Grit & Grace Adventures

09/06/2026

Books to read before travelling to Africa 📚🌍

Some books entertain you. Others transport you so completely that you can almost hear the lions calling across the savannah, feel the Kalahari dust beneath your feet and imagine yourself beneath an enormous African sky.

These nine books explore Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania and South Africa through memoir, wildlife, conservation, adventure and stories from the bush.

A few are beloved classics. Others reflect perspectives from another era and are best read with a thoughtful, critical eye. Together, they offer a fascinating glimpse into the landscapes, wildlife and complicated history of this extraordinary continent.

Save this African reading list for your next trip, or for the days when Africa feels much too far away.

Which one would you read first?

09/04/2026

“When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.”

Gloria Steinem understood that travel is not only about seeing somewhere new. It is about listening. It is about meeting people beyond the borders of our own experience and allowing the road to change who we thought we were.

Her life on the road was inseparable from her work for women’s rights. Travel took her into communities, conversations and stories that could never have been understood from a distance. It moved ideas out of theory and into real life.

Perhaps that is why her words resonate so deeply with me.

I didn’t follow the expected map either. I married at 49. I chose not to have children. I built businesses, lived in different countries and travelled the world.

Travel was never something I did while waiting for my “real life” to begin. Travel was part of how I discovered who I was and how I wanted to live.

Women like Gloria fought to widen the world women were permitted to inhabit. They fought for our right to make choices that are genuinely our own.

For me, women’s travel, solo female travel and travel after 50 are expressions of that freedom. Every time a woman boards the plane, takes the train or joins a group of strangers without waiting for someone else to come with her, she is using a freedom generations of women fought to create.

The most meaningful way to honour that freedom is to use it.

Where has the road taken you, and how has it changed who you thought you were?

09/02/2026

Galápagos giant tortoises aren’t one species. They’re a whole family tree, shaped island by island, volcano by volcano.

On Isabela alone, five volcanoes each hold their own distinct tortoise population. Dome shells in the misty highlands where the grazing is low and lush. Saddleback shells in the dry lowlands, necks stretching for cactus pads. Same archipelago, completely different evolutionary paths, still unfolding in front of you right now.

This isn’t a diagram in a textbook. It’s evolution you can stand beside.

Our 2027 Ecuador and Galápagos expedition is sold out.

The 2028 waitlist just opened, send me a DM.

Save this for the friend who needs a reason to finally book the trip.

*GiantTortoise .
1p

08/26/2026

We have lost another truly great woman. 🤍

Dolly Parton showed us that we could be deeply rooted and endlessly curious. That we could love the lives we have built and still wonder what else might be waiting for us beyond the familiar.

Her song “Travelin’ Thru” has had me thinking about all the versions of ourselves we meet along the way, and why we should stop waiting for the perfect time, or the perfect travel companion, to take the trip.

None of us knows how much road we have left.

So, while we are still travelin’ through, let’s make sure we are paying attention. Let’s make sure we take the trip.

I wrote a little more about Dolly, travel after 50 and the courage to see what else is out there. You can read it here:

👇🏼

A tribute to Dolly Parton and her wisdom on life, identity and travel after 50, reminding women to stop waiting and finally take the trip.

08/26/2026

Travel after 50 is not about escaping your life. It is about remembering how much life is still waiting for you.

We have lost another truly great woman. Dolly Parton was a hero, an inspiration and a reminder that we never have to be only one thing.

We can be deeply rooted and endlessly curious. We can love home and still want to see the world. We can be grateful for the lives we have built and still wonder what else is out there.

Dolly wrote a song called “Travelin’ Thru,” and perhaps that is what all of us are doing.

Travelin’ through careers, motherhood, grief, reinvention, empty nests and new beginnings.
This is why women’s travel matters so deeply to me.

Travelling with a small group of women gives us the chance to step outside the familiar, make new friendships and discover that we are more adventurous, capable and adaptable than we remembered.

You do not need a partner or friend who wants to go.

Most women join our adventures solo. They do not stay strangers for long.

None of us knows how much road we have left.

So, while we are still travelin’ through, let’s make sure we take the trip.

Thank you for the music, wisdom, laughter and rhinestones, Dolly. 🤍
Dolly Parton
DollyParton

08/23/2026

You can’t add more days to your life, but you can add more life to your days. ✨

Take the trip. See the places you have dreamed about. Immerse yourself in new cultures. Make friendships with women who were once strangers. Come home with stories you will tell for years.

Grit & Grace Adventures creates boutique, women only small group travel experiences for women who are ready to see more of the world and feel fully alive while doing it.

Where would you go if you stopped waiting for someday?

08/21/2026

What’s the one book that changed your life?

Mine? My passport. ✈️🌍

Travel has taught me more about courage, connection, perspective and myself than anything I’ve ever read.

From the African bush to tiny villages, jungles, mountains and places I never imagined I’d find myself, every journey has left something behind.

Maybe that’s why I believe so deeply in travel for women, especially in this chapter of life.

Because adventure travel isn’t just about seeing somewhere new.

Sometimes it’s about meeting a version of yourself you haven’t met yet.

The one book that changed my life?

My passport.

What’s yours? And yes, an actual book counts. 😂

08/21/2026

Women’s small group adventure travel isn’t about escaping your life. Sometimes it’s about remembering just how much life is still out there waiting for you.

My grandfather used to say, “That Penny, she’s a wild one.”

Turns out, he was right.

But I think I understand “wild” differently now.

Wild can be booking the trip even when you don’t have someone to go with.

It can be getting on the plane alone.

Sleeping close enough to hear lions at night. Wandering through the medinas of Morocco. Watching the sun rise over a place you’ve never seen before. Sitting around a table with women who were strangers a week ago and laughing like you’ve known each other for years.

Wild can be being 40, 50, 60 or beyond and realizing you are nowhere near done discovering the world, or yourself.

That’s why I created Grit & Grace Adventures.

Small group travel for women who want more than a vacation. Beautiful places, meaningful cultural experiences, a little adventure, a lot of laughter and the freedom to come on your own without ever feeling like you’re travelling alone.

You don’t need a travel partner.

You don’t need to be fearless.

You might just need to find your wild.

Grandpa knew. ❤️

05/16/2026

When did you last feel truly awake?

Not scrolling-through-life awake. Not fine awake. Actually, fully, in-your-body awake.

I just said goodbye to ten women in Marrakech and I have been sitting with something ever since. Something about the comfort crisis we are all quietly living through. And what Morocco does to it.

I wrote it all down.

Link to read below 👇🏼

A reflective story from a women’s retreat in Morocco exploring transformative travel, the Sahara Desert, cultural immersion, human connection, and what happens when we step outside the comfort crisis and back into the real world.

05/06/2026

We are all mothers.

The mother daughter trip to the Galápagos you have been imagining is here. The sister trip. The grandmother granddaughter trip. The trip with the friend who feels like family.

The aunties who showed up when no one else could. The grandmothers who hold the memories. The women who never had children, and still mother the world.

Our stories are shared stories. We are born of each other. Connected in stardust.

This Mother’s Day, I am opening the doors to something I have been holding close for a long time.

The first Grit & Grace Intergenerational Journey. Twelve days through Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands.

Quito at nearly 2,900 metres, where the Andes carve a valley around one of the oldest cities in the Americas. Two nights in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the rainforest hums in a thousand voices. The Otavalo market, where indigenous women have traded for centuries.

Four nights aboard a private Galápagos catamaran, where sea lions sleep on black lava and the wildlife has no fear of you.

Designed for mothers and daughters and grandmothers, traveling as pairs or trios. Built for all of us. Sisters. Aunties. Friends who feel like family.

Save this post for the woman you would bring. Send it to her if your heart already knows the answer.

16 May to 27 May, 2027.
Limited to 10 women.

Full itinerary and deposit at the link in bio.