As I wrote in the fall of 2014, among all our photographs of all our travels – from Orlando to Outer Mongolia, from Beijing to Beaufort, from Moscow to Montego Bay – the above photograph will remain one of my favorites.

It’s a shot of our children on a nondescript playground in a nondescript place – could be anywhere. It was taken on Jekyll Island, and I think of it as the lemonade shot.

As so often happens with travel, despite all our planning and good intentions, despite owning a travel agency, despite doing everything right – everything went wrong. We ended up 500 miles from home in a beautiful out of the way place on a beautiful fall day – crystal blue skies and calm seas, a day to forgive all sins, our room reservation gone awry and not a vacancy for miles. [Read more…]