UpTake’s Bloggers
UpTake.com created six blogs to help you plan a great trip in the United States whether it is a romantic day trip or a ten day vacation with four kids and a dog. Our bloggers are avid travelers and give tips, advice and insight about short excursions from their homes, which happen to be some of the most popular tourist destinations in the U.S. If they tell you to skip a tourist attraction or about a "don't miss" restaurant, you can rely on their expert advice.
Attractions Blog
Barbara Ann Weibel worked in corporate marketing and public relations for more than 20 years before leaving to pursue her true loves of travel, writing, and photography. In 2007 she strapped on a backpack and traveled solo around the world for six months, visiting 17 countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Pacific Rim, Africa, and Europe, blogging about her experiences along the way. These days, Barbara divides her time between her popular travel and life blog, Hole In The Donut, and writing freelance articles for a variety of traditional magazines and online entities. She travels six months each year and is currently writing a memoir about her extensive travels.
Rhea Thomas is a native Texan currently living in the Dallas area. She grew up on a ranch with all sorts of experiences and a family that loved to travel. Now married, with two boys and a dog, she shares her love of nature and traveling on her own blog, Texas Word Tangle, and enjoys learning about other cultures and exploring the world with her husband and children.
Shannon Hurst Lane works full time for the fire department and is a freelance travel writer. She like to make people smile and feels such joy when she can help others, no matter how big or small. She has traveled the world and plans on traveling as long as she can. Shannon is a founding member of Traveling Mamas and blogs about her adventures as Cajun Mama.
Beaches Blog
Sebastien Tobler, Beaches Lead Editor, is a freelance producer for the Travel Channel, a blogger for Colliding Continents and a manager at an interactive marketing firm focusing on the hospitality industry. Sebastien has been blogging for two years and has been traveling for the past 26 years. He currently resides in Washington, DC but has lived in Switzerland, the Philippines, Poland, Indonesia, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Coming from a diverse cultural background coupled with an agenda to never stop moving around, Sebastien is finding every way to inspire people to break out of their comfort zone and explore the world.
Hotels Blog
Colleen Lindesay, Hotels Lead Editor, writes about food and culture for Delights and Prejudices, Tonic and wishbone clover. On her frequent travels, she’s sought out xiao long bao in Shanghai, fruit shakes in Luang Prabang, and the very best fried chicken in Nashville. She lives, writes and eats in San Francisco, a traveler’s (and hedonist’s) paradise.
Jenny Bengen, a graduate of Stanford University, is fairly new to the blogging world, though she has worked as a freelance writer and editor for the past six years. She wrote about travel for sites including Dulcinea Media, AOL CityGuide and TheExpeditioner.com. She’s also a contributing writer for AAA’s Westways and Alabama Journeys magazines. Find her personal blog at Travel Writer Gal.
Cat Lincoln is a writer and photographer based in San Francisco. In addition to sharing her favorite travel tips on UpTake, she is a contributor to several style and green sites including StyleList, Green Daily, Holidash, and Tonic News. Cat shares her love of popular culture and bargain hunting on wishbone clover and What a Bargain. She is also a freelance writer covering the financial services and healthcare sectors. Cat is always planning her next trip to Hawaii, although she usually winds up visiting family on the East Coast.
Kristen Seymour is a freelance writer and blogger living in North Central Florida. When she’s not helping you figure out where to stay for your next vacation here at UpTake, she’s busy writing about a variety of topics for StyleList, That’s Fit, Tonic, Holidash, BeautyHacks, and ChatterBox. At the end of the day, if she still has anything interesting to say, she pops on over to Jeez-o-petes, where she dishes on her husband, dogs, and a million other things. She loves to travel, but is still at an age where most of her trips involve weddings, babies, family, and friends.
Lodging Blog
Nancy D. Brown, Lodging Lead Editor was horse-crazy in her youth. She passed on European travel to stay home and ride her horse. She has since traded her horse for a husband and saddle for a passport. Married with two teenagers, she enjoys international adventure travel. As a California native, her home base is the Bay Area. With family in Carmel, she considers Monterey Bay her second home.
As a journalism graduate and food and wine PR professional, she has 25 years of writing experience. Nancy writes the What a Trip column for the Contra Costa Times Lamorinda Sun and the What a Trip blog, in addition to her duties as Uptake’s Lodging Travel Editor.
Lisa Crovo Dion has long been an adventure junkie, Lisa left Boston after college to drive across country in an ‘87 Chevy with two girlfriends. She camped in Bryce Canyon, drank whisky at a topless bar in Kansas City and got tattooed in Phoenix. Eventually she made it to San Francisco and never left.
Today, she works as a writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, raises two young children, and continues her exploration and exploits. She has contributed to Insight Guides for 12 years and has written for SOMA magazine, SF Weekly, salon.com, Gayot’s Restaurants, San Francisco and Via. She also co-publishes Defenestration, a collection of Bay Area women’s writing.
Betsy Husband grew up in San Diego. After two years of college she hitchhiked around Europe for a year, worked as a bar maid in a pub, then toured the United States in a Volkswagen van. She finally landed in a small town in Eureka, California, where she raised a family, worked in physical therapy for 26 years, and continued to travel extensively with her family. She returned to school in 2004, getting a Journalism degree in 2006. Her published credits include Skywest magazine, Tasmania 40′ South, the Humboldt Beacon, The Eureka Reporter, and The Gringo Gazette.
Brooke Morton is a travel writer who currently calls Orlando, Florida, home (because that’s where her dog is). Her travels have taken her throughout Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean, as well as to Egypt and Thailand. Now the associate editor of Sport Diver magazine, she has also written for Florida Travel + Life and Caribbean Travel & Life magazines. For more about Brooke, visit bybrookemorton.com.
Kara Williams has worn several different hats in her two-decade editorial career — from newspaper reporter to corporate copywriter to magazine editor — and she currently works from home as a freelance writer. The majority of her writing work is travel related, with destination articles appearing in such publications as Every Day with Rachael Ray, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, Porthole Cruise Magazine, Denver Life, GRAND, Chesapeake Family and Mountain Parent. Learn more about her writing at karaswilliams.com.
Restaurants Blog
Alison Osborne has been with UpTake for the past year as a regular blog contributor and as the Associate Marketing Manager at the company. Alison is a native Texan and recent transplant to the Bay Area. Two of her biggest passions in life are travel and food. When work gets in the way of travel, which it so often does, she likes to use food from other cultures to transport her across the globe. She also loves to share these culinary experiences with others, which is where the Restaurant blog comes in!
Jennifer Miner is a professional travel writer with a weekly luxury travel column at Suite101, an e-magazine. Her luxury travel column consistently gets more than 70,000 page views per month. Blogging about restaurants at Uptake has been enjoyable for Jennifer; culinary travel is an important aspect of any vacation, and she is happy to cover this angle as well. She is one of the founders and co-writers of TravelingMamas.com: This is a fun, friendly travel site created in January 2008. Going beyond the ever-popular family travel topic, they cover girlfriend getaways, romantic vacations, and destination/hotel reviews. She also frequently guests on morning radio shows, talking about all things travel.
Julie Sturgeon is an Indiana-based writer with more than 20 years of professional writing experience. Her résumé covers everything from lifestyle reporter to sports writer. Currently, you’ll find her byline in Fast Casual, QSR, Instore Shopper, and Bankrate.com. Her awards include first place in the Writer’s Digest magazine national feature contest and a regional award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors for best special section.
When she’s not researching and writing, you’ll likely find her on the road — she thinks nothing of driving her Miata from Hollywood, Florida, to Indianapolis in one day by herself. So it was a natural for Sturgeon and her husband to start a travel agency as a second business – Curing Cold Feet is a home-based venture with Montrose Travel.
Sharon Castellanos is a writer and photographer based in San Francisco. She has twenty years of marketing communications experience, writing for corporate America. She left San Francisco to spend the dot-com years living in Tokyo as an expatriate. Returning to the city Sharon recently spent five years writing about financial investing topics for Charles Schwab & Co. and its many clients. Over a year ago she put pen to paper and began her travel blog to inspire other global citizens to get out and about. Sharon has an undergraduate degree in public administration and a lapsed stockbrokers license.
Vacations Blog
Whit Honea, Lead Editor is an award-winning writer in the greater Los Angeles area. He is a husband of one, a father of two and the lifeline to many relatively tame creatures.
Whit's writing can be found at FameCrawler, AOL's StyleList, Green Daily, DadCentric and the Disney Blog. His personal site, Honea Express (Honea sounds like pony), is an eclectic mix of family fun and foul-mouthed tirades.
J. Edward Romeo has 16 years experience in software development and team management. He was the founder of New Jersey Online Travel and served as the director of Redbank.com before they were acquired by Banyan Vines along with ePresence, where he worked on the design and development of Switchboard.com, YourHomeDirect.com and the original Survivor site for CBS.
Presently he serves as the Director of Fire Services at Emergency Software Products , as well as the co-host of the Parentograpy Podcast. He spends his free time photographing his travels and maintains a personal blog Triple Venti.
Britt Reints has been blogging at Miss Britt since 2005. Offline, she has a fancy title that includes words like "VP" and "marketing" - which essentially means she sells stuff. Online, she's entirely too open about her personal life and has embraced the motto, "Dignity is Overrated." She neglects to tell any of this to her editors at her paid blogging gigs where she portrays a very responsible working mother, childcare expert and travel aficionado for the entire state of Florida.
Matthew Henry, CEO of Blogging at Childsplayx2, has been chronicling the highs and lows of parenting twins since he knocked up his wife in 2004. Childsplayx2 has been featured in Parents Magazine, the New York Daily News and his mother’s annual Christmas newsletter. When not battling twins, Matthew is an executive for the YMCA who enjoys exercising, reading and eating fine desserts – not necessarily in that order.
Joe Romano works in in the field of corporate communications and has worked as a freelance writer and blogger since 2005. His blog, Hey Joe, is a collection of random bits of flotsam concerning life, his family, dead celebrities and other miscellaneous drivel that strikes his fancy.
Kim Tracy Prince is a television producer and freelance writer in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. With two little boys under 4, she writes about the messy underbelly of family life at House of Prince, contributes to the colorful group of voices at Los Angeles Moms Blog, and guides parents to enriching activities at Being Savvy San Fernando. Kim also writes a column in the local newspaper The SFV News. When she and her husband can wrestle the kids into their car seats successfully, they enjoy trips within a 7-hour drive, max.
Sherry Roberts was inspired by the honesty, creativity, and sometimes shocking brashness of the writing style know as personal blogging when she set up her first blog in 2006. Even though she doesn't consider herself a writer, she has been blogging ever since. Her days are spent as a homeschooler and mother of two active girls. They travel every chance they get and they prefer small lesser know location to the larger crowed stops. With a full hard drive of photos and wonderful memories to go with them, she is looking forward to sharing her favorite locations with other parents.
Warren Toland is a VP of Development and Public Relations for a non-profit located in Central Connecticut. Warren has been blogging for over three years at his personal site, mr big dubya, and is a founding member of the irreverent and very popular dad blog, DadCentric. He also contributes to The Whinery, My Wife Hates My Xbox, and Draft Day Suit.
Phil Corless is a stay-at-home dad in North Idaho. He also homeschools his two kids, which makes it easier to make frequent road trips around the West as a family. He's been writing about this unique life since 2004 at his blog, A Family Runs Through It. Corless received his Masters in Business Administration from the University of Idaho and his undergraduate degree from Cal State Fullerton.
James Grayson is a photographer that loves to write. He currently resides in Austin, TX, with his wife and kids who provide endless hours of humor in his life. He shares some of it with the world at his blog, Daddyshack. James and his partners at Quirkee Media also publish a humor and entertainment magazine at Quirkee.com. He loves to travel and plans on doing it more often as his kids grow older. He wants to discover more of the world around him with his family and capture the moments in photographs. See more of his photography at JamesGrayson.com.
Darren Farrington is a theater manager and producer living in Connecticut with his wife and daughter. He got in on the blogging scene in 2005 as a daddy blogger and later incorporated posts into his professional consulting website DarrenFarrington.com. Darren began working in arts organizations in 1991, but took a much-too-long break for law school and legal practice in New York and Connecticut. Even then, his strength was writing and persuading readers to go (mentally at least) where he told them. As a big fan of vacations, he’s glad to be using his cultural and writing experience to promote travel and tourism.
Ed Lamaze has spent the better part of his life dreaming of someplace else and traveling less than extensively. Elated when offered the opportunity to be a part of the Vacations Blog team at UpTake.com, his wife flatly countered, "But you don't take vacations." "I know, that's the beauty of it!" Ed is a Stay-at-Home father of five children having left a career as a Registered Nurse in a Children's Hospital ER to tend to the scrapes and bruises of everyday life at home. Rest assured that when Ed speaks of a vacation destination, it's been tested kid friendly.
Born and raised in Louisiana, Ed currently resides in a historical home (that means it's old) outside of Columbus, Ohio where he will be writing of vacation adventures in America's Heartland. His personal blog, Zoe's Dad, chronicles some of the zaniness of raising five crazy kids.
Jason Roth, a resident of Las Vegas, provides UpTake readers a local's take on the hotels, restaurants, attractions and events that make for an ultimate family vacation in the City of Sin. A blogger for nearly four years, he also chronicles his journey as a husband and father under the pseudonym of VegasDad on his personal blog ivegasfamily.com. In addition to blogging, Jason is director of marketing and public relations for a private university in Southern Nevada. He has more than 10 years of experience in public relations, having served clients in variety of industries at firms in Southern California, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
