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A natural hot spring

Recharge in the Healing Waters of Hot Springs National Park

If you’re looking for a rare and restorative national park experience, Hot Springs National Park should be on your shortlist. Nestled in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, Hot Springs National Park offers a unique blend of natural beauty, history, and therapeutic geothermal waters you won’t find anywhere else in North America. It’s the perfect destination for a relaxing weekend getaway. I traveled solo to the park because I needed a long, hot soak and lacked an excellent bathtub or natural...

Rene Cizio sitting in her van putting on her hiking boots while wearingKUHL pants

12 Safety Tips for Solo Female Travel

As a solo female traveler, other women often ask if it’s safe, isn’t it dangerous, or aren’t I afraid? Should I really be traveling alone?  Yes, no, no, YES! I won’t kid you. Traveling alone comes with a series of obstacles and considerations. I’ve been on many solo trips to several places in Europe, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Canada and have traveled alone for nearly two years. So I know a few things about solo female travel safety. Here...

Angel statue at Bonaventure cemetery with pink and white azalea flowers in spring

6 Sights in Savannah from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Before the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” few people went to Savannah, Georgia. After, everybody went. In 1993, the year before John Berendt published the book, about five million people visited Savannah. In 1995, that number increased by 50%, and by 2022, they received approximately 14.8 million visitors yearly. Much of it, like me, is still from the book or the subsequent movie. Even those who have never read “Midnight in the Garden of Good and...

The author bundled in all black begins to accelerate. Blue sky behind, white snow everywhere. The moonbike is side angle showing the rear wheel is a track and the front tire a ski

What it’s like to Ride a MoonBike in Michigan  

When it comes to winter adventure, you may think you’ve done it all, but then they invent a MoonBike and it’s back out into the great white outdoors we go. If you’ve followed my adventures these last two years as I’ve traveled around North America on my solo road trip, you’ll have noticed I don’t spend much time in the snow. I’ve actively avoided it until now. But that was before I saw the word “MoonBike” in a news story....

St. Phillip's Church in Charleston

Charleston Haints and Graveyard Ghosts

Down south, I went looking for Charleston haints and other cemetery ghosts. Haints are just Southern ghosts. In the south, there are ghosts on every corner, so it’s a good place for storytelling. In Charleston, there are the ghostly soldiers still dueling in the street, an apparition of the proprietress still in the restaurant bathroom, and a library patron who haunts his old books. There’s a great story about a famous poet, another about a female serial killer, and even...

Clear teal water show white limestone-covered tree stumps in front of tall green pine trees

Journey to Kitch-iti-kipi, Michigan’s Mirror of Heaven

Kitch-iti-kipi is so crystal-clear that you can see the bottom of the 40-foot-deep spring, where the water gushes in. However, it’s so still on top it reflects the surrounding trees like a mirror. It’s a natural freshwater spring in Palms Book State Park in Manistique, Michigan, in the Central Upper Peninsula. As the largest spring in Michigan, it’s known for unusually clear teal water. It’s a great place to visit as a part of your Michigan UP journey or to...

A dark red steel bridge surrounded by green trees

New River Gorge National Park: Explore the Beauty of West Virginia

The New River Gorge in West Virginia is the newest national park in the United States. This little-known location wasn’t on my radar for a long time, but I’m glad I found it. This park is worth visiting if you like outdoor recreation, history and spectacular views. I’ve been to 29 national parks and there are the types that are closed off like a theme park and those that are part of the community that you might drive through on...

A white marble bust of Poe
landscape view down a long cell block filled with light and doors

Is it Haunted? Let’s Go Inside Eastern State Penitentiary

Some say Eastern State Penitentiary is haunted. I don’t know if that’s true but it is haunting. Strong energy lingers and clings, calling for notice as you walk past empty, ruined cells. Block after block; these small, featureless rooms now hold only impressions of those who once dwelled there, locked in perpetual isolation. There’s a heaviness in those cell blocks; though hundreds walk through them daily, an eerie silence permeates everything. Like the people who used to be locked inside,...