Vanuatu gave incredible us insight into the old ways on Pacific islands, when men wore nambas (penis sheaths), women wore grass skirts and all survived off the fruits of the ocean, tarot roots and drank kava as a community every afternoon. Enjoy this short video of native dancers on Ambryn Island in Vanuatu.

The Spanish Colonial heritage of Oaxaca Mexico serves as a stunning backdrop for Guelaguetza, the celebration of all things indigenous. An entire week of dances, costumes and foods celebrate their ancient Zapotec past

White elephants - a curse and a blessing

We discovered that disaster response work is messy, chaotic, and difficult—but we were hooked. It felt great to be vital and useful in a meaningful way. Watch this video about traveling into the hardship areas of Nepal to install communications and internet for Red Cross field hospitals, surgical units and clinics.

Friends wonder what it’s like when my husband, Glen, and I deploy to disaster zones—at times living in what some consider to be hardship conditions. Here’s a little insight:

I loved long passages—21 days seemed our magic number for the three longest. Some of what kept me busy I described in my book

Beekeeping is no instant gratification hobby and figuratively speaking, beekeepers are a dying breed.

Sweden won my heart when I looked out the window of the train and saw an ad for a floor cleaning product that featured a man with a mop and bucket.

Lazy rivers, working windmills and fields of flowers had so far marked our journey from Amsterdam as we pedaled our way to Bruges, Belgium.

“There, did you see that?” Ben Kittell, our fly fishing guide on the Lower Deshutes River pointed a few feet from where I balanced in the current. He whispered, “A fish just broke the surface”.

if you have to say goodbye to something wonderful and start a new phase of adventures, Bali, Indonesia is a good place to start.

“Aye, that’s a tricky period for finding your Ancestors.” A nice way of saying that the hours of online research to find John Jamieson, my Scottish ancestor, were for nothing. Birth records in Edinburgh showed I had the wrong guy.

The past few days Glen and I had our heads in our work; installing communications for the Red Cross disaster response in Saipan after Super Typhoon Soudelor devastated the island.

Back from Nepal with only 4 days to prepare for this trip of a lifetime; a rafting trip on the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon.

Red Cross deploys an Emergency Response Unit (ERU) to install emergency disaster communications to support earthquake relief efforts in Nepal

Dhunche, a remote village high in the northern mountains where we were going to support a 35 person Canadian Red Cross medical unit perched on a narrow strip of rare, flat land.

The past few days our job in the American Red Cross IT/Telecoms ERU has been to support field units in the hardest hit areas of Nepal.

The aftershocks, which have been rolling across Kathmandu sporadically since April 25, shake the region almost as much as the initial 7.8 quake.

we considered ourselves part of the first wave of what will become a flood of American tourism as things improve between America and Cuba.

Months ago, friends suggested I volunteer to ride as “sweep” for the 36 mile rocky, winding, singletrack Mountain Bike Tour of the White Mountains in our town of Pinetop, Arizona.