Summer’s not over yet. (Oh, to be a kid in the Pacific Northwest where the school year starts after Labor Day!) Make these last weekends count, people.
1. KUOW’s Weekday radio program tackled an all-important question last week: What’s on your Northwest Life List? Local travel writer Crai Bower refuses to call it a bucket list, and evidently has no shame in co-opting “life list” from the bird people. (As a member of the bird people myself, I’m on the fence about this). Anyway, “Life List” it is. After fifteen years of traveling here, my list is still immense. I want to go backpacking in the Salmo Priest Wilderness, take a road trip through the Chilcontin in BC, and go rafting down the Snake River. And that’s just in the next year! What’s on your Northwest Life List?
2. You don’t have to have a whole week of vacation time to take a cruise. A few luxury cruise lines and smaller freighters offer short cruises around the Pacific Northwest, some that are actually affordable. I’ve always maintained that I’m not one of those cruise people (having already admitted to being one of the bird people), but this sounds kinda fun. Check it out in the Seattle Times.
3. I’ll soon get to start telling people: “I knew Langdon way back when…” Professional forager and Fat of the Land author Langdon Cook is, well, everywhere these days. If he ever gets off his road trip with the mushroom people and returns my email, he’ll be featured on this very blog, too. Until then, you’ll have to pick up Seattle Magazine or Sunset, both which are feature seafood foraging pieces by Langdon this month. See, you don’t have to go to a fish market for Manila clams; hit the beach with a bucket and a garden cultivator! That’s what the clam people do.
4. Everyone should have a favorite place. Maybe it’s your back yard, or maybe it’s a local destination you return to year after year. For Seattle writer Pam Mandel, that place is the Olympic Peninsula. In a recent piece she penned for World Hum, Pam lets us in on how the Olympic Peninsula reaches into her soul and slows the world down. I’m not going to say more about it, because I think you should just read it, and enjoy. And then, of course, visit there yourself.
5. I am all about sustainable, green travel. It’s why my family travels locally. It’s one of the primary reasons I started this website, Northwest TripFinder. And so I am quite excited to be attending the P.U.R.E. Travel Collaborative 2011 Green Travel Road Show— “Telling Your Story: Stake Your Claim in the Cascadia Travel Market.” The 2-day event will focus on the power of storytelling in marketing sustainable travel, and I think this will bring together some savvy small travel businesses and tourism organizations with travel writers. If you are an independent travel business that strives for sustainability and you want to better engage a targeted audience of conscientious travelers, the Green Travel Road Show will be a good investment of time for you. It’s October 6 – 7 at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Seattle, and early bird registration end on August 31. So it you’re thinking about attending, go ahead and register now!
