Photo Of The Day: A Hammock View In Florida

by Jessica Marati on

Whenever I start to feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, I conjure up a mental image that is very similar to today’s Photo of the Day, taken from a hammock at the Gulf View Waterfront Resort in Marathon, Florida. “This was a great place to take a nap,” says Flickr user Chuck Oliver. Oh, the joys of vacation.

What personal travel photos stroke your wanderlust? Upload your shots to the Gadling Flickr Pool and your image could be selected as our Photo of the Day.

15 Super Shots Of Nature Reflected On Water

by Jessica Festa on

The richness I achieve comes from nature,
the source of my inspiration. – Claude Monet

It’s true. There are not many things on this planet as inspiring as nature. Vibrant colors, enormous peaks, crystal lakes, animals in the wilderness and natural phenomena you have to see to believe exist in a world far away from the intimidating skyscrapers and chaotic lifestyles of busy cities. Spending time in these uninhabited areas can calm your mind and help get your positivity flowing.

While beautiful to look at on its own, there’s something extra moving about viewing a mountain, forest or sky as a reflection on the water. It adds to the aesthetics as well as makes the setting that much more majestic and intense. Luckily, for those who don’t have time to take off work and head into the wilderness, the photographers in the gallery below were able to capture moving shots of nature reflected on water to share with others.

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[Image above via Jessie on a Journey; Gallery images via Big Stock, Beverly & Pack, slobirdr, marissa_strniste]

Held Hostage By The School Calendar? Year-Round Schools Allow Parents To Travel Offseason

by Dave Seminara on

If only kids were in school year-round, the rest of us could actually get a good deal on flights, hotels and cruises in the summertime. As the father of two boys, ages 3 and 5, I still have the freedom to travel outside the traditional summer vacation season, but that freedom will soon evaporate when my older son starts school and I’m not looking forward to it.

We try to travel in the shoulder seasons, but there are times when we have to travel in July and August and I’m always resentful of how everything is more expensive and crowded. A few weeks ago, we visited relatives in Dekalb, Illinois, a town about as far off the tourist trail as one can get. It was a spur of the moment trip and we were shocked when the two best hotels in town were both sold out. We ended up staying in an overpriced, glorified motel for double the price it would be at any other time of year.I was willing to chalk that experience up to a fluke – even though there were no events in Dekalb, at least that we could ascertain, but over the last few weeks, I’ve encountered nothing but high airfares online, sold out hotels and crowds pretty much everywhere we’ve been. Welcome to high-season travel, where everything costs more.

Since I’m accustomed to offseason and shoulder-season travel, I’ve had to recalibrate what’s a good value in my mind, but I still have a hard time swallowing the inflated prices. Our experiences traveling on the East Coast and the Midwest over the last few weeks have me dreading the arrival of the 2013 school year, when my 5-year-old will start kindergarten.

As compulsive travelers who can’t sleep well if we don’t have a big trip somewhere on the horizon, I fear that we’ll have just two unappealing travel options once our kids are in school: prepare to pay a lot more to travel during school vacations or pull our kids out of school to travel.

This parental budget traveler dilemma had me thinking: wouldn’t year-round schools be a boon for travelers? Year-round schools give students the same amount of time off as traditional ones, but the breaks are typically spread out in shorter, more frequent increments across the year. If my kids had, say, three weeks off in May, rather than July, for example, I could afford to take them to the Greek isles or Italy, where we’d enjoy lower prices, smaller crowds and more comfortable weather.

Also, there are some destinations, especially ones in the Southern Hemisphere that are too far to visit on a brief holiday over Christmas, that have less than ideal weather during our summer. For example, I wouldn’t want to visit Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, or Southeast Asia in July or August.

Obviously school administrators don’t set up to the school year for wandering parents like us, but some educators believe that the year-round schedule helps kids retain their lessons better than the traditional school year with a long summer break.

According to a recent Huffington Post story, about 14% of U.S. public schools used the year-round calendar in 2008. Research on the effectiveness of the year-round calendar is mixed but has anyone surveyed the parents and asked them how the year-round calendar has impacted their travels? If more American schools were on the year-round calendar, the entire travel industry would have to adapt, but in general, it would spread the business and crowds out more evenly through the entire year. The tricky part would be for families with kids in different schools that have different breaks.

Despite the potential downsides, I’m hooked on the idea of year-round schools for my kids but finding one can be tricky, depending on where you live. Based on my research, it appears as though most year-round schools are in warm weather states – California, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Florida and a few other places. If you’re looking for a year-round school for your kids, the National Association for Year-Round Education maintains a list of them, but before you yank your kids out of their school and plan an off-season trip during the school year, double check it, because it may be outdated.

What do you think about the year-round calendar? Does it give parents more flexibility to travel? Is it better or worse for kids?

(Photo by SinDesign on Flickr)

Where To Sleep During A Long-Haul Road Trip: Putting A Price On Your Safety

by Laurel Miller on

As you may have gathered from my last few posts, I spent the second half of July and first week of August living out of my car during a relocation from Seattle to Boulder. En route, I had a family vacation on the Klamath River in Northern California, and business trips to the Bay Area and North Carolina, which is why I was in limbo.

I’ve road-tripped and relocated across the West many times, and love the time alone with my thoughts and enjoying the scenery. Now that I’m in my early 40s, however, I’ve become more wary about where I choose to spend the night. I’m still on a tight budget, but this increasing awareness is a direct result of life experience, and my obsession with TV shows like “Forensic Files.”

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, someone who is truly fearful wouldn’t travel or drive cross-country alone. They certainly wouldn’t elect to drive Nevada’s notorious Highway 50, aka “The Loneliest Road in America,” but that’s what I did last week (anything to avoid the mind-numbing hell that is Highway 80). Allegedly, less than 200 drivers a day pass on this route, so one needs to plan accordingly.

Highway 50 is mostly high desert landscape, broken up by a handful of historic mining towns like the curiously appealing Austin. Located seven hours east of the Bay Area, this is where I chose to spend the first night of the final leg of my journey, in the rustic but comfortable Cozy Mountain Motel.

Although I was desperate to save money (my room was $60, and of the three motels in town, it had the best reviews … I also use the term “town” loosely), I didn’t feel safe camping alone in such a desolate region. It’s a shame, because the nearby primitive Bob Scott Campground, in the sagebrush and Piñon pines of the Toiyabe National Forest, is a beauty. Yet, due to its isolation and handful of sites, it wasn’t the place for an exhausted, solo female to spend the night.The next day, I had a grueling ten hours on the road before I hit Green River, Utah. Green River isn’t the most savory place, but it’s a popular jumping-off point to Moab/Lake Powell/Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands National Parks.

I was so wiped out when I arrived that I chose the first campground I saw: a KOA, which is the type of place I usually go to great lengths to avoid. At that point, all I cared about was a shower and rest, and because it was a glorious, hot desert night, I planned to sleep under the stars. Expediency meant more to me than dealing with setting up a tent in a less generic campground.

I walked into the office and asked the very friendly girl behind the counter for a tent site. Upon driving to the location, I discovered several things that didn’t thrill me. It abutted a vacant lot separated only by some sparse vegetation. Next to the lot was a rundown Motel 6. To my right were a few unoccupied, dusty campsites and open highway. Um, no thank you.

I scouted the mostly empty campground (which was primarily RV, and not tent, sites) and chose a location between two motorhomes, which was backed by a chain-link fence. Then I returned to the office and explained that I didn’t feel safe in my assigned site, and could I please have X or X location?

No problem. The receptionist said she understood, and proceeded to tell me a horrifying story about a recent encounter her mother had had in the town park with a drug-addled freak. She didn’t even charge me the higher RV rate.

An hour later, I was sprawled happily on my sleeping bag, reading, when the receptionist and her employer, a crotchety old man, whizzed up in a golf cart. She looked uncomfortable as he sniped at me for being in an “unauthorized site” because I was in a car. I was ordered to come to the office to rectify the situation immediately. Sigh.

Back behind the counter, the poor receptionist apologized profusely, and I shrugged it off, saying I’d rather pay more to ensure my safety. A manager was needed to get into the system and charge me accordingly, and when he showed up at the office, she explained the situation. He was clearly more interested in returning to his happy hour, so I was permitted to remain in my present location, free of extra charge.

Needless to say, I remained unmolested during the night, and although I was embarrassed by the musical campsites, the entire experience reinforced that it’s best to listen to your gut. Always insist upon putting your safety first.

[Photo credits: tent, Flickr user Pink Sherbet Photography; Arches NP, Flickr user Fikret Onal; Jason, Flickr user Stinkie Pinkie]

Savannah: A Friendly Place

by Elizabeth Seward on

Savannah isn’t a young American town. Established in 1733, Savannah is what we refer to as “historical” in the U.S.A. The city’s pillared homes and ivy-covered walls make a nice backdrop for visitors on any of the various guided tours of the town, but the reputed friendliness of Savannah is part of the reason people visit and then return.

I first traveled to Savannah on tour. My band played at a place in town, The Jinx, and I was impressed with the owner of the venue. She was kind, energetic and uniquely accommodating. She believed in paying touring bands and she even had a space available for the bands that came through if they didn’t have a place to stay. She promoted touring bands to local music writers and publications. She requested a stack of posters in advance and made a point to actually hang them. And so my first experience in Savannah was a good one. People were at the show and enjoying themselves. One man even bought two of everything we had for sale at the merch table and then opened up a tab for me and my bandmates to use the rest of the night. The one-off kindnesses I experienced in Savannah might have seemed just like good luck when isolated, but the collective hospitality of the town began to seem more intentional than not, more a fact of Savannah life than a fluke.

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When I was back home in New York, I talked about moving to the South. Before visiting Savannah, I never knew charm and cool could be so inseparably paired in a place. When a roommate of mine eventually departed NYC with aim for Savannah, I bid her farewell with envy. I couldn’t undo my first impression of this Georgia destination; the luster didn’t fade with time.

My husband and I were haplessly traveling down the east coast in June. The trip had been a series of badly timed and poorly planned excursions that had led to more frustration than fun. We decided to stop in Savannah because he had never been there, but we only had one afternoon to explore. Yelp pointed us in the direction of a good cafe, so we parked and tied our dogs to the patio table when we arrived. We sat next to a Russian couple that had been living in Savannah for a while. Conversation sparked in that serendipitous way it does sometimes, wherein each involved party is actually in the mood to talk. When the couple said goodbye, two older gentlemen discussed our afternoon plans with us, giving us both advice and direction. We walked toward the river with the canopying Spanish moss overhead. Many more people than usual, it seemed, stopped to pet our dogs. Each person had anecdotal Savannah stories to share and we had listening ears. In between our conversations, we began discussing the town.

“Everyone is so friendly here. It’s unbelievable,” my husband remarked.

“I told you so,” I quipped.

When the heat of the afternoon had toasted our shoulders, we walked back to our car. My husband pulled out of our space and drove down the road and made a left turn. Unfortunately, he turned directly into another car, mistakenly thinking that we were on a two-way street when we were instead on a one-way street. I uttered a succession of curse words and we pulled over into a nearby parking lot to assess the damage. The two cars were damaged, alright. I was trembling as the woman who owned the car we’d hit approached us, feeling uneasy in anticipation of her wrath.

“Just tell me, what were you thinking?” she asked my husband in a voice sweet with maternal instinct.

“I thought we were on a two-way street. We don’t live here. I’m so sorry,” he responded.

“Well, that’s OK. Is everyone alright?” she asked, spotting our dogs through the open door.

“We’re fine, are you?” I asked.

“I sure am, and that’s all that matters,” she said before warming us with a smile I’ll never forget.