Victorian Village Resort in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Jan Ross

Welcome to Victorian Village Resort!

When I heard Elkhart Lake described as “crystal clear”, I just shrugged my shoulders.

Yeah. Whatever.

I know lakes. When you swim in lakes, you might as well accept the fact that the water is going to be murky and you can’t see the lower half of your body when treading water.

Which is, quite frankly, a little creepy.

So when I stepped out onto the large wooden porch of our completely fabulous suite (which is a misnomer, these are more like apartments) of the Victorian Village Resort and saw the absolutely – yes – crystal clear water of Elkhart Lake, I was astonished.

This is the most beautiful lake I have ever seen. Seriously. We have lots of lakes in Kentucky. We even have a region that is called the Land Between the Lakes, we have so many. But nothing like this. This absolutely gorgeous, clean and clear water with a sandy bottom, actual sand beaches, surrounded by lovely, thick green forest…this was incredible.

View of the lake from our suite.

Not only is this lake incredible in every way – you must see this lake – we stayed in just the loveliest resort imaginable. Originally built in 1882, the Victorian Village Resort was recently purchased by Kenny and Judy Salzwedel and restored as a labor of love into a charming, elegant estate with beautifully landscaped grounds, a sandy beachfront, wonderful pool and hot tub and some of the nicest accommodations in which we have ever stayed.

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Mountains or Beach: It’s a Never-Ending Quandary

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Jan Ross

Possibly because he had never seen the beach until we got married – don’t even get me started on how unbelievable this is – Tom is not the beach-loving fanatic that I am.

My mom was born in Pensacola, Florida and we spent most vacations there my whole life so to me the proper travel equation is:

perfect travel destination in any scenario = beach

Tom. Not so much. He thinks the beach, any beach, is pretty much just OK. His perfect travel equation is more like:

perfect travel destination anytime = mountains

So, needless to say, we often have to negotiate. Beaches this trip, mountains next time. Stop in the mountains on the way to the beach. A state that has both beaches and mountains. Somehow, we manage to work it out. The next destination we are working on is a perfect example of beaches vs. mountains.

I have recently seen several articles about the rather obscure Hawaiian island of Lanai and I am very intrigued. We loved our visit to the Hawaiian Islands two years ago but there were some things we very much did not like, such as the overwhelmingly urban city of Waikiki and some of the beaches and other locations crowded with tourists.

I realize we are tourists and it’s rather unfair to not like a place with too many tourists but there it is. Apparently we are tourists who want lovely and fabulous destinations all to ourselves. So lovely, quiet and rather deserted Lanai sounds like a paradise. And it’s rather a unique place as well with some desert-like topography and spinner dolphins playing right off the shore.

But then I found out that there are actually Grand Canyon Hotels where you can stay and spend time exploring this marvelous sight.

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A Weekend in Nashville. Or Two.

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Jan Ross

One of the deals with being a travel writer and photographer duo who get comped stays (or really comped stay = many articles, hundreds of photos, Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, etc. So not actually FREE. Only other travel writers will understand this disclaimer) is that hotels will often only offer a 2-3 night stay even if you are going to be in town for several days. This is perfectly understandable. They are not giving us a free vacation but a chance to experience their location so we can write about it in a disarmingly casual yet sincere way that will make other travelers long with all their hearts to book a stay there.

We do our best to accomplish this.

This means, though, that more often than not we are packing up and moving from one location to another during a visit. This can be a bit of a pain. Or it can be pretty darn fabulous because we get to see lots of different hotels, have absolutely wonderful experiences, eat fantastic food, and meet perfectly lovely people. We prefer to focus on the latter.

This is precisely what happened on our last trip to Nashville, Tennessee, where we stayed in three different hotels in the span of a week in search of material for an article about the Nashville music scene for a regional magazine. And all three were completely wonderful in every way. We will be returning to one hotel in the near future so I’ll tell you about that experience in a more detailed post but let me tell you about the other two because if you are headed to Nashville for a few days either hotel would be a great choice.

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Top 5 Southern Seafood Dishes

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Jan Ross

You know you are in a seafood restaurant in the Coastal South when 1) the place smells like frying seafood so succulent, your tongue wants to slap your ear off; 2) the seafood was swimming free just a very short time ago; and 3) there’s probably rice in the salt shakers because of the humidity.

If you are a lover of good, fresh, delicious seafood, you need to head down to the coast of Georgia, Alabama or Florida—take your pick. They all have beautiful beaches, friendly people and seafood that has never seen the inside of a freezer. I saw a show on TV the other night in which some guy pushed away a plate of fish, saying he didn’t like fish, never had. And I thought, “Honey, you have just never had really good seafood, because if you had, you would never utter those words again.”

They like their seafood fresh in the Coastal South and they like it plain or fancied up—you just can’t ruin really good seafood. Fresh shrimp boiled and served with homemade cocktail sauce? Yep. Fish garnished with fancy spices, sautéed and served with delectable vegetables and fancy garnish? Yep. I like it all. But here are some of my favourites.

Read the rest of this article on Travel + Escape HERE.

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How to Avoid Ruining a Perfectly Good Getaway

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Jan Ross

 

We remembered all the rules on this trip. So we are smiling.

A long, long, long, looooong time ago (35 years this past summer, to be exact), my husband and I went on our honeymoon. My poor, travel-deprived husband had never left the state of Kentucky and had never seen the ocean. As a worldly, well-traveled person myself, I found this very hard to believe.

Are you ready for this? He was truly amazed at the saltiness of the ocean.

Seriously.

That was the amusing part of the trip. A not-so-amusing moment was yet to come…

On the evening of the first day of our honeymoon, in a lovely oceanside hotel, as I was making tentative plans for the rest of the week, I casually asked him how much money he had brought with him.

I’ve forgotten the amount he told me, but it was not much. Miniscule, in fact. Not even enough to pay our hotel bill.

Over the years, I’d always depended on my parents — mostly my father — to handle all the financial arrangements for vacations. I’d assumed my new husband would do the same. But he was completely unequipped to do so. We had never discussed how much everything would cost or how much money to bring. And he had never been on a vacation. How could he know?

Somehow we managed to make our honeymoon work, thanks to a helpful grandmother who just happened to live at the beach nearby. But it could have been a disaster!

I’m sure this lack of financial preparations for vacations happens all the time. So I want to offer the following ten common sense suggestions so you can avoid potentially ruining your getaway.

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Travel Is Broadening My Mind But Also My A$$

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Jan Ross

For the last three years, we have been traveling the world as part of our full-time jobs. I write. Tom photographs. We make a great team. We have seen the Eiffel Tower, incredible cathedrals, soaring edifices erected for various Olympics, and a lighthouse perched on boulders at the edge of the sea. We have seen natural wonders that are so awe-inspiring, so breathtaking, that I find myself at a loss for words to describe their beauty. We have stayed in tiny hotel rooms, huge and gorgeous hotel rooms, staterooms on a variety of cruise ships, a cabin in the woods and incredible resorts. And during all these trips and experiences, there has been one constant.

We eat.

Mostly completely fabulous and wonderful in every way imaginable food.

And, even though we have walked and biked and kayaked and hiked our way through various destinations, I’m just going to admit that

Travel = Exercise < Food

I’m the first to admit that Tom is much better than me about exercise on the road as well as at home. He walks on our treadmill for several miles every day and will actively seek out exercise options wherever we are. Whereas I? Can pretty much always come up with a very reasonable excuse why I can’t exercise.

I blame the food.

Just for example, we returned from a trip to Savannah and Tybee Island a couple of weeks ago and I knew better than to weigh myself before I went to at least a couple of exercise classes. Because the food? It was marvelous.

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Gourmet Cooking Class for a Non-Gourmet Cook

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Jan Ross

I went to a gourmet cooking class recently.

This statement would seem more hilarious if you knew me.

My grandmother hated cooking. My mother hated cooking. I won’t say that I hate cooking, but I will tell you that I just recently figured out the correct way to make both jello and iced tea. Our daughter is a gourmet cook and we often wonder how she came by the culinary gene. Our assumption is that her paternal grandmother was an excellent cook and she must have inherited that elusive, cupcake-shaped piece of culinary DNA from her. She inevitably knows what spice to use, how to make perfect sauces and salad dressings, and her baked goods are to die for. I, on the other hand, had my husband beg me to please, in the name of all that is holy, stop making Hamburger Helper every week.

Read the rest of this article on Travel + Escape Magazine HERE.

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Yet Another Adventure – Kayaking on Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Jan Ross

I lifted the kayak paddle out of the water and droplets spilled down the surface of the paddle, dripping into the clear, cool water of Elkhart Lake and onto my bare arm.

That was fine.

I didn’t mind getting a little wet.

It was a beautiful, warm day with not a cloud in the azure sky. The others had paddled ahead and I was alone on the vast expanse of the lake, surrounded by dark green trees and lakeside cottages peeking out from between the lush foliage.

The only sounds were the seagulls that had flown over from the Great Lakes squawking and arguing about something or other and the quiet drip drop of water from my paddle.

I liked kayaking. No, that’s not entirely accurate.

I loved it.

I had been a little hesitant. Not nearly as afraid as I had been when I got ready to zipline but the kayak was so slim and tiny. So very, very slim and so very, very tiny.

I buckled on my life vest and stood with my bare feet planted in the sand of the beach as Doug Dier with Ecology Outfitters explained how to get in the kayak, how to paddle, not to be nervous, they were very hard to tip over. We would be fine.

Just relax.

So I did.

Getting my life jacket on.

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They Don’t Just Eat Tacos in Arizona

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Jan Ross

To those of us who travel for a living, culinary delights become crucial to enjoying the whole travel experience. We might just possibly start planning the next meal before we have completed the one in front of us.

Okay, we do. Often.

But those culinary delights, be they freshly baked éclairs from a storefront bakery in San Francisco or a brick-oven pizza from one of the hundreds of pizzerias in New York City, are an important part of a great journey. When we talk about past travels, we often mull wistfully over the perfect steak, the sublime pasta, that exquisite dessert. These lovely interludes help us to understand the local culture, whether it’s a traditional, fresh Southern biscuit or, as we experienced recently, some spicy Southwest dish.

Read the rest of this article on Travel + Escape Magazine HERE.

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Girlfriends Getaway to Bay Point Wyndham Resort in Panama City, Florida

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Jan Ross

It was true love.

I was in love with this beautiful lanai patio which overlooked the gorgeous pool, the incredible landscaping and the quiet St. Andrews Bay in front of the resort. I sat down at our little private table with the ceiling fan rotating quietly overhead and just relished the fact that I was at the lovely Bay Point Wyndham Resort, near Panama City Beach, Florida.

My sister, sister-in-law and I were on a girlfriends getaway and had actually been a little hesitant about staying in Panama City Beach, Florida based on a not so relaxed visit years ago to the very, very busy beach town. Panama City is still an extremely popular place but the Wyndham Bay Point Resort is located several miles from the city and is a lovely, quiet refuge from which we only ventured a couple of times for seafood dinners in Panama City, then scurried away from the crowds back to our fabulous resort.

Read the rest of this article on Girlsgetaway.com HERE.

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