Nancy Mueller, Author at Wanderboomer

BY Nancy Mueller Leave a Comment ON April 21, 2011

Spring Days in Portland

Portland, Oregon might be known as the City of Roses, but you know it’s Spring when the cherry blossoms burst forth along Waterfront Park, brightening the gloomy, gray skies in the Pacific Northwest.

After meandering through The Portland Saturday Market, we continued walking north, past a dazzling display of these beautiful flowering trees. I wish we had been able to stay a little longer for the Cherry Blossom Festival, sponsored by the Japan-America Society of Oregon. What a wonderful tradition to celebrate the fleeting beauty of the blossoms with a picnic and musical entertainment, as they do in Japan.

This year the festival is a poignant reminder of the country’s recent tragedy and organizers focused on collecting donations for victims of the Japanese tsunami through the Oregon Japan Relief Fund at Mercy Corps.

Here are a few other signs of Spring that caught my eye on our walk through the city.

Let’s not forget the daffodils.

“More than anything, I must have flowers, always, always.”
– Claude Monet

I’m with you, Monet!

BY Nancy Mueller Leave a Comment ON April 19, 2011

Hello, Portland!

Time to get out and stretch those legs after our three hour drive from Seattle. Sure we had that pit stop in Chehalis, but that was awhile back, and we’re ready to check into our hotel.

For this trip we’re staying at Hotel Fifty, located downtown across from Waterfront Park. Perfect! Our room comes complete with a view of the park as well as the Williamette River and we can head directly to the dining room for a bite to eat after unpacking.

Portland is such a great town with so much to offer travelers of any age. Here’s what made the grade for this Boomer family on our short weekend getaway:

Tom McCall Waterfront Park – While it was fun to watch the world go by from the comfort of our hotel room, it was even more so to get out and about with bicyclists, pedicabs, runners and walkers. Kids and the young at heart need space to play and this park appeals to nature lovers, athletes, and entertainers.

In between rain squalls and sunbreaks, we watched marathoners participating in the Annual Race for the Roses, people walking their dogs and kids playing lacrosse. I was mesmerized by a woman twirling and criss-crossing cords with a weight at each end without once smacking herself in the head or face. Impressive!

We followed the park north for a few blocks and came upon the Portland Saturday Market, featuring food stands and a plethora of artists showcasing their colorful crafts, including jewelry, photography, clothing and musical instruments.

As a travel writer, I’m a sucker for beautifully designed journals that lay flat upon opening which I happily discovered at the booth of Jan Christine.

It was hard to choose only one, but I came away with a small, cloth-bound journal that just happened to have a map insert of Rochester and Syracuse, New York, very near where I grew up.

As we were finalizing the sale of my treasured purchase, Jan said she was taking a dollar off my order. When I asked her why, she said, “Because we had a nice conversation, it’s my business and my prerogative.” You have to love that. Thanks, Jan!

BY Nancy Mueller 4 Comments ON April 14, 2011

Pick a Card, Any Card

The Art of Travel Conversation scores an A+ on packaging design. You can’t help but be inspired by the beautiful art and travel words gracing the cover of this deck of cards. Comprehensive and sophisticated in their approach, Australian authors Keith Lamb and Louise Howland focus on “travel discussion that involves both serious thought and fun.” Clearly, the objective is not only to ignite conversation, but also to increase players’ knowledge and understanding of the world.

Topics include history, politics and geography, environmental awareness, areas of travel interest and creative pursuits. Each card contains three questions or imagination-starters, ranging in difficulty from elementary to advanced levels. The cards come with a 32-page booklet filled with tips for using the cards and an expansive section on word definitions, together with descriptions of places and landmarks, providing a strong educational component. The addition of three blank cards encourages players to generate their own questions based on their travel experiences or interests.

Though the cards are presented as questions that can be used with children as young as five, I find that they are best suited to those with advanced travel vocabulary and more travel experiences under their belt. Even though the first level of questions targets elementary-age children, younger kids will need adults to explain or rephrase many of the statements, quotes and questions.

Many thanks to authors Keith Lamb and Louise Howland for the opportunity to take these cards for a practice run.

BY Nancy Mueller Leave a Comment ON April 12, 2011

And We’re Off!

We’re heading down the highway from Seattle to Portland. It’s late in the day, and my goal is to have a pleasant enough trip with my reluctant tween in tow. I have a business gig on Friday and a birthday on Monday so Portland presents the perfect opportunity for a weekend getaway celebration. Except I seem to be the only one excited about getting out of town. Never fear, however. I’ve brought along a few different decks of travel cards to spark engaging conversation. My challenge is to figure out a way to have my daughter remove her iPod earphones long enough for her to actually hear what I’m saying. Hey – I can dream, can’t I?

Here’s what I brought along for entertainment: Travel Table Topics to Go, The Art of Travel Conversation and International Landmarks. Let’s start with the first one. I’ll talk about the last two card decks in separate blog posts to follow.

Travel Table Topics to Go is a series of 40 cards all related to travel that slip inside a plastic case. The cards are designed for ages 10 and up. The beauty lies in their simplicity. Each card has one question. Out of the 40 cards, 38 are presented as either Wh-questions (e.g. “What’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?”) or imagination-starters (e.g. “If you could trade houses with someone for two weeks whose house would you choose?” or “If you went on a volunteer vacation, who would you most like to help?”). Only two are presented as yes/no questions, a good thing since these have the potential to be conversation-stoppers rather than conversation-starters. For instance, how do you think your teen would answer the question: “Have you ever had a psychic or out-of-body experience?” Uh-oh. On second thought, are you sure you’re ready to hear the answer to that question?

BY Nancy Mueller 3 Comments ON April 7, 2011

WanderBoomers, Unite!

With spring travel beckoning and my wanderlust in overdrive, what better time for this wander boomer woman to launch a new travel blog? Wordsworth might have “wandered lonely as a cloud,” but there’s no need for us to be lonely in our meanderings here. As traveling baby boomers, we want to have fun adventures that we can share with kindred spirits, don’t we? While some of you may be empty-nesters or childless by choice, grandparents of young children or boomerang parents, I myself am a married baby boomer mom to a tween, otherwise known as She Who Will Not Be Photographed. No matter. For you and me, our travel lust binds us together.

I hope you’ll join me as I make my way through jungles and swamps, over mountains and deserts, through my neighbor’s backyards, and across the vast unexplored terrain of teen traveler, and other, landscapes. By this stage of our lives, many of us are well-worn travelers so expect a bit of reflection in my blogs on roads already taken and those to come. Let’s tighten our seatbelts and hang on. Undoubtedly, there are roadbumps ahead, but as Dr. Seuss so aptly enthused: Oh, the places we’ll go!

Spring Days in Portland

Hello, Portland!

Pick a Card, Any Card

And We’re Off!

WanderBoomers, Unite!

Destination:

Categories: