After 22 years of marriage, I lost Joan to complications of a stroke in the fall of 2024. After recovering, I decided to continue our travel legacy and will continue to travel as long as I am healthy. I have been on several trips in early 2025, and have more planned for the remainder of the year. I also purchased a travel trailer and plan to take camping trips in the future.
I have been to many places
Even though Joan is no longer with me physically, she is with me when I travel.
Me at a Chaco Outlier in NM
Me in Florence
Me in Morocco
This is Mark. Yes, I’m a real person, and this website is run by just me. And yes, my name is Mark. So we got that out of the way. I started this website several years ago to share photos of my trips with my friends and family. But recently, I felt I needed to change the site’s focus. I want to share my love of travel with as many people as I can. All travel is an important part of our lives, be it a day in the local park or a month abroad.
The longer I travel, the more my interests change. Originally I was all about the open spaces of the western US. And while I still love to visit the area, I have become interested in the cultures that existed a thousand years before Europeans set foot in this hemisphere. This led to an interest in everything historical. Many of my trips began to revolve around history and historical sites. And recently, I have added cultural interactions as a reason to visit a place. This has really begun to dominate with my recent tours with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT). Use the contact form to find out how to get a discount on tours.
A goal of mine is to share knowledge and the joy of travel with others. I will be adding a free newsletter to this site in the near future. Watch social media for the announcement. I am looking at other means to share my knowledge with others. If you have any ideas, I would be glad to hear them. Also, I am open to questions, comments, and smart remarks (I love that line from The Shopnotes Podcast). There is a contact form below, or you can email me at mark@markstravels.com