There are so many world-traveling women out there now and in history that I’d love to write about. But I am lucky to know personally one woman that travels more than anyone I know! Tyler Burgess has retired from years of leading walking tours around the world and teaching fitness walking classes in Eugene, but she still travels to amazing places and shares them with us in a variety of artistic media.
Tyler grew up on a ranch in Wyoming, attended the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and then lived in Montana before moving to Oregon. I’m sure the epic beauty of those states impacted her wanderlust, but she told me she was inspired to travel from hearing her mother’s stories of travel (her father who was stationed in the Pacific Islands during the war).
She founded her business “Walk With Me” in 2000. For many years, she gave walking tours in 10 different countries, taught fitness walking classes at the UofO and LCC in Eugene, coached marathon walking training, and directed four marathons.
Now she is officially retired from all that, but she is nowhere near done traveling. She packs a fold-up bicycle into her luggage for many of her trips so she can travel by bike across places like Sri Lanka. In Europe, she’s done a few different pilgrimages on the Way of St. James. She says she loves those because the local churches have been praying for the pilgrims for over 1,000 years, and the hospitality is amazing. Her son lives in Ecuador, so she has a good excuse to travel around South America, too. She says her favorite specific place to travel to is Venice. The destination isn’t the goal; she loves meeting interesting people on the way. Her most recent trip (as of the time of this writing; I started this post a while ago but she keeps going places!) was to bike across New England.
Fun fact: Tyler played a part in my going to Afghanistan before I even met her. My mom had met her years ago through the singles group at her church. When I was looking for a teaching job, Mom ran into Tyler and told her that I’d been offered a job in South Korea and one in Afghanistan, but was leaning toward Afghanistan. Despite having joined the army and going to live in Germany during the Cold War when she was half the age that I was when I went to Afghanistan (see my previous article about her journeys), Mom was understandably anxious about my decision. She asked Tyler what she thought I should do. Tyler said something like, “Oh, she should go to Kabul! What an opportunity!” Mom felt that was confirmation from God that I would be okay or at least was making the right decision. That helped me feel better about it, too, because I didn’t want to cause emotional distress for my family.
Years later, after I had returned to the U.S. and was teaching and living in the Eugene area, I found a couple of her Oregon walking guidebooks in local bookstores. One of them was about Eugene walks, complete with sketches of things she’d seen along the way. I did some of the walks from the book and loved them.
Now Tyler attends the church I do, so I am getting to know her myself! And I get invited to her travel talks. I’ve been to a few of them. It’s so neat to hear about her trips and look through her watercolor hand-painted travel journals. She also puts together fast-paced Youtube videos and writes about her trips on her blog. You can find links to those on her website https://walk-with-me.com/, but here are a couple photos I’ve taken of the pages in her travel journals. Postcards of her Oregon-themed sketches can be found in the Eugene Cascades to Coast (Travel Lane County) visitor’s center in downtown Eugene. And you can find lots of her books on Amazon, including city walk guidebooks and sketchbook diaries for some of her bigger walks like the Way of St. James in Europe.
If you’re in the Eugene area, I hope you get to meet Tyler! And if not, you can buy her books on Amazon.
Mom and Tyler at her book booth in 2024 when Mom and I did the Springfield Art Walk
4/25/2025 – Note that this article has been edited for accuracy. You’ll know which part when you get to it. 🙂
Last year I promised to write about my mom’s life journeys. Really, this post could be about both of my parents, but since my overarching blog theme is the journeys of women, we’ll start with her. I interviewed her for this, and found out some things I didn’t know! Read or skim all the way for fun photos.
My mom, Vicki, was born in a small town in farm country, Nebraska. Harvard is surrounded by cornfields. She likes to say she graduated from Harvard (adding “High School” after letting people be impressed for a moment). Her ancestry is mostly German, English, and Scottish. Random genealogy note: we’re distantly related to the guy that invented Kool-Aid, and there is a Kool-Aid museum in Nebraska! There is a strong German heritage in Nebraska, too, as evidenced by the existence of a fast-food chain called Runza that specializes in German-inspired stuffed meat pockets. Bonus genealogy note: Mom’s Scottish ancestors came to the U.S. as a young couple who ran away because she was the daughter of aristocrats and he was the family gardener and they weren’t allowed to be together, or so the story goes. Anyway, with all the German heritage around there, Mom took German classes in high school.
Her early travels with family were to the nearby museums including the Pioneer Village (we went there once when we drove to Nebraska to visit family, and it reminds me of the Oregon Trail museums we have here in Oregon) and the state capitol building in Lincoln. I have her little souvenir binoculars she got at Pioneer Village when she was a kid. Mom was enthralled with the big city of Lincoln with its department stores complete with escalators and chocolate pie. She also got to see dinosaur fossils at the University of Nebraska (GBR!*).
When she got a little older, she ventured out farther across the state with church friends to Scotts Bluff and a church college in Indiana. She also went with her family to visit her much-older brother in Colorado. She loved the drive up into the mountains and watching airplanes take off at the airport. She let me have this souvenir booklet of Colorado pictures that her grandma must have given her!
She says she didn’t have big travel dreams at that age yet. However, her horizons were to soon get much bigger.
When she married my dad right after graduating high school, they soon enlisted in the army for a three-year tour. They listed Germany as their top choice of where to be stationed since Mom had studied German. Not only were they lucky to be stationed together at all, they were assigned to their top choice!
They were stationed at the American army base in Hanau, near Frankfurt, but lived off-base in the nearby town of Oberrodenbach. They had an upstairs apartment in a Germany lady’s home. Because of this and my mom’s high school German classes, she got really fluent while she lived there. Dad learned some while there but didn’t have the head start Mom had. Mom remembers the beautiful cobblestone streets in Oberrodenbach and how you could hear the noise of trucks driving on them from across town. She loved it.
General life in Germany included good friends at the American chapel and good food. Her favorite dishes were schnitzel, currywurst, and goulash suppe.
They traveled around Germany whenever they could. Mom’s favorite part of the country was Bavaria. There, they saw all three of Mad King Ludwig’s castles, including Neuschwanstein (I’ve been there!) and another one that had a huge grotto with boats in it. She also loved the mountain ski town of Garmish-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps. She says it was just the cutest town. It’s the highest one in Germany. They saw the Zugspitze (the highest mountain in Germany/ the Bavarian Alps) but she didn’t get to ride the historical cogwheel train to the top. Another highlight was seeing the lighting of Heidelberg Castle, another one that I’ve been to. Mom says that when her parents went to Germany to visit her and Dad, they all went to the town of Eckertsweier to meet some of my grandparents’ relatives.
Being in the middle of a bunch of European countries, Mom and Dad got to travel to several of them. They went to Holland, Belgium, France, Austria, and Switzerland. Between those and Germany, Mom got to see castles, cathedrals, and sobering visits to concentration camps.
One of Mom’s favorite places outside Germany was Paris, France. She never got to go up the Eiffel Tower, but she loved seeing it anyway. She remembers eating crepes along the Seine River and watching people paint there. Her other favorite city outside Germany was Salzburg, Austria. There they signed up for the Sound of Music bus tour, where they could see many of the locations filmed in the movie.
Mom and Dad loved Germany, but Mom was pregnant with me at the end of their three-year commitment, so they decided to return to the U.S.A. However, they didn’t want to live in Nebraska. They (we! although I don’t remember it since I was a baby) stayed with family there for a few months while they prepped for a new life across the country. Two of my dad’s brothers had moved out west, and my parents decided to join them. They’d been to Oregon to visit before, and with all the forests and mountains, it looked like Germany to them (minus the castles, of course).
They drove across the country with a baby in the back seat. According to one story I was told as a youth, I wouldn’t stop crying for hours in the car. As I remember the story, they filled my baby bottle with wine, and I sacked out for the rest of the drive. That may explain some of my idiosyncrasies… (Note: after reading this, Mom pointed out that she only put a tiny bit of wine in my bottle of milk or formula or whatever. I pointed out that makes for a less exciting story. The version my 10-year-old self remembers is funnier, although if it really happened to someone, I admit it wouldn’t be funny. Please do not fill your baby’s bottle with wine!)
For many years, Mom’s main travels were with us to Nebraska to visit family, with occasional trips to Washington for Dad’s jobs. She finally made it to the top of something big: Seattle’s Space Needle! My parents didn’t have a lot of money for tourist traps, but that is the biggest thing I remember getting to do as a kid on a trip. Our trips to Nebraska were pretty epic, too. One time when we were young, Mom took my brother and me back there, and didn’t want to drive by herself, so she took us across the country by train. It was so much fun! Another time, Dad flew us there in a 4-seater airplane (he was a flight instructor at the time). Guess who was the copilot? Mom! Yup, she learned how to fly! Not everyone’s mom gets to do that.
Mom took a few trips on her own when us kids were older, too, especially after my parents divorced. She went to Kansas and to Texas on work trips and enjoyed watching the storms. That’s one thing she misses from Nebraska. Oregon gets most of our lightning storms in the mountains, so we don’t get to see them as much here in the Valley.
Mom remarried when I was in college. My stepdad, Darrell, had also lived in Germany when he was in the American military, albeit earlier than my parents. Mom and Darrell have not been able to go to Germany together, but they’ve made up for it by going to towns here in the Pacific Northwest that have been made to look German. This includes Mount Angel here in Oregon, which grew in numbers in the late 1800s with many immigrants from Bavaria and a group of monks from a town named Engelberg in Switzerland. The name Mount Angel is the English translation of Engelberg. The abbey the monks founded on the top of Lone Butte is still a place of peace and prayer today. Mom and Darrell have also made it to Leavenworth, Washington. Leavenworth was a dying timber town when its residents came together with a creative idea to save it: recreate it as a German-themed tourist town. With Washington state’s Cascade Mountains on one side of it, Mom and Darrell felt like they were in the Bavarian Alps! And of course ate bratwurst and did fun touristy things like the horse and carriage ride and old-time photos. Mom says the photographer was retiring the next day after her photo shoot, so I can legally post the photo here, which is great, because Mom couldn’t find any photos of her in Germany for me to post.
Mt. Angel, ORLeavenworth, WALeavenworth, WA
Before those trips, Mom finally made it to California for the first time. I think she and Darrell went there for their honeymoon. They drove down the coast a ways and enjoyed the Redwoods, beach, and Victorian architecture in Eureka before driving east over the mountains to the Mt. Shasta area and heading home on I-5.
Mom also made it to Canada with Darrell! They went with my aunt and uncle to Vancouver, B.C. to see the sights several years ago. Mom is terrified of heights, but she walked across a canyon on the Capilano Suspension Bridge! I was so proud of her when she told me that.
They’ve taken other trips, too, like a road trip across the country to Amish country in the Midwest and short camping trips in their RV. But lately they’ve slowed down to work on their property (they live on 9 acres in the country west of Eugene) and spend time with people they care about. My stepkids love going out there to visit “Grandma Vicki” and run around the property with my brother, “Uncle Ben.”
Mom and I have gone on day trips around Oregon in recent years, like to the tulip fields near Woodburn and fun places in the mountains like Newberry Crater National Monument. But I’ve been wanting for years to take her somewhere really neat, like San Francisco or Victoria, B.C. I’m not sure what the future holds, but if nothing else, there’s always hanging out in my hometown. She raised us in Eugene, Oregon, and there’s nowhere like it, with miles of hiking trails in the woods at the edge of the city.
In Holland? Nope, WoodburnNewberry Crater National Mon.Top of Skinner’s Butte, Eugene
*GBR = Go Big Red, what Nebraskans cheer at sports events (at least American football games)
Want to be inspired? Watch this video by the BBC about the oldest person to visit all 63 U.S. national parks! Grandma Joy didn’t do it by herself – her grandson started and finished this journey with her, making one of the sweetest travel duos I’ve ever heard of. I’ve been to quite a few national parks, but didn’t think I’d ever make it to all of them. Now I am encouraged that it’s still possible! How many have you been to? What are your favorites? I’ll post mine below, and feel free to add yours in the comments!
Happy Summer! We’ve been on a couple trips lately, and I hope to write about them soon. But in the meantime, I’d like to share a couple of recent news stories that will inspire you. These are a few weeks old now. I’d meant to share them earlier on. But if you haven’t heard about them yet, they are well worth taking a look!
This first one is about a plane crash I’d read about before this article came out, where they found evidence at the crash site that gave authorities and rescue teams hope that the children survived it. And they did! After being in the Amazon jungle for 40 days!
This next story is about an Afghan girl living in Washington. Her family went hiking in the mountains, and she got lost. But her instinct and strength kept her alive until rescuers found her. Read on to find out how she did it.
Happy spring! Or at least I think it’s spring. Today is the last day of the kids’ spring vacation, and the season officially started a week and a half ago, but it’s still cold and stormy here in Western Oregon. This weekend saw a couple feet of snow in the mountain passes, and hailstorms here in the valley. But did we let that stop us from taking the kids on a fun day trip yesterday? No way! I’ll tell you a bit about it in another post if I have time this week.
Happy International Women’s Day! This is a great day for celebrating the various journeys of women.
We have come so far in so many ways, from individual accomplishments to changing the world by banding together. There are still inequities and glass ceilings, but barriers continue to be broken, too.
A fun example of this is women’s sports. A couple weekends ago, I took my husband and kids to their first college basketball game. The Oregon Ducks women’s team, of course! Even without my favorite players from a few years ago (Ionescu, Heber, and Chavez), they are still great. Chris was very impressed with Paopao’s 3-point shot skills, and he isn’t even into basketball! Afterward, I was waiting outside the Matthew Knight Arena with the two youngest kids while Chris brought the rest out. A volunteer worker who was directing people out there commented that some big tournament or other would probably be held there because Eugene tends to bring in so many fans for the women’s teams. And then she said that after women’s games, she has to ask people to come back for the men’s games! I’m grateful to live in a place that values the women’s team as much or more than the men’s, at least in that sport. And nationally, the USA recently passed a bill to ensure equal compensation for U.S. women competing in international events. About time, since the U.S. women’s soccer team has won four world cup medals and four Olympic gold medals. Go, team!
Unfortunately, women in many places are still oppressed or facing devastating challenges. In Iran, hundreds of women and men have been killed in recent months for protesting after a woman died in custody of the “morality police” for not wearing her headscarf correctly. Women in Afghanistan have recently lost most of the rights they had gained back in the years between the current regime’s rule. Women in parts of Ukraine are carrying their children to safety out of the war’s reach, and same for the survivors of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. In Burkina Faso and other countries, women have been abducted in mass kidnappings by jihadist groups. And the list goes on. These are not the kinds of journeys that I want to read about.
What can we do? A few things. Pray for women who have fled difficult places and for the ones who have stayed. Donate to charities and organizations that are making a difference in their lives and in the world. Follow news stories of their challenges and others, so they are not forgotten. Speak up for what is right, regardless of your gender. We need brave women and men to make a difference. I haven’t heard an update on the Afghan professor who was jailed for protesting the banning of women from university there, but he gives me hope.
The people who give me the most hope, though, are my former students and my new children. There are those that I taught in Afghanistan, many of whom are now spread around the world attending university or practicing their careers. They have not given up on the world or their home country. Using their talents, skills, gifts, and dreams, they are making a difference in their spheres of influence, showing the world the power of love. Then there are the kids from the military school. I see them finding their way in the world, too, pursuing their careers and raising families. One of them wants to be a teacher to give hope to the next generation.
And my adorable stepkids? Well, while everyone was getting ready for school and work this morning, I commented that I was wearing purple and green for International Women’s Day. Our little boy, age 6, looked at his sweatshirt and proudly announced that he was wearing green. His four older sisters are already making their mark on the world with their art.
How are you or the women in your life celebrating International Women’s Day or making a difference in the world? Leave a comment below if you would like.
Teaser: In a future post, I’ll write about my mom’s journeys. She’s taken some amazing ones in her life, and brought me up to be an adventurous woman! Thanks to my friend Caitlin for the idea!
I’m not going to write much on this one. Instead, I’ll let this great article by the BBC tell the story of these brave women. The Afghan women’s soccer team endured danger and hardship to escape their homeland last August, and now are surviving in a foreign country. But they’re not just surviving. They’re thriving, as they try to figure out how they will continue their soccer careers. Read this to find out more, and be inspired! https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/61744830
In her travels, MexĂa often surprised people who weren’t used to seeing a woman do things back then like travel alone, wear pants, ride horseback, and sleep outside. She rejected stereotypes and fears in order to do what she set out to do, even when other explorers told her it wasn’t safe for her because she was a woman.
Thinking about this and my previous post, what is something that you have always wanted to do, but haven’t done because of fear, society expectations, or anything else? What is holding you back (besides money, of course!)? What dreams have you done by overcoming obstacles? Please share in the comments if you’re willing.
Hello readers! If you’ve read my last two posts, you know that I’m trying to do a post every night this week to reach my 100th post on Saturday. I’ve been teasing you with what other anniversary I’ll be celebrating that day. Unfortunately, we’re close to the 100th day of the invasion of Ukraine, which is devastating. So to not have my celebration confused with that, I’ll go ahead and tell you what I’ll be attending on Saturday, at the end of this post.
Also unfortunately, today saw yet another mass shooting in the USA. This one hit me really hard for personal reasons. But all of these events are tragic. Please join me in prayer for hospital staff across Tulsa, especially those at the hospital that was attacked.
In the wake of that news, I hesitate to even write anything today. But I have made a commitment, and I’d like to keep it. So tonight I’ll introduce you to a current woman explorer that I discovered recently in a National Geographic newsletter, and then let their article about her tell you more.
Lehua Kamalu is one of the few women captains and navigators with the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and is her ship’s first. The PVS sails the oceans without modern navigation technologies in order to replicate the journeys of the ancient Polynesians, and preserve their story, traditions, and seafaring knowledge. Instead of maps and compasses, they use the sun, stars, waves, and wind. Kamalu is inspired by Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire. As the legends tell it, Pele travelled from Tahiti to Hawaii after being banished. Kamalu recently did the same in reverse, after many other long-distance travels over sea in the ancient-styled ships.
I’ll let you find out more about this amazing woman and her journey using this link. It should let you read it unless you’ve already read three Nat Geo articles this month.
And now to announce what I’ll be honoring with my 100th post this weekend: the 100th anniversary of Oregon State Parks! They’re celebrating at parks around the state all year, but this weekend is the official party, held at Oregon’s first state park. I’ll let you figure out where that is for now.
Hello readers! As I wrote yesterday, this week I’ll be posting every night so I can reach my 100th post on Saturday to celebrate the 100th year anniversary of something I like. See yesterday’s post for a clue as to what that is. Tonight’s post will be short and sweet because I’ve spent the majority of the evening defrosting my freezer in hopes that it and the refrigerator will work better after discovering everything a little too warm this morning. Many thanks to my workplace for letting me stuff food into the lunchroom fridge and freezer this morning!
I’ve written a little before about one of my favorite heroes, Harriet Tubman. Her journeys changed history as well as saved lives. Tonight’s post celebrates another traveling Harriet, the renowned explorer Harriet Chalmers Adams. She was born in Stockton, California in 1875 and died in France in 1937.
Adams travelled over an estimated 100,000 miles or more over the course of her life, exploring nearly every continent. She stayed and studied many of the cultures in these places, as well as the linguistic branches of Native American tribes in the USA. National Geographic first published articles and photos of hers in 1907, and she became the first lecturer to use color slides of her trips. During World War I, she was the only female war correspondent allowed to visit the front lines in France. She became the first woman president of the Society of Woman Geographers while recovering from an injury that would presumably keep her from ever walking again. Two years later, she travelled to North Africa. (Information in this paragraph from Wikipedia and from “Women Explorer Knowledge Cards”, copyright Sharon M. Hannon, Published by Pomegranate Communications, Inc.).
She once wrote, “I’ve wondered why men have so absolutely monopolized the field of exploration. Why did women never go to the Arctic, try for one pole or the other, or invade Africa, Thibet, or unknown wildernesses? I’ve never found my sex a hinderment; never faced a difficulty which a woman, as well as a man, could not surmount; never felt a fear of danger; never lacked courage to protect myself. I’ve been in tight places and have seen harrowing things.” (“Woman Explorer’s Hazardous Trip in South America”, The New York Times, August 18, 2012).
Adams seems to me an amazing force to be reckoned with. A person who does not let anything keep her from going where she wants to go. She did these things in an era when women weren’t allowed to do much because society didn’t think they could do much. Wow, did she ever prove them wrong! I need to remember her the next time I doubt if I can do what I need or want to do. And now I need to find out how to be in the Society of Woman Geographers, if it still exists. Thank you for your inspiration, Harriet Chalmers Adams.
And I’m finally off to bed, just in time for this post to count for today. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, which is TBD.
The Compass Rose Queen 