Author: Nancy

Winston-Salem is in the heart of tobacco country, headquartering RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, the second largest tobacco company in the world, yet the city is discreet about it tobacco legacy, instead preferring to highlight its art, education and innovation Reynolda Village, part of the former estate of tobacco tycoon, RJ Reynolds, has been reinvented as…

Ten miles is a short distance by bike; an easy one hour pedal by rail trail.  But those ten easy miles can sometimes represent a wide chasm, an unbridgeable gap between poverty and privilege, between those who have and those who don’t, something we observed first hand in our cycling venture from Niles to Notre…

I’ve always been a romantic about lighthouses – the simplicity of their purpose, the isolation and beauty of their locations. Like a magnet, the lighthouse pulls and compels me to visit. So that’s how we ended up on a sunny Sunday morning making a short detour while enroute to a southwestern Michigan bike trail; our…

I try not to let more than a few months elapse without seeing my out of state kids so it was time to see my son; rather than spend a summer weekend in Chicago, we opted to meet him and his girlfriend in southwestern Michigan for a weekend of wine tasting and biking. Originally, we…

We woke to another warm, sunny day in Milwaukee and breakfasted at a family diner in New Berlin – fortunately, we got seated and ordered before the after church crowd arrived and jammed the restaurant. Our first excursion of the day was the the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservancy. Distinguished by its three distinctive domes, the…

Today’s activities around Milwaukee center on brews and boats but first we had to fuel up for the day. We had an excellent breakfast of omelets & french toast with specialty coffee and smoothies at the Gingerbread House in Muskego, a 1885 farm house turned restaurant and wine bar. The farm house vibe was enhanced…

We drove up the Door Peninsula along the Lake Michigan shoreline from Manitowic, stopping briefly at the Waterfront Bar & Grille in Kewaune for a surprisingly good lunch of made from scratch soup and salad. We reached Sturgeon Bay by 3pm and drove immediately to the shipping canal. This turned out to be a disappointment….

Crossing Lake Michigan on the National Historic Landmark Ship, the S.S. Badger has been on my 89 year old dad’s bucket list, so when my niece accepted an internship in Wisconsin for the summer, this was the perfect opportunity to visit her and fulfill my dad’s wish. So on a beautiful clear morning I drove…

My philosophy: when traveling for work, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, no matter how many emails, voicemails and deadlines you have, take some time to explore your surroundings.  So that’s how I ended up exploring Chandler and photographing some of it colorful vegetation. I was invited to be the keynote speaker at an event at Arizona State University…

Who doesn’t love wine tasting? How fun is it to bike from winery to winery along a magnificent Great Lake? And did I mention this was an international experience just a little over one hour away? Many of our Canadian friends highly recommended a visit to the Lake Erie North Shore Wine trail so we…