Author: Shannon C. Ward
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Pacific Coast Highway Day 1: Seattle to North Bend, Oregon (Aug. 11, 2021)
Initially, my cross-country route had included a rail trip from Seattle to San Francisco, but about a month before I was scheduled to leave, the Lava Fire in Northern California burned the Dry Canyon Bridge, stopping service for Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train south of Klamath Falls and causing major backups clear to Colorado from diverted…
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Seattle, Day 2: Open Books, Pike Place Market, Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum, and The Bureau of Fearless Ideas
(August 10, 2021) My second day in Seattle, I focused on my business mission for the trip: exploring the bookish side of the city for inspiration on what I could accomplish with Longleaf Press, a literary nonprofit I had acquired in the spring. The press was founded in the late ’90’s by my undergraduate mentors,…
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Couchsurfing in Seattle
(August 9) Traveling overnight on the Empire Builder train from West Glacier to Seattle, I slept most of the way. Normally after sunset, I take my inflatable sleeping pad to the observation car and stretch out in the narrow space between the seats and the windows, but on this particular stretch, I was so exhausted…
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7 Couchsurfing Tips for Everyone, Especially Women Traveling Solo
Since several of my forthcoming posts pertain to my Couchsurfing experiences this summer in Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, and Boulder, I thought it would be a good idea to preface those posts with some general information and safety tips. Couchsurfing is an online, global, social network comprised of surfers and hosts. In general, the surfers…
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Glacier National Park Without a Car, in the Rain
(August 8, 2021) I woke up this morning around 5 AM to the sound of heavy drops splashing against the rainfly of my one-person tent. It’s the same tent I took on my solo, cross-country train trip in 2017, but that time, I somehow managed to get from Atlantic to Pacific and back without having…
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Glacier National Park: The Highline Trail and Glacier Overlook
(August 7, 2021) At sunrise on my second day in Glacier National Park, I woke up in my tent at the Sprague Creek Campground and walked about a mile to the Lake McDonald Lodge. The dining room of the restaurant there had recently closed again due to concerns about the Delta variant of COVID-19, but…
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Shuttle to the Sun: Glacier National Park Without a Car
The beauty of traveling alone is that it facilitates meaningful connections with people you may not have gotten to know otherwise, but paradoxically, it can also make you feel your solitude more acutely. Sometimes both things are true at once.
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Navigating East Glacier and the Blackfeet Reservation without a Car
With the current rental car shortage, I wasn’t sure whether a stop at Glacier was going to be feasible, but after some research, I discovered inexpensive public transportation options in and around the park (more details on that later in this and the next post). As I was planning the trip, I also heard an…
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Minneapolis
I. Aug. 1- Reunion with Sheila II. Aug. 2- Lake Street, George Floyd Square, and Wing Young Huie’s Third Place Gallery III. Aug. 3- Birchbark Books & Native Arts, Lunch with Stephan and Jim from Howling Bird Press, Rain Taxi Reading & Interview with Rita Dove & Jericho Brown I. Aug. 1: Reunion with Sheila…
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The Empire Builder: Minneapolis to Glacier National Park
Notes from August 4: I had initially planned to fly from Fayetteville, North Carolina to Green Bay, Wisconsin and make the first stop of this journey in Door County, Wisconsin; however, I decided to skip that destination and begin instead in Minneapolis on account of two main factors: the first is that a couple of…
Shannon Camlin Ward 