Tell Us Your Personal Traveler’s Story

My travels have never been measured in miles, only in people. The places I’ve gone, the sights I’ve seen, the mountains I’ve hiked, the rivers I’ve crossed, the backroads I’ve walked have never been as important as the people I’ve met along the way.

I have an idea that your travels across the great American landscape are no different from mine. The Traveler’s Story has been designed for travelers like you and I. We visit wonderful places. We come home talking about the people we’ve met. Their voices stay with us. So do the stories they tell us.

The voices may come down the road, at the counter of a midnight diner, on a bar stool, in the front yard of a mountain cabin, along a stretch of spun-sugar sand, back in the darkness of a pine thicket, in the lobby of a bed and breakfast hotel, in the far corner of a museum, among the cannons of a national historic battlefield, on a wilderness trail in a national park, or from the faint memories of a distant past. Those voices, those stories reflect the personality of the land itself.

Everyone who crosses our paths when we travel has a story to tell. It may be personal. It may be something that happened last week or the year before. It may have been handed down for longer than a single generation. It may be well known or known hardly at all. Most of us probably have not heard it at all. The important thing is that the traveler’ story is about real people in real places doing real things.

In the coming weeks, I will be telling stories of the most unforgettable characters I have discovered during my travels, and I am counting on you to do the same. We have a The Traveler’s Story space on this site ready for you and waiting to hear about the fascinating people, the unusual places, the uncommon little towns, the uncommon attractions in large cities, the great little off-the-beaten-path restaurants, and even those hallways in historic homes where it’s said the ghosts still roam.

We love a good mystery.

If you run across a traveler’s story that intrigues you, I can guarantee that it will intrigue the rest of us as well.

Submit your stories to storysubmissions@venturegalleries.com and travel photographs to photosubmissions@venturegalleries.com.

We will choose a winner for the best travel story and best travel photograph each month.

The winner might as well be you.