Chocolate cake. Those two words best describe Waikiki on the Hawaiian island of Oahu; good in small doses, but sickening if you get too much. After returning for a week, we overdosed! Three years ago we spent three nights in Waikiki before heading to the island of Kauai. We had expected to hate Waikiki, but ended up liking it a lot. Here is what I wrote about it: “While we were expecting our trip to Oahu to not be a good one, we were really »

Whoa, my wife wrote another blog post.  This is the manly disclaimer stating that I did not write this and find reading books “decadent” and “luxurious.” So check out some of her favorite books (and some of mine, too) – Jason I love reading books! A decadent, luxurious day for me is to curl up with a good book in bed and read all day. A good book can transport me to a different world, time, or place; it can make me laugh »

Oh, the places we will go In order to travel round the world it is usually necessary to have a plan; or at least a compass bearing in which way to circle the globe. I guess someone could, and probably has, aimlessly wandered from place to place and eventually made a loop. When we travel we are more of the point A to point B type of people with a noncommittal for points C and D. That is, we generally know where we are (most important!) and where we »

Five years ago we decided that we wanted to do something amazing; something that we would talk about for the rest of our lives. We decided that we would take a leave from our careers and the rat race of American life and take our daughter, who was only 2-years old at the time, on an adventure to see the world. Not a vacation, but two years of non-stop world travel. The type of trip that most people only read about and think, “Wow, I wish I could »

Last week was depressing. The warmth of summer ended and has been replaced with cool rain that chills you to the bone, I caught a nasty flu like virus and have been suffering in a fever induced delirium, Steve Jobs died, my aunt Hazel died, my retirement account statement arrived (ouch), and the worst part, I turned 40. Yup, I’m officially over the hill. When I was 19 I walked by a basement window in downtown Portland. Through that window I saw »

Last night our daughter woke up with croup. Croup is an inflammation of the larynx and trachea (usually caused by a virus) which causes a deep barking sound and can lead to breathing difficulties. Sydney was rather distraught and asked us, “Why am I making this noise, am I going to die?” She was scared. Fortunately, she did not have breathing difficulties and after a cup of hot herbal tea and a humidifier in her bedroom, she felt better and slept »

I just sold my surfboard and that makes me sad. I should be happy as this gets us one step closer to going on our round the world trip. But, I loved that board! About 15 years ago I discovered the joys of surfing. At that time I was a college student working a low paying job in a pizza restaurant and did not have a lot of spare money. One of the great things about surfing is waves are free and any extra money I had went to the purchase of a wetsuit »

Getting rid of everything you own is easy. Load everything up into a truck and drop it off at Goodwill or other charity, or throw everything out in your front yard with a free sign on it. Done! But, to get rid of everything you own by selling it for a fair price is much harder. In preparing to travel round the world next year we are left with the daunting task of getting rid of everything we own, minus photos and other treasured items. We have tried »

In 1999 Kerri and I stopped at a small non-touristy village north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We were looking for lunch and noticed a restaurant with a lot of tables and chairs on the beach with a great view of the bay. So, we grabbed a table away from the other diners to enjoy a good Mexican lunch and the great view. We were expecting the waiter that had been serving the other diners to come to our table with menus, but were surprised when the waiter »

To celebrate the one year anniversary of Travel-Junkies.com, our web hosting company (Just Host) charged our credit card $107. We were only expecting to be charged $60, and $107 was way too much to be paying for hosting a travel blog. I thought that this must be a mistake and we were billed wrong. So I contacted them about it and this was their reply: Hi Jason, Thanks for your email. I apologise for the inconvenience with your Hosting costs changing, »

Unless you are Rolf Potts, you will need a bag when you travel. There are a lot of options available and it can be a tough decision to choose one; especially when it will carry everything you own. We currently use hard sided suitcases to travel with. These work well for travel, but take up a lot of space and scream “tourist!”  The wheels are also small and do not do very well on gravel or rough surfaces, as we discovered in Mexico.  So, for »

Like the title says, there is no perfect travel camera. For many months now, I have been testing a variety of cameras in stores, reading camera reviews, and searching for every camera rumor I can find in an attempt to find the perfect travel camera that exists now or will be available in the near future. For me, the perfect camera would be compact, fast, high ISO, wide aperture, really sharp optics, have easy to use controls including manual focus, »