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Armchair Travel August 2023 |
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| The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-Mile Horseback Journey Into the Old West by Will GrantHi-yo, Chicken Fry and Badger! Away! With his two delightful horses, cowboy and journalist Will Grant left St. Joseph, Missouri, in 2019, heading for Sacramento, California. He followed the 1860s path that the Pony Express riders took and explored what the route is like today.
Reviewers say: "a paean to the horse and the American West, both of which Grant writes about with beauty and precision" (Washington Post).
Read this next: For more evocative equine travelogues, pick up Elizabeth Letts' The Ride of Her Life or Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail. |
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| Walking With Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain by Andrew McCarthyWhat it is: an intimate, amusing memoir chronicling the ups and downs (both literal and figurative) of actor Andrew McCarthy and his 19-year-old son Sam as they walked Spain's 500-mile Camino de Santiago in 2021.
Don't miss: the historical details, the musings on fatherhood, and the descriptions of the people and places they see.
Read this next: Andrew McCarthy's earlier books, or try Calvin Hennick's Once More to the Rodeo for another thoughtful look at fatherhood, though it's centered around a road trip with a five-year-old. |
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| Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the... by Melissa L. SevignyBranching out: In 1938, two women botanists, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, left the classroom to survey and catalog the plant life of the Grand Canyon...by taking a treacherous trip down the Colorado River.
Don't miss: details on the many barriers they faced, the plants they found, and the history of the area, as well as maps and photos.
Reviewers say: "A beautiful tribute" (Kirkus Reviews); "[Melissa] Sevigny recreates their expedition in novelistic detail" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| Graveyard of the Pacific: Shipwreck and Survival on America's Deadliest Waterway by Randall SullivanThe graveyard: the Columbia River Bar, the treacherous miles-long and miles-wide area where the Columbia River enters the Pacific Ocean in a fury, fed by Rocky Mountain water runoff.
What happens: Nearly 70-year-old writer Randall Sullivan and his friend Ray, who's the same age, cross the area in a Hobie trimaran, which is essentially a sailing kayak built for two.
Is it for you? This "strikingly rendered tale" (Kirkus Reviews) is "a thrill ride" (Publishers Weekly) combining history, the voyage, and the author's reflections on his and Ray's lives, both of whom grew up amid violence. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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