I am putting the final touches on plans for my next travel adventure.  While this trip will be largely work driven (meeting people, visiting the shows, etc. etc.)  I am reminded of something that I wanted to share with you.   Travel by non-guide book is kinda great.

When we plan a trip, especially to foreign destinations, we buy a guidebook….but we also check out other books and employ other ideas for getting to places that others have not quite discovered (this is important to us -we hate being part of tourist throngs).   We once spent a trip through France with a road map that we had taken a highlighter to, marking a cross-reference between a France photography book that had been gifted to us and the map —  we charted a course from yellow highlighter dot to yellow dot.  (this was great for finding beautiful off the beaten path villages and picturesque places).  We have traveled by patch, taking wild detours to any National Park, Monument, or historic site so that the kids could collect patches from the place. Or the Road Food trip, were where we navigated by the Road Food guide and ate our way through back-roads. (pie, frogs legs, lobster, biscuits and gravy, tacos, etc…). Then there was our famous alphabet trip that started in ‘A’nnapolis, MD and ended in ‘Y’ork, PA with a stop in ‘N’ewport, RI where we got caught in a hurricane.

I’m always on the look out for new ways to navigate….and I have found one.  Between Celebritrees: Historic and Famous Trees of the World (which I discovered in the kids section of our library) and my copy of Remarkable Trees of the World  I am prepared to navigate by tree.   Now I just wish I could travel also by map. (Muppet-fan reference).

 image from apartment therapy