Run North, Go West is both homage to my native Minnesota farming valley where the river runs north, and the spirit of discovery that inspired Horace Greeley to encourage young men to “go to the West.”

Run North, Go West challenges the notion of home and what that means by chronicling my search for a place of my own.

The journey started in 2010 when I divorced my husband and the bank took back the home we had built – a casualty of the California mortgage shenanigans. A six-week Western States Tour road trip took me through 13 states and put 7,000 miles on my car.

The search expanded in 2011 when flew off to the other side of the world. I put all the things that I didn’t give away in storage, I spent 107 days seeing if Australia and New Zealand were livable. During this time, my family agreed to sell the original homestead my great-grandfather purchased from the railroad in 1883. Although my portion of the proceeds helped finance the trip, the house where I grew up was destroyed to make room for another family’s home.

Now I am back in Australia traveling the country living, traveling, witnessing how people live and where they live and why they live there and if I might, too, be at home somewhere.

This is where I tell their stories along with my own. I thank you for following along.