by Sherry Shahan | May 5, 2020 | Community, Morro Bay, Travel
It’s Wednesday afternoon. Low clouds hang over Morro Strand, a three-mile stretch of beach north of Morro Rock. No kids, kites, or coolers. I focus on a different type of beachcomber. Hundreds of sand dollars have been stranded at low tide. Little purple spheres...
by Sherry Shahan | Feb 1, 2020 | Travel
The following March, I flew to Anchorage. I’d done my research about the volunteer pilots, nicknamed the Iditarod Air Force (IAF). They sometimes flew volunteers and journalists to remote checkpoints. A pilot heading to Finger Lake offered to drop me at the...
by Sherry Shahan | Nov 1, 2019 | Travel
A handful of guests at the dude ranch mount their horses for an afternoon ride. We string out behind Ross Knox (head wrangler) and Colleen Crisman (his assistant), crossing dry creek beds and battling mesquite trees with their inch-long thorns. I’m on a sure-footed...
by Sherry Shahan | Aug 1, 2019 | Travel
SANTA BARBARA IS MY HAPPY PLACE, A PLACE TO lose myself on the beach boardwalk, breathing briny sea air thick with the caw of gulls. This time I drove down to explore the Funk Zone: a 10-square-block area of old warehouses, manufacturing and industrial plants. The...
by Sherry Shahan | Jun 1, 2019 | Travel
Everyone I talked to, including the guy bagging my groceries, had hiked Mount Whitney, 14,491 feet. Sure, it’s the highest peak in the lower forty-eight with well-marked routes. By some accounts, these trails are the most heavily traveled in the United States: Some...
