Category: Travel
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Weekly Wanderings: July 30, 2023
In recent weeks I’ve driven round-trip from Ann Arbor to both Grand Rapids and Cleveland, and I’m currently in Pittsburgh en route to Philadelphia, so I’ve had lots of time to catch up on podcasts while behind the wheel. Here are some highlights of my playlist during these road trips: Drum Tower, “The Cage,” a…
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Korea 2023: Daegu
The odd thing about traveling for conferences is that I often don’t see very much of the place where the conference is held. Sometimes, if the hotel and conference venue are part of the same physical structure, there will be entire days when I never even go outside. So while I can now say that…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 9, 2023
The ongoing decimation of Twitter coincides with my own desire to get back into a regular writing practice, so I’ve been slowly reviving this blog. I’m making a minimal commitment here: a photo and short gloss on Wednesdays, and a “Weekly Wanderings” round-up of stories/thoughts/recommendations each Sunday morning. If and as I can, I’ll post…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 24, 2023
Lots of self-promotion and work talk this week, but sometimes a bunch of things come together at once … Greetings from Daegu, Korea, where I’m working at the 2023 AAS-in-Asia conference, co-hosted by the Association for Asian Studies (my employer) and Kyungpook National University. For the past few months, every time I told someone from…
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Sleeping Bear Dunes
In my 50 Hikes in Michigan guidebook, Sleeping Bear Dunes occupies a full ten slots. This spot on Northwest Michigan’s coastline, about 40 minutes west of Traverse City, is renowned for its scenery, characterized by the stunning contrast of undulating sand dunes meeting the flat waters of Lake Michigan. A visit to Sleeping Bear Dunes…
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On the Lake
Last week I wrote about Detroit’s riverfront in Southeast Michigan. Today I’m going north—far north—to the Keeweenaw Peninsula on Lake Superior, specifically the town of Copper Harbor at its very northern end. Copper Harbor is among “The 16 Best Lake Towns in the U.S.,” according to Trips to Discover, though that wasn’t the reason I…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 13, 2023
Yesterday marked 15 years since a deadly earthquake hit Sichuan Province, causing the deaths of at least 85,000 people and revealing widespread corruption in the local government and construction industries. I wrote about the Wenchuan Earthquake on its tenth anniversary in this post (which I revisited yesterday, checking all the links and updating them as…
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Getting to Know the Gusset
Michigan is referred to lovingly as “The Mitten” for the way its shape resembles one of those cold-weather accessories the state’s residents normally wear from October through April (at least). In the four years since I moved here, I’ve traveled almost the width of the mitten’s cuff, from Detroit in the east to Kalamazoo in…
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Sweet Home Chicago
I spent the first weekend of 2019 in Chicago, attending the American Historical Association annual conference. Chicago is, relatively speaking, not that far from Ann Arbor—about four and a half hours by train or bus, somewhat less if you can bear the drive, which I can’t—but I have not been there once since moving to…
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The Happiest Place in Shanghai
Well, sort of. If standing in line—a lot of lines—makes you happy, then a visit to the two-year-old Shanghai Disney park will be an unbeatable experience. In eight hours at the park on a Monday earlier this month, I spent roughly two-thirds of my time in one line or another and read an entire novel…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 