The "wanna goes"
Looking through magazines, books and travel guides, we are often hit with the "wanna goes," that moment when our eyes get starry and we look up and say, "Wanna go!" Where would you go if you could, and what would you really want to do? Does this place look interesting? Does that activity get your heart racing? What would it take to go there?
Before you answer the question with "money concerns," think again. There are many ways to get to anywhere your heart desires. The point is to "go" and not sit still. If the spirit is willing, the feet will find a way.
For now, just let your imagination carry you away. Keep a notebook or journal near you and stuff it with clippings and notes of every place you find in a magazine, book or television show or advertisement that strikes your fancy. Cut out pictures and articles, collect travel brochures and information about all the places that get your heart racing. This book is your "pre-travel journal," your collection of dreams. It doesn’t cost anything to explore the world from your comfy chair.
When it comes time to plot your adventure, go through the journal. Ask yourself what it is about each place that caught your attention. It doesn’t matter if you are a tourist, photographer, or adventurer. Do you "wanna go" because you like the look of a place? Or the feel? Do you wanna go because of the activities the locale has to offer? Are you inspired by the adventures you might find? Do you like the amenities? What about the temperature? The weather in general? Are the activities of interest dependent upon weather? Does it offer more than one subject of interest? Add these thoughts in a list to your pre-travel journal.
“Are we almost there?”
“We’re almost there and no where near it. All that matters is we’re going.”
“We’re practically there already.”
“Look out world!”
Dialogue between Rory and Loreli Gilmore,
TV show – Gilmore Girls: Red Light on Wedding Night
Deciding when and where
From the information in your pre-travel journal, all dog-eared and ready for cultivation, it’s time to make plans. There are two methods to deciding when and where to go. The first method we call the "Location Lust" method and the other is the "Action Adventure" method.
- Location Lust
- This is the process of determining where you want to go based on location. It is the easiest decision of the process. "I want to go to Hawaii." "I want to visit Paris." You’ve made your decision. The lust for the location and the desire to explore a place is more important than the activities and people at the location.
- Action Adventure
- When the activities and adventure of a location interest you more than the location itself, it is a yearning for an "Action Adventure." "I want to go skiing" announces that you need to find a locale with great skiing. It could be anywhere as long as snow is present and the lifts are open. "I want to go white-water rafting" is dependent upon a location with good white water rafting, of which there are many. After making your "Action Adventure" decision, weather and location come into play.
A decision can be a combination of the two. If you want to go white water rafting and you have your heart set on the Colorado River, you have a lust for a specific location tied into your action adventure. Either way, being clear about the reasons you are going helps you plan your trip.
When to Go
If you want to see Paris, maybe the best time to go would be in the spring when the trees are all in bloom. Or is another time the best time to visit Paris? The next step in planning is to figure out when to go. "When to go" 
entails some additional research, unless the information is already in your travel journal. When is the prime time for the location or activity? For the Location Luster, the prime time would be when the locale is at its most spectacular for viewing and exploring. If Texas in bloom is the location you crave, April is the prime time for rolling in wildflowers. For skiing, winter is clearly the best time in the Rockies, but skiing on the Matterhorn in Switzerland and other places can be done in July and August.
For the Action Adventurer, many factors need to be considered. If the activity requires tickets and is popular, your planning must include advance ticket purchases and lodging reservations, maybe six months or more in advance. Do you have to bring special equipment, like scuba gear or canoes, or can you rent what you need there? Day hikers require little more than good shoes and a pack with food and water, while other outdoor activities may require specialized training and certification and possibly even a guide. List all the special requirements of the activity you are interested in and figure out the logistics to make it all happen. There’s more on preparations and planning in Part II.
When planning a trip, sometimes it is easier to let someone else do it, someone with more experience and familiarity with the area. Travel agents are probably the best resources and definitely the most experienced. They typically get into the travel industry because they love travel. They have already been through most of the harrowing experiences and challenges you may face. Take advantage of their experience and use them to plan your trip. They will handle all of the details that can overwhelm the inexperienced traveler, such as meals, lodging, airlines, car rentals, and insurance. All you have to do is pick the place, the time (they can even help with both of these) and show up.
Travel magazines are great resources for a variety of locales and activities. If you are working on an 
Many local visitor bureaus, chambers of commerce, hotels, and tourist information centers offer brochures and pamphlets on places outside of their jurisdiction. Even stores featuring outdoor and travel gear may have information on trips and tours all over the world. Most brochures and books will list the local agency you can write or call and request information from. This information is typically the best and most updated for recommendations on where to stay and what to do.
Don’t think the trip you are planning has never been done before. Ask for recommendations and advice from friends, relatives, neighbors and co-workers. Take some of their comments with the proverbial grain of salt, but look for those tidbits that tickle your fancy. Ask about favorite restaurants, what they enjoyed most, what they enjoyed least, where they stayed, and what cultures they found. Their perspective may give you a fresh insight into your trip, and when you return, you will have someone to exchange stories with.
Yep, Dahni is famous. Impressed with Dahni after a visit, a friend told her daughter, the magazine writer, about his accomplishments. The daughter called me for an interview with Dahni – and me. A few months later it was published in the Ma’Ariv Children’s Magazine which is published weekly in the national Hebrew newspaper. Here is Brent’s translation of the Hebrew article for your enjoyment.
Our hero is Dahni, an extraordinary black street cat. Or perhaps, the hero is Lorelle, his owner, an American who has lived in the country for several years. She understood how special Dahni was and saved his life. She’s no ordinary woman!
In a campground with water hookups, we wash dishes the same as everyone else, though we use less water than most households. Dry camping without water hookups means changing our system of washing dishes. Using water then becomes a problem of having enough and getting rid of it when we are done. A trailer and motor home have two systems to handle water. First there is the fresh water tank where water is stored before using. In our trailer, our fresh water tank is 40 gallons. The second system is made up of two parts and is the disposal water system or sewer. A grey water tank holds the waste water from the shower and kitchen sink. A black water tank holds the sewer from the toilet. In our case we have two grey tanks, a 20 gallon in the kitchen and 40 gallon for the bathroom. We also have a 40 gallon black water tank.
Ah, food. One of our favorite subjects. Brent is an incredible cook, experimenting frequently. Recently, I thoroughly enjoyed homemade lasagna, homemade spaghetti sauce, sauteed shrimp on rice, baked pork chops with a three cheese crispy coating, and homemade chocolate chip, coconut cookies! I wear it well. In reality, it is cheaper to eat in the trailer than in restaurants and fast food stops. We eat out once in a while, especially since our best friend, Bruce Groninger, gave us a going away present of a ton of gift certificates for the Olive Garden (found all over the country) so we can take a break from Brent’s cooking once in a while.
We have an answering machine installed on a separate line at their home in Tulsa, and the phone service is set up as a “limited access” service costing less than $15 a month compared to $30 for a regular full service phone. There is no phone attached, so it doesn’t ring when we call in for messages.
Honestly, this is a very good question. Brent cooks with mostly fresh meats and vegetables, so we have to stock up frequently. We are very reliant upon Costco and Sam’s Club for their great prices. Wal-Mart Superstores are also great places for travelers to shop, especially those with RVs, as the parking lot is large enough to accommodate the vehicle.
While living in the USA, we used Compuserve as our online service and loved it. Half the time we find information we needed under the auspices of Compuserve and rarely went out on the Internet. We used an off-line reader to pick up our mail and access the forums there. This software allowed us to get email and forum mail and then hang up and read and respond without connecting. When we are ready to get online again, the program goes through the whole process all over again, allowing us to get on and off borrowed telephones as fast as possible. We talk about connecting to the Internet in our article 
The first rule in protecting yourself from theft and break-ins is to not be a target. We travel all over the place, staying in campgrounds that some would consider shady, and others we considered very ritzy. We’ve never felt “unsafe” anywhere, but part of that is attitude. The point for us is our “targetability”. We discuss this more thoroughly in our article on 
Coin-operated laundries mats are everywhere. Most campgrounds have them, too. The trick to doing your laundry quickly is to show up when the place is empty. Mornings are usually the busiest, with evenings being next. So we like to head over right after noon, when everyone is at lunch. This way we can spread our wash over several machines. Dryers are the most painful part of the process. Each one works differently; some are faster, some slower, and some just look like they are working. We keep a close watch on our clothing as some commercial dryers run so hot they will literally cook your clothing.
What a great question. And we wish we had a clear answer. Saying "because it’s there" just doesn’t cut it, but that is part of the answer. I guess we are doing this because WE CAN.
Yes, we are writing two books about our adventures. More may come out of all of this, but right now we are starting with two. One is about the technical aspect of our travels called 
This is one of our favorite questions, and yet the most difficult to answer. When we ask people who’ve been married for 20, 30, 50, 60 years, they tell us that it takes hard work and a commitment to make it work. For Brent and me, while there are more than plenty of hard times, we find the whole process of togetherness easy and wonderful. Everyday is filled with learning something new or finding something exciting and wonderful in the other person. We are so thankful to have each other, sharing every moment, the good and the bad…we just revel in being alive and together. We’ve learned the hard way that life is short and you have to treasure every moment because together they all add up to a life lived.
This may seem like a strange question, but it is a very good one. Traveling in strange places away from family and friends and our support network, handing loss can be really difficult. Let’s break this down to how we get the news, and then how we deal with it.
Another good question. Unfortunately our answer keeps changing. While traveling in North America, we missed the things we took for granted when we lived in one place and knew where everything was. There are just some days when knowing where the next gas station or grocery store is means more to us than the adventure we are on. There is a security that comes with familiarity of a location. Living on the road full-time, you lose that security.
We do sell our photography. We specialize in editorial photography which means that we sell the use of our original slide images to magazines and newspapers. We also sell our photography to stock agencies and for commercial use, but we rarely ever sell a print of our nature or travel photography work. Why? We rarely sell prints of our photographs because we want to present the very best of our work and a fine quality color print from a slide is very expensive, though there are more inexpensive high quality scanners and printers available. The process of having a slide made into a print for framing is not only costly but time consuming. Living on the road, such services are hard to find, not always trustworthy, and therefore more trouble than its worth. If you are interested in one of our nature photography images in print form, please let us know and be aware that our starting price is USD$1000 unframed.
We specialize in nature photography, especially in North America with a growing inventory of photographic images from Israel and Europe. We also have a wide selection of travel related subjects. We have a good inventory of patterns and textures in nature, which we enjoy doing, along with interesting closeups in nature. A little of everything nature and travel oriented. You can find out more about our photographic inventory on our 
Our favorite photography subjects are nature-related. We love photographing mammals of all shapes and sizes from the proud elk in Canada to the tiniest pika found in the rocky slopes of high mountains. We also photograph insects, amphibians, snakes, flowers, weeds, and rocks. Brent is passionate about photographing birds. Lorelle loves travel-related subjects like historical and archeological places and old markets. In general, we love capturing the world around us, especially the natural world, in all its shapes and sizes and funkiness.
But, we also have favorites. In general, I love longer zoom lenses which allow me the flexibility to carry less equipment and to photograph and move quickly, working the full range from closeup to scenic perspectives. Brent works slower and enjoys creating more dramatic presentations. He loves wide angle lenses, from 17mm to 35mm in range. He also loves his big 500mm lens he has, as it allows him to bring the close closer (especially with his bird photography) and to isolate a scene in a 
When we know we are going to be at a location for a least two weeks, we send our slide film off to Fuji Labs in Phoenix, Arizona, with a return address to the campground. It usually returns in 5 – 7 days, but we leave some room for doubt. If we are in a hurry for film particular to an article, we will use a local professional lab.
It holds the camera steady, eliminating camera-shake, giving you a sharper focused photograph. Actually, the best answer to this question came from 
We had a blast staying with our friends, Maresa, Chuck and Patrick in Sarasota, Florida. We wedged in their long narrow driveway wedged between their house and the neighbors, which blocked most of the storm winds. It was fun and relaxing as Brent and Maresa took turns fixing awesome meals, and I swear I gained more weight. Maresa and her family rehabilitate squirrels and I was honored with a chance to hold one. “Bob” is just too cute and fun. Injured as a baby, Bob had his tail amputated, restricting his return to the wild. He’s a part of the family now, and quite a character. Chuck brought him in the house and he ran all over the place including UP our legs at the speed of light, his little pinching claws pin-pricking our skin as he crawled up. He thinks we’re trees. Chuck gave him nuts which would send Bob into a flurry to race all over the house to find a place to hide them. Patrick’s bed, down under the covers, is a favorite spot, causing the 14 year old to scream at his parents at bed time, “Mom! Bob’s been in my bed again!” Other favorite spots include under the couch, the fireplace, garbage cans, anywhere he feels would make a good permanent spot. After he is put back out in his large cage on the back deck, a search of the house rounds up the nuts for use on his next excursion. It was a riot. Maresa takes Bob camping with her from time to time, even though he’s still in the dog house from trying to eat out the fabric covering the speakers in the RV last time.
Okay, now, we return from the station break to vent our frustration about a certain wildlife.
We have a mouse. And not just any mouse. We call it the MOUSE from HELL! Upon arrival in Ft. Myers, I unrolled the plastic bath mats we use to cover the hoses and electrical power cords so people won’t trip, only to find that in the space of a couple of hours between Sarasota and Ft. Myers, they were now well ventilated with huge holes chewed in them. Furious, I started pulling everything out of the small “basement” in the trailer. When I pulled out a plastic milk container filled with bird seed, a huge hole in the side of it spilled seed husks were spread all over the place. Emptying the basement, we found the booger had eaten a huge hole in our heater vent going into the bedroom, which gave the stinker access from the basement into our generator compartment.
The thing has a fetish for plastic. Ate miles of covering off wires, hoses, even consumed 3/4s of the bristles off Brent’s favorite paint brush. The damage was extensive. We found mouse poop everywhere. So we cleared everything out of the basement and the generator. Oh, you wouldn’t believe what was eaten and bit on.
We tossed that out along with tons of other things. We washed all the pots and pans and dishes and canned food and everything that was down there with hot soapy water and rinsed everything with a bleach bath and then rinsed it again. I found my little portable telephone with a headphone/mic for talking while making interview phone calls, since it leaves my hands free to take notes by hand or on the computer, chewed up all along the microphone wire, cutting it up into little pieces.
I’m almost ready to seal up the two access holes and hope the thing just dies in the floor boards, but I have this vision of this monster mouse with a huge bloated plastic-filled belly using a huge splinter from our floor supports to pick its teeth while lying back on a couch made from our floor insulation, staring out the “doors” chewed in our heating system. He’ll keep eating away until I step down the hall stairs into the living room one morning and hit ground as the floor gives way. Oh, GAWD!
We research birds, mammals, seasons, and information about different areas for the best time to visit and plan accordingly, as best we can. Sometimes we sit down with advertisements from photo travel companies and check out where and when they think it is the best time to be somewhere. Sometimes we decide we need a particular subject and research where to find it and go there. Sometimes it’s word of mouth and just guessing. Sometimes it’s because we have a program or workshop in that area.
We have a Chevy, 1 ton, crew cab (four doors), dually wheels, 1988 pickup truck. It ain’t pretty but it does the job. We’ve installed steel headers and a special exhaust system which cools the engine better and increases efficiency. While an automatic and not four wheel drive, this truck has some serious pulling power. We have a 30 foot trailer that weighs about 10,000 pounds and the gasoline engine pulls it without much debate. We write about 
Oh, we get lost, from time to time, but we avoid it as much as possible. With a truck that gets 6 miles to the gallon, getting lost can be expensive. We are very dependent upon maps, of all kinds. We have statewide maps from Rand McNally, but we will also buy area maps. We have a lot of guidebooks for nature areas and always pick up more at visitor’s centers when we arrive.
we handle emergencies just like anyone else: sometimes with grace and style, and sometimes with frustration and anguish.
When we will be in a place for at least a week, we call Brent’s parents, the keepers of our mail, and they box it up and send it to us. We were going to use a mailing service, of which there are many good ones, but his family wanted to be a part of our adventure and handle it. We are so thankful for their wonderful dedication to this process. It means so much to us. 
Camping consists of two forms of accommodation: the quickie stop and the longer term stay. When traveling from place to place, we often make use of truck stops, rest areas, and inexpensive campgrounds near the highway. We will often travel several days in a row, moving from Florida to Arizona, or Arizona to Texas or even 
from Oklahoma to Florida in a couple of days, so we only need a place to pull over to sleep for a few hours and then we’re back on the road. Truck stops are the most convenient, when you can find them. While it is illegal in many states for trucks to leave their engines running for more than a 1/2 hour or so while parking, many leave their engines going all night long. You get used to it. Security is rarely an issue as the rule of the highway is that everybody looks out for everybody else – but do take precautions.
We got rid of just about everything we owned at garage sales. We scattered the remains with friends. In the Seattle area, our light tables are with friends in Bellingham, our huge filing cabinets for our slides are in Gig Harbor with another friend. Our couch is at another friend’s home in Everett. Some boxes of precious books and mementos are at my mother’s house and our TV and some book cases are at my fathers. Our stereo is at a girlfriend’s in Seattle and Lorelle’s piano is with a friend of Brent’s. We didn’t limit the spread of our stuff to the Pacific Northwest. We carried furniture with us to Oklahoma to store with Brent’s family. One sister has a table and other furniture in Tulsa and the other sister has another table and other stuff in Florida. Not only are we travelers, our stuff is, too.
Our 
Being small and quick, they’re hard to spot and harder to photograph. You have to look for quite a while as they blend in with the grey and brown rocks quite well. By watching them over the years, we’ve learned that they follow the same 5 or 6 paths over and over again, pausing at a high viewpoint to scout out the area for predators, then diving back down into the rocks. If you watch long enough, you can predict their path and have your camera ready to catch great shots of them dragging shrub branches and grasses through the rocks.
While photographing these aggressive pikas along the highway, Brent was on one side of the rock field and I was on the other side along an old abandoned road working my own set of wild and vicious pikas. A couple of willow trees and the rocks kept the two of us out of sight of each other.
A car drove by on the highway only a few yards away. It slowed down as it passed. This is not unusual. It happens all the time. A car slowing or stopped usually means “oh-oh, animal sighted” so everyone stops to see what others are stopping to see. When we stopped a week ago to photograph some beautiful fall colored trees on the hillside above, cars stopped to see what we were seeing. After the millionth car and millionth answer to the tourists, “See the lovely colored trees” and watching them drive off disappointed, my dear, patient husband answered back, “Yeah, it was a bear! You should have seen it! It was THIS BIG! Big and drooling and had HUGE teeth and claws!” “Really?” “Nah, we’re just photographing these trees. See how pretty they are?” “TREES? You’re taking pictures of TREES? Come on, Martha, keep driving. What’s so great about trees?! Crazy people!”
Then the mantra chant started in. I call this the motivational self discussion. “Oh, my god, what am I going to do, it’s a real moose, oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my god, what am I gonna to do, what am I gonna to do, oh my god, oh, my god, oh, my god….” and so on. When my head finally cleared from the shock, I had the wherewithal to ask Brent if moose charge.
As the moose, drooling, trotted towards me, his little – whatever you call it thingy dangling from his neck swinging back and forth – I realized that my slow scoot-and-butt-drag-with-the-tripod towards the rocks wasn’t going to work. I finally voted for the duck-and-pray-that-he-thinks-I’m-a-bush idea. Curling myself up behind the tripod, I heard the monster break into a run, his hoofs crunching into the gravel, right at me.
“Oh, sh#t, it’s a real freakin’ moose!” he screamed into my ear. As the monster trotted off into the woods, I laid back on the gravel panting, now warmer than I had been in days, and pushed back my hood and pulled off my hat, tugging off my scarf from my face so I could suck in safe, clean air. I shook my hair out of my hat and lay there on the old road just glad to be alive. A voice from the road interrupted my relief.
Traveling on the road full-time, asking directions becomes part and parcel of everyday life. While living in Spain, I found the word “there” had a lot of different meanings. This added to the general confusion associated with asking for directions. The word “there” translates into Spanish as alla and va par alla and the list goes on. All are offered up by the locals when handing out directions. I ask where the post office is and get “Well, let me see, it’s down there, and then over there, and then you go way over there, and then just a little bit to there, and then you turn there and you’ll see it.” Very helpful. My favorite is ” va por alla ” which basically means “go for WAY over there”. I get confused with all these “theres”, and it must show on my face because next thing I know my arm is in a vise grip and I’m being dragged to exactly where “there” is by a very determined, but helpful, elderly lady in black.
In the city, I find I get very specific directions. “Go to the end of the block and turn right on Smith. Go three blocks to a street light. That’s Anderson Road. Turn left and it’s the third house on the right. House number 80.” Direct. No time wasting. Easy to remember, with a couple of landmarks thrown in. I call this kind of direction giving The Dragnet Method : Just the facts, ma’am. The instructions are brief, to the point and clear, just like Jack Web in the old television show.
One of my favorite direction methods is The Landmark Method. It is offered up in two variations. I punched a hole in my bike tire in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, and needed to get it fixed. Brent and I walked half the length of the town to only find one bike shop which was closed on Mondays. Of course, it was Monday. I finally stopped and went in for directions at an auto repair shop. For a while, I thought I was having problems with the language, but then I remembered: I speak English, too.
This method is based upon landmarks of where people live and their mailboxes if you can’t see the house or another landmark from the road. This harkens back to the good old days when a mailbox was the major source of communication in the world. Another variation on this uses stop lights. Read through the above and replace most of the mail boxes with stop lights and you’ll see what we mean.
The life of a nature photographer does have its exciting moments, especially when you get under the sheets with your camera. The use of camouflage can make a difference in how close you can get to nature. Many animals are threatened or suspicious of sights, sounds, and smells they don’t recognize. The human form and scent is one they usually associate with danger.
humans, when a tiger hunts at night, its sight is six times better than a human’s. Most predatory animals rely heavily upon the ability to detect motion rapidly. Frogs and some simple vertebrates may not even see an object unless it is moving. Dangle a dead fly on a string in front of a starving frog and it will not sense it until it moves.
The physical presence of a human can be disguised by changing shape, form, and color. The human form is very recognizable. Changes in the shape and form can be simple such as covering yourself with a sheet or wearing items that change your shape, like tree branches on a hat. By wearing clothing that blends in with the surroundings, your shape can become invisible against the background and foreground.
Take care to cover your face and hands along with the rest of your body as you work to blend into the surroundings. Remove watches, rings, and anything that can reflect light and attract attention to you. Take care with binoculars, camera lenses, and eye glasses as they can also reflect light. Mosquito netting which covers the face and gloves on your hands works well as an alternative to camouflage paints.
small structures. Where wildlife live alongside a highway or road, they become accustomed to seeing vehicles, so a stopped car can become a blind as the animal is used to seeing it. If you step out of the car, they usually recognize a human and run. Anytime a foreign 
structure appears in nature, it is usually avoided by the local inhabitants. Once they have grown accustomed to it, it is forgotten. Sometimes digging a hole in the ground and covering it with a tarp coated with leaves and branches gets a photographer down to the eye level of small animals. Bird photographers often build tree-houses to get to the eye level of their subjects. Some photographers who work with remote cameras and exceptionally sensitive animals will paint empty food cans black to resemble a camera lens and place them nearby for several months, allowing the bird time to become accustomed to the presence of a camera without the risk of leaving an expensive camera outside for months.
Take care in approaching the blind. Walk or crawl slowly and keep your movements few and close to your body, making little noise. Consider spending a lot of time inside a blind after you enter it waiting for the animals to return, or enter it at a time when the animals are elsewhere feeding or sleeping. Pat and Tom Leeson, well-known nature photographers and specialists on eagles, found that eagles could count. If two people went into a blind, and one came out, the birds would stay away, waiting for the second person to leave. They finally came up with a system where two people would enter the blind but then one would leave with a coat on a hanger, resembling the second person, and soon the eagles would return.
A bedsheet in natural and floral print drapped over you and your camera gear hides your movements and blends you into the background.
Camouflaging your scent involves several steps. The first step is the elimination of scents on your body and clothing. Then consider your equipment. Your camera bag and back pack can also carry scents. Food tucked inside can be smelled by some animals even through plastic containers. Sun and hand lotion can rub onto your camera equipment, bringing those scents with you. Take care to clean these items thoroughly with scent neutralizing soaps. Next, consider using cover scents, scents from animals or nature. Take care to choose a scent that matches your surroundings. When you are working with deer or elk, using a wolf scent would not be appropriate, but deer and elk scents are readily available at many sporting goods stores.