little traveling through Poland. Below are a few do’s and don’ts from our experience there. The first “do” is, of course, go to Poland! After that, you can worry about the specifics below. Do’s and don’ts of travel in Poland DO: Come prepared to learn. DON’T: Assume…

  • Pile of money

    Destination Australia: Planning and Saving for a Trip Down Under

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    Do you know how to plan and save for a trip? Travel funds and budgets are not something I am terribly good at. However, I have recently been working on them in an effort to prepare myself for a trip to Australia. As a child, I was obsessed with The Man from Snowy River. My…

  • What to do when E.T. can’t phone home

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    This morning was rough. After a series of most unfortunate events, my shiny new iPhone ended up taking a swim. The friendly IT guy at work gave me a baggy full of silica gel packets and told me to put my phone in there and leave it for 24 hours. So today I’m kickin’ it…

  • Cascade Lake in Idaho on a summer day

    Exploring Your Own Backyard

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    How often do you go out exploring your own backyard? This past weekend, we headed to the mountains. Our goal: huckleberries. I am happy to report that we were successful and came home with a nice little haul. R had family visiting from another state. They opted to postpone their drive home in order to…

  • Moroccan cash

    Top 10 Tips for First-Timers Travelers

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    My coworker’s husband has just left on his first international trip to London. And other than a couple of trips to Mexico, this is his first international voyage. His wife has not done a lot of traveling herself so she has been asking me a lot of questions. Based on that, I figured I would…

  • Guide Books are our Friends

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    One of the first things I do after we’ve booked tickets for a trip is make a beeline to the library so I can see what they have for me in the travel guidebook section. I LOVE guidebooks. Nothing gets me more excited about visiting a place than to see all the cool things that…

  • A Modern-Day Icelandic Saga

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    This post about Iceland is written by our friend and fellow traveler, C. Enjoy! A year and a half ago, B, R and I went to Iceland for a long weekend. We spent a couple of days in Reykjavik and one day touring the Golden Circle. We had such a great time that I knew…