In 2007, our family visited New York City during Spring Break to enjoy the sights and attend a few Broadway shows. The trip held many fun and fascinating moments, but the most moving for me was touring Ellis Island. The former immigration station had received and processed my Hungarian grandparents in the early 1920s, and as I walked the same …
Have you ever visited a place where you had that sensation of having stepped into a picture postcard of a bygone era? Did your body seem to relax, as if you’d been transported into a time long ago when life seemed much simpler and the stresses and strains of daily routine melted away? Christmas 2019 in Georgetown, Colorado was that …
Today, I’m switching up my content a little bit because it’s Veteran’s Day, and since my father was a Veteran of World II, it seems only fitting for me to say thank you to everyone who has served and is still serving today in the armed forces of the United States. Your contributions to help secure the freedoms we hold …
In my last blog, I talked about the nineteenth-century, narrow-gauge Georgetown Loop Rail Road in Colorado. This week, I want to expand on a theme that connects Swiss technology with another Colorado icon—the Manitou and Pikes Peak Colorado Cog Railway west of Colorado Springs. Long before the Territory of Colorado was formed in 1861 in response to the Colorado gold …
Long before my Singing Silver Mine historical fiction series came to pass, our family became fans of the Georgetown Loop Railroad, a living museum attraction in Georgetown, Colorado. The three-foot, narrow-gauge railroad through the Rocky Mountains provided a delightful summer excursion only forty-five minutes west from Denver. Little did I know its importance in the history of Colorado would take …
If you’ve read my blogs, you know one of the more enjoyable aspects of being a writer of historical fiction for me is research, especially if I have the chance to go to the place that I’m researching. In the case of Muckross House, the historical mansion and environs became a flashback scene for my protagonist, Anna, in A Song …
Butchart Gardens is one of my favorite places in the Western Hemisphere. These spectacular gardens on Vancouver Island, British Columbia are a horticultural delight that must not be missed, and their history is equally remarkable. My husband and I first visited Butchart Gardens in the fall of 2004 during our twentieth anniversary trip to the Northwest, and then again in …
A number of images come to mind when people think of Dublin, Ireland—from Guinness Ale to musical pub crawls to clam chowder to four-leaf clovers, leprechauns, and St. Patrick’s Day. Many Americans go to Ireland to discover their ancestral roots. Some people have romantic notions of rugged shorelines and pots of gold at the end of a rainbow. While these …
Looking out my window at three to four inches of snow overnight, I know that officially we still have another month of winter in Northern Colorado. I really love the snow, but my thoughts are also turning towards spring when the weather becomes more moderate, and we can ride our bikes again. In Larimer County alone, we have numerous completed …
The unsuspecting tourist visiting Rome may not know that at the north end of the Forum they have just walked past one of the most revealing archaeological finds in the city discovered a little over a decade ago. Since Medieval times the Mamertine Prison, also known as the Carcere Tullianum in Biblical times, was hallowed as the prison where Christians …
Have you ever had a strong desire to discover your roots—I mean, where you hail from, the place where your grandparents or great-grandparents once called home? It seems a lot of us have. Ancestry.com claims more than 15 million people are currently in their network, and more than 16 million have gone through their DNA analysis. Sometimes, the results are …