I'm a traveling man...

I love to travel. I admit it. I love everything about it: the planning, the decision-making, the choices - do we go here? or there? or both? do we drive? do we fly? do we stay here or there? I love the packing, and I especially love the anticipation.

I also love to drive - it's another one of my favourite things. I like huge highways and I like small country roads. I'm picky about the amount of driving I do in a day - unlike my friend Leanne who thinks a 10 hour day of driving is reasonable. My comfort level is maybe 5 or 6 hours (or even less), mostly because I like to stop. For shopping and sighting and for whatever else catches my fancy along the way.

I also love airports (yes, I love airports), the waitnig lounge, the restaurants and bars and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the people watching. Okay, I admit I don't like to fly (who does?) but everything else? I'm there.

So this summer has been a terrific summer for me. I've spent a big part of it travelling all over the US - okay, not exactly ALL over, but pretty close.

We started in Seattle for the zoo - funny, though, I don't have any animal pictures.

Then down the Oregon Coast during the coldest July anyone could remember. The good news? We did some great tax-free shopping, ate some amazing seafood, and the water was turquoise, the waves were white, and the beaches were unimaginably beautiful.

Then down the coast to Northern California to see the redwoods and they're definitely worth seeing. We have big trees here in British Columbia so it's not as if I'm not used to it but those redwoods? Drop dead gorgeous.


Then down to Eureka to see the gorgeous painted ladies - the Victorian houses that have survived since the Gold Rush.

Then over to Sacramento to visit friends, who took us to San Francisco for a day. From a sunny 100 degrees to a fogbound 65 in one relatively short drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. But I've always loved San Francisco - as I love any city you can walk - so I'm not complaining about the weather. Besides, the food and wine and company more than made up for it.

The back up to Seattle to my favourite writing conference - met some old friends, made some new ones, and enjoyed, as always, every single minute of it.

And the final ending to an already great holiday?

New York for a week. Walking, walking, walking and shopping, shopping, shopping. Plus plenty of art and museums and people watching. New York is great for all those things.

I have this plan for some year in the future. I want to take a month or three (I haven't quite figured out how long it would take) and walk every single street in New York City. I want to walk from the bottom to the top and every single street in between. I want to take a large scale street map, pin it to a wall, and highlight every street I've seen and walked. And I want to take pictures - hundreds of them.

Wouldn't that be fun?

Kate