When the world came to a grinding halt in March 2020, the days began to melt one into the other. Until I discovered the joy of a solo road trip. This is the story of solo car travel as transformative travel and how it opened my mind and soul.
My love for travel and adventure began with my mum. I still take time on her birthday, on Mother’s Day and on International Women’s Day to honor her and thank her for all the gifts she gave me. Gifts that have made me a better traveler, journalist, photographer and, I hope, a better man.
It has been a very long 2020 but through it all we found our readers still wanted to dream of travel, to think about travel, and to plan for travel. This was made clear with our Top 10 Stories of 2020 as selected by our readers and what they viewed. Local and regional U.S. stories, stories that highlighted adventures closer to home and ideas for road trips, sprinkled with a few topics drawn from our archives allowed us and our readers to keep dreaming of travel in 2021.
Little Charlie wasn’t only a musician to me. He was a buddy, somebody with whom I had shared a passion for languages and travel. Most knew Charles Baty as an internationally renowned blues and jazz musician. He passed away on March 6, 2020. I will miss my buddy Charlie forever.
We put out a call to friends and colleagues around the world for photos to document how some of us are experiencing life during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Photos from Stockholm, Berlin, Paris, Innsbruck, Boston, New Orleans, London, New York, and California. Each of the photos capture a world on hold during the coronavirus outbreak — sad, strange or with humor.
In two short weeks, we went from happy travelers to anxious escapees. Therese and I held hands and stared out the airplane window. It was goodbye Berlin. Hello to a world forever changed. From Tegel airport to London Heathrow to Los Angeles and then home, each airport provided a glimpse of a world turned upside down because of COVID-19.
The coronavirus upended the entire travel world seemingly in days. Hurrying out of Berlin, I felt like an evacuee – not that I really know what that feels like – but here I was being forced to leave somewhere I didn’t want to. I felt like Pac-Man scurrying away from the hungry ghost called COVID-19.
Should we be traveling in the age of coronavirus? We make our living as travel writers and photographers. For us, it’s either travel, or find another line of work. But the fear of COVID-19 is real. How do we travel and still stay safe from coronavirus? Read our personal essay on learning to stay calm and travel despite a fear of cornonavirus.
Times have changed a lot over the years, especially when it comes to travel, travel preparation, and things we don’t do anymore when traveling: Postcards? How quaint. Paper lists of addressees? Ah, adorable and clumsy. Paper maps? Why when we have Google?
When travel goes wrong you are rarely as prepared as you’d like to be. I had made my way to Berlin two weeks before a long-planned photo trip to Morocco that I was beyond excited about. My plans were about to go sideways.
The secrets of my grandfather’s life are held in a box — a 1914 Princess Mary gift box. It’s just a simple brass box. Weathered, dented, tarnished. But to me it is precious because this box saved his life. Which meant this box, in a way, saved my mum’s, mine and my daughter’s life too.
I arrived at my photography workshop eager and excited for learning while traveling, but also more than a bit nervous. “Why?” asked one of the instructors earlier when I mentioned that I was a bit anxious. “We don’t bite.” Transformative travel is a marvelous thing for learning.
There is an art to slow travel. It doesn’t come easily, this crashing into a place. I like to sit, to wait for moments to come to me, to feel a country from the inside out.
Korean War Memorials are always on my list to visit when traveling. My Uncle Ara disappeared on Oct. 23, 1951, less than a year into the Korean War. A part of an air mission with nine Super Fortresses, his B-29 bomber was one of six attacked by Soviet MIGs.
It was my first Christmas far away from home. I was 21 and an exchange student experiencing Christmas in Germany – with its Christmas traditions, markets, and more.
Because we do fly a lot, and talk with so many other passengers and frequent travelers, we think it is worth pointing out there is another side to the story: Despite the avalanche of news regarding despicable behavior by some airline employees and by some passengers, there are always two sides. We would like to humbly point out that airline acts of kindness can and do happen, on an almost daily yet too often unreported manner.
Charles Baty is feeling the blues. As I prepare for the last road trip of the year (and probably my last road trip for a long time), I have been spending a lot of time re-tackling the solos of Charlie Parker and trying to learn more chords, arrange Christmas tunes for the holiday season and learn a few new jazz tunes.
Then …BOOM!!!… The unmistakable sound of an explosion or other impact came from the cockpit. Immediately the plane began to shake and, within seconds, we were executing a very tight turn and initiating a steep descent heading back toward Salt Lake City … and, I hoped, for the airport. She looked at me with very wide eyes. “You have an explanation for that, right?” Her fear of flying was real.
Traveling blues on tour with Charles Baty. Bluesdays at Squaw Valley has been going on for several years in the summer months. Bluesdays is a free all-ages concert and dance series in the Village at Squaw Valley most Tuesdays. Enjoy more blues wisdom from Charles Baty.
Traveling blues guitarist Charles Baty (“Little Charlie and the Nightcats”) and his fellow musicians with the Golden State-Lone Star Revue are on the road yet again – now in the Southwest, Northwest and California (wait, where did that one gig in Illinois come from?) This round, he and band members Mark Hummel, R.W. Grigsby, Wes Starr and Anson Funderburgh will be not only turning clubs into hot blues joints, but also some outdoor festivals.
More traveling blues wisdom from Charles Baty. He’s singing the blues now that his traveling blues band tour is over and he’s home without any more Saigon Nights ice cream.
Traveling blues guitarist Charles Baty (“Little Charlie and the Nightcats”) and his fellow musicians with the Golden State-Lone Star Revue are nearing the end of their June tour through a few midwestern burgs (is Chicago a burg?). Charles Baty is singing the blues and offering up some tasty blues wisdom.
It is heating it up again in the Midwest with Charles Baty taking a red eye to hot blues. His traveling blues wisdom seems quite focused on food! Pizza, pizza, pizza?
Leaving home, hitting the road, casting oneself into uncertainty and danger, discovering the unknown, seeing one’s reflection in the landscape and the sky—these have been the stimuli and the “itch” that have propelled writers, artists and thinkers to abandon home, family and security and set out alone, across the seas, over the mystic mountains or out on a road trip.
HI Travel Tales friends Diane Benton and Jerry van Heeringen recently traveled for several weeks throughout Asia, hopping a cruise ship for part of that journey. They experienced a cruise ship boarding near miss, two days in a row, no less. Not what you normally plan on,…but it does make for some great stories.
Charles Baty talks dirty blues and Italian ice with this latest bit of traveling blues wisdom. As he counts down to the last gig on the Golden State-Lone Star Revue tour, they are the walking wounded.
More traveling blues wisdom from Charles Baty: The official “Diner Tour” continued today at one of his favorite spots – Dove Diner in Newcastle, Del. It has an amazing assortment of cakes and pies that he had never tried because he’s always too full after finishing a breakfast there to even attempt a bite.
Calling Sweden? You mean the entire country? Yes, you too can call Sweden and talk to a “Random Swede” and ask this random person picked randomly in Sweden about some random thing. We bit on the Swedish Tourist Association’s new promotion, The Swedish Number. We’re all over random.
Famed blues guitarist Charles Baty (“Little Charlie and the Nightcats”) is a friend of HI Travel Tales. Although Baty semi-retired in 2008 he still hits the road to perform and is sharing his travel journal with us — a bit of Charles Baty traveling blues wisdom if you will.
Sometimes you get stuck in a grind, a life that sucks you into a day-to-day routine that leads to being unfit and unhealthy. Sometimes, if you make travel important, travel can be your lifesaver, leading you to a fresh start or exposing you to a mind-opening experience that affects you deeply and changes your life forever.
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