"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness... Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."  -Mark Twain

This was not something I understood when I began traveling, but something that I learned in the process. Through trips to China, Australia, New Zealand, England, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Iceland, the Galapagos Islands, and many more-domestic locales, I came to understand that the greatest value of travel is the realization that people are people, no matter where you find them. When a person begins to lose preconceptions about "us" and "them," it becomes almost impossible to continue to harbor prejudice or bigotry, which are almost always predicated on the assumption that there are those who are like us (who are good) and those who are not like us (who are bad).

One thing I regret is that some pictures from my earliest (and most distant) trip have been misplaced, but I'm working on finding them. For now, I've posted a few of the better shots I've taken on my travels. I'd like to consider myself an amateur photographer, but like time for more travel, that's more a dream than reality for now.