Valerie

Happy Monday, Reader Wow – a lot of you were fascinated by my trip recaps from last week's email. Thank you so much for reading, because that's helpful feedback for me that those trip recaps are actually worth writing! (If you didn't know, you can find them in the menu on my page by hovering over Alaska > My Recent Trips.) As I've alluded to a few times in the past year, there are some big forces happening behind the scenes for me as your friendly neighborhood travel blogger. Google has...

Happy Monday, Reader Woof! First of all: thank you for putting up with me and supporting me in the Ultimate Explorer contest this past few months. Unfortunately, I was eliminated in the semi-finals, but we raised over $6,600 together! I have an update about the contest in the post-script of this email if you want to know more, but I promised we'd get back to normal content, so LET'S MOVE ON!!! It's already mid-October, but I don't want to get too far away from sharing the trip recaps from...

If you don't want to receive these contest updates anymore, please reply and let me know. I can remove you from this sublist but you'll still get all my other emails! Happy Monday, Reader I've been trying to think of how to make the Ultimate Explorer contest more interesting, and I think I've got a fun idea. At this point, I'm not sure I'll make it out of the semi-finals, but we've gotta try something new, right?! So, if I win – I don't want to get ahead of myself, though I do have the best...

I'm still in the running for the Ultimate Explorer competition, but I'm not currently in 1st in my quarter-finals group – I'd really appreciate your vote each day to help me try and move on to the next round. Click here to vote daily for free! Happy Monday, Reader I knew this would be the case, but somehow it's now September 30th, and time to start planning for the month ahead. I did spend 18 days of September in Alaska, so time was flying for good reasons, but now I'm home and trying to...

Happy Monday, Reader Sorry for the late email today – I'm still on the road! I'm actually sitting at the Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, Alaska, as I write this. But I'm popping into your inbox because I have several pieces of news to share... bear with me as this is a big dump of stuff! 1. The Ultimate Explorer Competiton I've made it to the quarter-finals!! We're now in "sudden death" rounds, meaning if I don't win this round, I don't move on. This round lasts TEN days, so we've all got plenty...

Happy Monday, Reader We're home!! I'll share more thoughts in a future email, as I'm still catching up from this trip – and I leave for Anchorage again on Thursday 😅 – but our trip was a success: Baby V had a good time, and we did too! (You can see a bunch of recap posts over on my Facebook Page if you missed them...) Today I want to chat about the Ultimate Explorer competition, as it's a crunch week. If I finish this week (which ends on Thursday night) in the #1 position, I move on to the...

Happy Monday, Reader How's your week been? I'm traveling this week* – a recap is coming in next week's email! *Don't forget you can find daily posts from my trip on Facebook & Instagram! Today I'll keep it short and sweet in the same format as previous emails... --- The Ultimate Explorer Competition --- I finished #2 again last week, which reduced us down to the Top 10 – apparently my group is quite competitive! I need to finish in the top 5 this week to continue to the next phase, which I'm...

Happy Monday, Reader As mentioned last week, I'm simplifying these emails for the next few weeks. They'll be shorter and have two main sections – so let's dive in! --- The Ultimate Explorer Competition --- First up, an update on the Ultimate Explorer competition: I made it to the top 15 last week (and was #1 in my group). Thank you to everyone who voted after last week's email, as it helped me pop back to the top of my group in a snap 🫰 This week, they're trimming to the top 10, so if you...

Happy Monday, Reader I've been sitting here for about 45 minutes now, writing and then deleting emails to you. I looked back at what I've sent these past few months, and realized: I'm just not happy with what I'm doing right now. I've been sending business-ish updates for a while, but I don't really want these emails to be about my business. I want them to be about travel. That said, I haven't been traveling much this year because A) Baby V is still so small (6 months already, though!) and B)...