I have come to love luxury barging in Europe going to places ships can’t reach and traveling at a pace that allows all the senses to be enjoyed.

This month’s WORLD TRAVELLER magazine ran my piece on barging via Europeans Waterways in Italy, Scotland, Holland, and France.  Two were girlfriend trips and two were romantic husband trips. I felt like royalty on all of them.

I headed to Nebraska for the birds and felt privileged to see hundreds of thousands of cranes seek rest in the Platte River as a stop-over in the Great Migration of the North American Fly Away.

The Netherlands in the Spring bloomed abundantly with tulip glory! A childhood friend and I took a barge through the canals with European Waterways and enjoyed “Tulips and Windmills with Panache”.

My husband Victor and I flew to Nashville, hoping for almost two minutes of the “Totality Awesome” Solar Eclipse, August 21. I have enjoyed upbeat Nashville before and knew that if the eclipse got eclipsed by clouds, we could still have a syncopated time in Music City, as chronicled in “Ringing in Nashville.”  Fortunately we were able to enjoy music and, after some drama with teasing clouds– a full and fulfilling Solar eclipse

Victor wrote “Nashville Hosts the End of the World” for the Huffington Post and used my photos.  Fortunately, the world did not end; the sun returned spectacularly from the moon’s shadow – so there is a lot more to explore.

I leave this Saturday to seek the Northern Lights and Narwals! If all goes well, I will board the Sea Spirit in the capital of Iceland — a country enchanted with waterfalls, hot springs, puffins, and more : “Wild Nights Iceland” won a NATJA award for Best Illustrated article.

From Iceland, we will head north of the Arctic Circle on a Poseidon Expedition to Greenland to explore the largest and longest fjord system in the world. I hope to be enthralled by the Northern Lights again. It’s been seven years since I shivered with awe and cold and produced a video of the dancing lights set to some Gershwin as part of
“Hunting the Northern Lights” for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INTELLIGENT TRAVEL.

This time I hope to see Nature’s great light show upward and reflected in Arctic waters with icebergs for exclamation marks!

Please stay tuned for more Nature ahead!

And if you want to record your own Nature adventures, you can pick up a copy of The Great Outdoors: Nature’s Bucket List or My Adventures: a Travel Journal, and add to the projects I was fortunate to create for Quartos Publishing.