Travel Year

What happens when "13 Going On 30" meets "Back to the Future"? Kate O'Reilly longs for the good old days when music was better, friends were aplenty, and England's football team almost reached the Euro '96 finals. But as a busy mother with a suburban home and a dependable husband, those memories seem like a distant dream. So when a freak electrical storm transports her back to 1996, Kate jumps at the chance to relive her glory days and maybe even right some wrongs.

Dorthe Nors's first nonfiction book chronicles a year she spent traveling along the North Sea coast—from Skagen at the northern tip of Denmark to the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea. In fourteen expansive essays, Nors traces the history, geography, and culture of the places she visits while reflecting on her childhood and her family and ancestors' ties to the region as well as her decision to move there from Copenhagen.

How does a middle-aged wife, mother, and FBI agent pursue her dream of hiking 2,200 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin, Maine? Sticks Harsha balances her trekking ambitions against the responsibilities of daily life by hiking the Appalachian Trail in sections, one piece at a time. Across a thirteen-year odyssey, Sticks discovers the best of America: the stunning beauty and diversity of nature, the quaintness of small towns, the quirkiness of fellow hikers, and, above all, the generosity of strangers.

Join Annette, the first woman to drive solo around the planet, in a glorified delivery van called the Wish Mobile. Share her experiences as she explores the caves of Slovenia, swims in the crystal water of Croatia, and nearly drives off the top of Mount Olympus in Greece.

For most of 2020, Mikes Dilger’s day-job of travelling to the four corners of the British Isles all but disappeared. Having been confined to one place by the Covid pandemic, and with daily dog walks his sole permitted outdoor pursuit, the simple pleasure of getting to know the flowers at his feet reignited a long-buried botanical passion. Now Mike is on a mission: to see a thousand different wild plants in one calendar year, and assess how our fascinating flora is faring in modern Britain.

LET GO. TRUST. RECEIVE. That is precisely what Max had to do. He felt stuck in his life and was yearning for something more meaningful. After years of working in investment banking in Frankfurt, London, and New York, he finally pulled the trigger to quit his job–or rather, ego-identity? What followed was two years of world travel, significant personal transformation, and rediscovery of our true essence.

Magnus shoved in another big bite of food, chewed and swallowed. “I am going tae take most of the vessels. I will secure them, guard them, and will live the rest of m’life as the keeper of the vessels. Nae a king but a guardian.” Lady Mairead tossed her napkin to the table and threw up her hands. “This daft idea makes a mockery of thoughtful decisions.” Magnus took a sip of coffee. “Tis nae a mockery, tis a wise idea. Dost ye want tae ken how I hae came tae it?” “It canna possibly be through deliberation.”

After exploring the Eastern Caribbean for several years on their 34-foot Creekmore, Connie McBride, her husband, and their 16-year-old son sailed away from their adopted home of St. Croix, west across the Caribbean to Bocas del Toro, Panama. What they found there will delight the reader as the archipelago comes alive in Eurisko Sails West: A Year in Panama. Howler monkeys, red frogs, and sloths in the jungle are accompanied by a symphony of parrots, oro pendula, toucans, and macaws.

Many childhood summers, Mark Woods piled into a station wagon with his parents and two sisters and headed to America's national parks. Mark's most vivid childhood memories are set against a backdrop of mountains, woods, and fireflies in places like Redwood, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon national parks. On the eve of turning 50, and a little burned out, Mark decided to reconnect with the great outdoors. He'd spend a year visiting the national parks.

In 2008, Lynn Barber's passion for birding led her to drive, fly, sail, walk, stalk, and sit in search of birds in 25 states and three provinces. Traveling more than 175,000 miles, she set a 21st century record at the time, second to only one other person in history. Over 272 days, Barber observed 723 species of birds in North America north of Mexico.

What would YOU do with a multi-million-dollar aircraft and time on your hands? Join the adventures of a Silicon Valley salaryman whose good fortune put him in the pilot's seat of a radical, high-tech Beechcraft Starship airplane, one of only a handful ever made. He set out on what many only dream of: slowly meandering around the world with no fixed route and no fixed return date. Discover new countries and cultures.

When Travels with Lizbeth was first published in 1993, it was proclaimed an instant classic. Lars Eighner's account of his descent into homelessness and his adventures on the streets has moved, charmed, and amused generations of readers and listeners. As Lars wrote, "When I began writing this account I was living under a shower curtain in a stand of bamboo in a public park. I did not undertake to write about homelessness, but wrote what I knew, as an artist paints a still life, not because he is especially fond of fruit, but because the subject is readily at hand."

In October 1968, teenager Denise Reid falls asleep one evening just like every night. So does Taylor Williams, also 17 years old, in October, 2012. In the morning, they discover they exchanged personalities. Denise wakes up in 2012 in Taylor's body. Taylor now occupies Denise's body and time. Each must learn to cope with the 44 year-switch. And each attends a presidential campaign speech central to a European billionaire's plot to destroy the United States.

Amy was never very keen on New Year's Eve - and that was before the time-travel accident that sent her spiraling back into the past. Now she's living every New Year of her life over again in reverse. As soon as each is over she is thrown back a year in time to the previous one. Starting at 39 years old, she grows progressively younger, revisiting snapshots of her life along the way. From dealing with an unfaithful boyfriend to trying to help her alcoholic mother, she attempts to make the most of her second chances, with varying degrees of success.

A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes, a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. An ideal travel companion, Frances Mayes brings to the page the curiosity of an intrepid explorer, remarkable insights into the wonder of the everyday, and a compelling narrative style that entertains as it informs.

This book covers the two-year odyssey of our family owning an RV, from the decision to purchase our RV (named Winnie by my daughters) to the day we finally sold her. Spoiler alert: I am a bad driver and made so many mistakes.

Once upon a time, an American girl moved to a little town in Slovakia, and she fell in love with the country, and with a boy. And then another boy. And then about a dozen boys fell in love with her. Many linguistic and romantic antics ensued, and a happy ending unlike any she could have foreseen.

Two Years Before the Mast is an 1840 memoir by the author Richard Henry Dana. A Harvard graduate, he spent the years 1834 to 1836 as a sailor on a merchant ship on a voyage from Boston to California. The journey took them past Cape Horn on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet. Dana provides detailed descriptions of ship life and the technical aspects of sailing. A chapter on California and its inhabitants offers valuable historical insights on the state which was then a foreign land.

Here is a travel audiobook with a difference: 10 chronological chapters from a year of wandering, from the Pacific Northwest to Tuscany and back again to the trout-laden streams of California. Join Bill Barich as he travels the globe, from the trout streams of Northern California to the auction ring at Saratoga, where millions of dollars may be gaveled away for a yearling thoroughbred; from seedy London pubs to a run-down Florentine palazzo during a glorious Italian spring.

Mike McIntyre and his longtime girlfriend, Andrea, are in their early 40s and itching for a break. So they rent out their San Diego home - dog, cat, and furniture included - and embark on a yearlong journey around the world. "We're not out to find ourselves, or even to lose ourselves," McIntyre writes. "We're merely seeking a pause in our routines." But the couple is soon swept up in the adventure of a lifetime.