Why a travel blog?

So why a travel blog? It's what I know best. It's in my genes. It's what I grew up doing.

My father grew up in a small lumbertown town in Washington state. Every summer, the family vacationed in the San Juan Islands. They went to the same island, stayed in the same cabin, and did the same activities. Creatures of habit, my grandparents found the annual holiday relaxing and comfortable, but my father dreamed of seeing other parts of the world.

As a child, my father's favorite book was Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels. The great American traveler's stories of climbing the Egyptian pyramids at night and hanging out with headhunters in Africa transported my dad from his ordinary life to faraway exotic places. In college, my father finally embarked on his own adventure when he left the country for the first time to go to school in Holland. Ever since, he has lived to travel.

Growing up, my dad showed my mother, brother, and me the world: Turkey, Thailand, Guatemala, Greece, Argentina. He wanted us to see places with our own eyes, not only read about them in books or in newspaper headlines. When the Berlin wall came tumbling down in 1989, he immediately booked a flight. He ingrained travel in me and he taught me that the best way to see the world clearly and to feel it truly is to travel.

Now that I'm married and have my own two kids (Paris is 5 years old and Dante is 3), I'm continuing the tradition. When Paris was only four months old, we exchanged our San Francisco condo with a French family and lived in Paris (the city) for several weeks. We traveled to a Mexican fishing village for a wedding and we even brought our young kids to Vietnam. This summer we're setting out on a great American adventure and driving Route 66.