"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list." -Susan Sontag

Hiking Olomana Three Peaks Trail in Hawaii

I  have viewed Monet’s Water Lillie’s, in three countries (and counting). I have had my picture taken on the London Towers Bridge, the Ben Franklin Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge. I have been to the top of the Empire State Building (twice). I have visited the only Royal Palace in the United States and snorkeled in Shark’s Cove, Hawaii. I have seen the casinos of Las Vegas, ice skated in the most romantic park in Vienna, and toured the U.S. Capitol building.

I have climbed up the twisted spiral stair cases of numerous light houses; I usually find the experience to be lackluster. I have ascended scores of spiral stair cases in cathedrals, and always find them exhilarating.  I once went on a ghost tour of Savannah, Georgia and did not believe a thing I was told. I have stood where Martin Luther King Jr, Juliette Gordon Low, Mickey Mouse, and Adolf Hitler stood. 

I have tasted the ancient healing mineral waters of Bath, eaten beef and broccoli in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and devoured the best Italian food while dining in Germany. I have backpacked a section of the Pacific Crest Trail and rafted on the American River. It was 106 degrees on the river. I have seen where Teddy Roosevelt lived, where Abraham Lincoln was shot, and where John F. Kennedy is buried.  I have been a spectator for a sheepdog herding festival in Canada as well as the only Penny Farthing Race in the entire United States.

Enjoying far too many Bratwurst in Vienna, Austria

I’ve never been to the Midwest, nor to Asia. I can also not check off anywhere in Latin America…not yet at least. 

 I have seen the Stade Olympique in Montreal and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. I learned not only have I been pronouncing “ Nev-AD-a” wrong my whole life but “Ha-vai’I” as well! I have climbed on castle ruins in Germany and gone bird watching on the Eastern Most tip of Long Island. I’ve been to Disney World with every combination of my family members possible and then my high school senior class. I’ve trekked the battle grounds of the Revolutionary War, Civil War and both of the World Wars. I went to Texas once, that was enough. I’ve gazed down from above the canopies of the Ghanaian rainforest and looked out at Chicago from inside of a glass box. I have frolicked in the very hills that are alive with the sound of music and sipped tea from the oldest café in Salzburg. 

Holding a giant bug in the Smithsonian Natural
History Museum in Washington D.C. 

 I have been to the site of the Valley Forge winter encampment -in the summer- and explored Manhattan too many times to even keep track. I took a cruise to Bermuda once… but the only significant part of that was the hunky boy who kissed me in the elevator. I have been in the steps of the millions of immigrants who passed Lady Liberty in awe and were processed at Ellis Island. Twice a week I am honored to tell their story to visitors from near and far.


 I have seen the original constitution, Van Gogh’s skies, and Dorothy’s ruby slippers. I once felt the electricity of the fans in the streets of Cardiff after an Ireland Wales rugby match. I’ve seen a door of no return in a slave castle on the coast of Ghana. I have spent summers down the Jersey shore, West Africa, California, and New York. I have felt the heaviness of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in DC, been silenced by the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, and gazed upon the Grandest of Canyons.  I have been to fifteen states and seven countries. I have now traveled through exactly ten airports without my mother and only once did I almost miss my flight (this was not my fault).

Learning about Victorian era fashion and trying on corsets at
the birth place of Girl Scouts in Georgia. 

This summer I trekked as far away as Honolulu, as close as Philadelphia, and a multitude of places in between such as  Manhattan, San Francisco, Gettysburg, and the High Sierras in California. I recorded these beautiful months in a journal that I kept with me at all times. In this journal I pressed flowers, taped ticket stubs, placed bird feathers, and filled the pages with stories about the absolute peaks of my days (alongside stories of the peaks that I hiked).

Receiving my tribal print from a native Hawaiian at a Luau. 

I am so fortunate for all that I have been able to do and see so far in my life and soon I will embark on my next adventure; Paris. I will be studying abroad for exactly five months. I have a goal to visit twenty five countries before I turn twenty five. This blog will be about those travels, and everything in between.