Tapestry Travel

09/30/2025

Any guesses as to where I am this week??? 😊 (I’ll give you a clue… it’s on a river, that originates in Switzerland!)

09/17/2025

Hellooooo, Tapestry Travellers! My goodness, it’s been a moment, hasn’t it? I’m currently writing to you from WORLD25 —one of my favorite travel industry conferences. I’ll be honest, I needed this. I needed to reconnect with my peers, with my supplier partners, for inspiration and education… It’s been a crazy couple of years for me, full of change, and Tapestry Travel is feeling that shift. After nearly five years of vacation creation, some changes are coming, and I’m really looking forward to continuing this journey with you. 🛫💗😎💃🧳

01/01/2025

Earlier today I thought, “Well! We survived 2024!” and while it *was* a particularly challenging year, there were some great things to come out of it too. The first half of the year saw Tapestry Travel at its all time busiest, and the last half of the year was home to some wonderful personal and business travel. Moving into 2025, I’m excited to look to the future and see where it takes us! Wishing you all love, happiness, and incredible adventures in 2025. 😘

09/14/2024

When I started in travel, there were so many things I had yet to learn - the nuts and bolts of booking travel professionally, the industry’s inner workings, not to mention running this brand new business I’d created. After much research I joined a network of agents that I thought would be a good fit for me -where I could learn what I needed to know, be inspired, and have a community. This year, at our network’s yearly travel conference, I was awarded as one of our network’s ’Monarch Agencies of Excellence,’ of 2024, an award that as our CEO put it, “embodies the essence of the network,” -a commitment to growth, education, and community spirit. I was very honored and emotional to receive it, especially because this has been a pretty tough year for me personally, and I tend to focus on the areas where I just *know* I could be doing better. The speakers this year gave me some compelling ideas for making “better” happen in a better way, and being surrounded by the love and belief of the friends I’ve made by being part of WorldVia really couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m so grateful for you all. 🦋💗🦋

01/24/2024

I was delighted earlier this month when I was asked by RedFin to contribute to an upcoming article on their blog about Orlando, Florida. Can you guess what I love about Orlando? (Psst.. Tapestry Travel's tip is Tip #10!)

Explore 11 activities in Orlando - stunning nature, culture, theme parks, and more all in one wonderful city.

12/03/2023

In today’s reel: A glimpse into the deep forests of Uganda’s Kibale National Park, where chimps reign supreme.

Kibale is home to over 1500 chimpanzees, living in individual communities that can number into the hundreds. The forest is also home to several other species of primates, but you’re more likely to see these smaller monkeys and baboons along the roads and outskirts of the park. Why? Because deep among the trees they are hunted by the chimps.

When we arrive, the rangers quickly go over the expectations -one of which is silence when we are in the woods- and hurry us towards the vans we have just barely stepped out of. We’ll only learn later that they’ve gotten a tip on where members of the local chimp community have been spotted, and it’s actually been a difficult two weeks for finding them. We take off in the vans and after a short drive, with our ranger Bosco in tow, we pull to the side of the road and tumble out onto the edge of the woods. Immediately the air is ringing with shrieks, screams, hoots… It is by far the most primal thing I’ve ever heard. Bosco exchanges a few words with the other ranger who is taking half our little group and then steps into the wall of leaves. “We’re going TOWARD that sound?!” My roommate whispers to me. She looks worried but I feel strangely giddy and can’t speak, so I just grin and nod vigorously before stepping into the darkness beneath the canopy.

The woman in front of me is much taller than I am and has a large jacket tied around her waist that catches every branch and sends them whipping violently into my face. Bosco is not much taller than me but he moves quickly and expertly across the uneven terrain, a rifle slung over his shoulder (“To scare aware the forest elephants,” he tells us. “How often have you had to fire that thing?” the Australian asks. “In 8 years…” he says, thinking, “only twice.”).

It’s hot and humid in the forest and and while I’m grateful for the protection of my long sleeve shirt and pants, I’m sweltering. We pause a moment and listen. Our chimps have gone quiet. But Bosco must have a hunch for this, as he looks around and carefully picks up a trail no one else can see. We start the mad dash again.

It’s then that I feel a painful stinging on my forearm. Am I imagining this? No, something stings there. Then on my stomach, a sharp sting, and again, on my back. I look down at my trousers, which I have dutifully tucked into my socks to protect myself from siafu, or safari ants. What do you know, they are COVERED in the little buggers. What I failed to tuck in? My shirt. And now they are under my clothes, eating me alive. I resist the urge to scream and start ripping my clothes off, but I can’t help a few frantic whispers, “There are ants on me! The ants are biting me in my clothes!” My compatriots within earshot give me silent looks of alarm, but also move quickly away like it might be catching. I am running through jungle, trying to shield my face from branches and avoid stepping through a rotted log, slapping at my torso in a desperate attempt to either shake the ants free or (gross) squash them. Anything to stop the biting. Just when it feels like I’ve mostly succeeded, there is movement in the shadows off to our right, and we are not alone. A full grown chimpanzee is moving quickly through the jungle with us. “They have moved out of their territory,” Bosco whispers, “if they encounter the neighboring group, there will be trouble.”

We follow him or her and find another and another. At one point during the pursuit I think, “This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.” They lead us ever deeper into the woods, where a number of chimps sit in a line along a log, having a snack, including some young, not quite babies. We follow another chimp on the move to a spot among the trees where about 7 more relax for a time. One of the most senior grey-bearded males of the group is there. Bosco tells me his age and he is only a year younger than me. Time bends. We have an hour with them but it feels like a handful of minutes. They watch us, watch them. I don’t know why but a lump catches in my throat and the next thing I know, a silent stream of tears is leaking embarrassingly from my eyes. I am grateful for the masks we have to wear when are this close to them, so no one can see me weeping like a crazy woman. I think only Bosco and the other ranger notice. Then, a distinctive hoot in the distance catches the chimps’ attention and Bosco tells us it’s a call that means someone has found food. They peel off, one by one, and lope towards the call. More emerge from the green that we didn’t know were there. It is time for us to leave them, but we all seem to be headed in the same direction. Then a fight breaks out further ahead of us. We can’t see it, but chimps run by at full speed. These beings that seemed so serene moments before now show just how powerful they can be. The woods are full of thrashing and screaming. I am right behind Bosco now so I can pepper him with questions and our quick pace is suddenly stopped when a giant male steps out of the trees, not four feet from me. He’s the alpha of this community and Bosco and I both freeze. The male casually swings past us and walks -nay, struts- directly in front of us, as if he is personally escorting us out of his forest. Bosco turns and whispers to me, “It seems we have a new guide…” He estimates we got to see 30-40 individuals today. The most they’ve seen in weeks. You can tell how pleased he is. “This is why we hurried you,” he says with a smile.

There is more -about the elephants and smelling one we couldn’t see and muddy tracks the size of hub caps, but I digress. When we step back onto the asphalt road, even though it is empty and quiet and flanked by trees, it feels a hundred worlds away. “It’s a little jarring-“ I say to Bosco, and he finishes, “returning to civilization.” “Yes.”

We walk back to the ranger station, but my brain is still back in the world of the chimps.

12/01/2023

Well, I can't figure out how to put a caption on these reeels, so you'll just need to head over to the page. :) Here's a collection of clips from my stay at Amboseli National Park in Kenya. Amboseli is made up of semi-arid grasslands and gets very dry. However, because of its close proximity to Mt. Kilimanjaro, the run-off of melted snow feeds underground rivers that manifest in Amboseli as springs -feeding year round lakes and swamps. The access to water supports wildlife in the area all year and is credited for the huge herds of elephants that Amboseli is known for. I know the Mara gets most of the attention when it comes to savannah parks in Kenya, but Amboseli sits very close to my heart now. There's nothing like touching down on a teeny airstrip in the middle of nowhere in a tiny safari plane, and stepping out to see wildebeest, zebra, and a whole host of antelope just milling about in the distance... And the ELEPHANTS. Oh, the elephants!

11/30/2023

I just learned how to share reels from Instagram, so… Get ready! 😂 If you were wondering where I was in November, the answer is East Africa! Here is a tiny window into part of my trip: Safari in Kenya’s iconic Maasai Mara National Reserve. This stunning savannah park shares a border with Tanzania’s equally iconic Serengeti, and the grazers -namely wildebeest, zebra, various antelope- cycle in and out of the two parks throughout the year, crossing the dangerous Mara River, and closely followed by predators -namely big cats and their various hanger-ons, like the hyenas- in what is called The Great Migration. I was there on the cusp of the short rainy season, so the park was beginning to green and the massive herds had already moved south (our guide joked that the wildebeest we saw here didn’t have their passports, so they couldn’t go to Tanzania with everyone else 😄). In spite of that, the wildlife viewing was still mind-bogglingly incredible, and what you see in this little clip is simply a fraction of what I was able to see. Not to mention, the landscapes… “Mara” means spotted, and the story goes that the acacia trees that dot the otherwise vast grasslands are what give this region its name. Anyway, much more to share on the way!