What do you do when your world ends? At twenty-eight years old, Krista Schlyer sold almost everything she owned and packed the rest of it in a station wagon bound for the American wild. Her two best friends joined her—one a grumpy, grieving introvert, the other a feisty dog—and together they sought out every national park, historic site, forest, and wilderness they could get to before their money ran out or their minds gave in. The journey began as a desperate escape from urban isolation, heartbreak, and despair, but became an adventure beyond imagining. Chronicling their colorful escapade, Almost Anywhere explores the courage, cowardice, and heroics that live in all of us, as well as the life of nature and the nature of life. This eloquent and accessible memoir is at once an immersion in the pain of losing someone particularly close and especially young and a healing journey of a broken life given over to the whimsy and humor of living on the road.

Unimpressed with the few packaged tours that she experienced, the author launched upon the research of worldwide independent travel that would ultimately lead to the publication of How to Go Almost Anywhere for Nothing and to a new career as a writer on travel, consumer and women’s issues. She has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, North Africa and America. --from the Introduction I began a quest for information on REALLY cheap travel. I researched an extraordinary amount of published material and then embarked upon many years of travel and research in the United States and abroad. I have now traveled extensively and at very little expense in Asia, North America, Europe and a bit in Africa. The scope of this particular volume will necessarily focus on areas with which I have the greatest familiarity. Southeast Asia remains a favorite because of the low ground costs, and the most detailed information will cover Asian ports of call such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, with some reference to specific destinations within Europe and the United States. My latest major trip was to Morocco, and that country is covered in this edition. In the United States, the largest port of entry cities will get the most attention, not only because three of my favorite cities fall into this category, but for the benefit of visitors from other lands. The principles outlined herein should pertain to travel almost everywhere and you will be able to apply them with just a little bit of courage and imagination.

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Outdoor Literature It was 1993, Suzanne Roberts had just finished college, and when her friend suggested they hike California’s John Muir Trail, the adventure sounded like the perfect distraction from a difficult home life and thoughts about the future. But she never imagined that the twenty-eight-day hike would change her life. Part memoir, part nature writing, part travelogue, Almost Somewhere is Roberts’s account of that hike. John Muir wrote of the Sierra Nevada as a “vast range of light,” and that was exactly what Roberts was looking for. But traveling with two girlfriends, one experienced and unflappable and the other inexperienced and bulimic, she quickly discovered that she needed a new frame of reference. Her story of a month in the backcountry—confronting bears, snowy passes, broken equipment, injuries, and strange men—is as much about finding a woman’s way into outdoor experience as it is about the natural world Roberts so eloquently describes. Candid and funny, and finally, wise, Almost Somewhere not only tells the whimsical coming-of-age story of a young woman ill-prepared for a month in the mountains but also reflects a distinctly feminine view of nature. This new edition includes an afterword by the author looking back on the ways both she and the John Muir Trail have changed over the past thirty years, as well as book club and classroom discussion questions and photographs from the trip.

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