Author: Emily Sara Smucker
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Why Read Old Books?
Do you ever finish reading a book and immediately want to talk about it with someone? Whether I love a book or hate it, I often finish with a huge desire to yap about it…or hear someone else yap about it. Do they hate the same things I hate? Did the scenes that moved me…
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Summer Magic
It’s almost 9 pm, and the sun is setting over the coast range, bathing the world in pinkish-gold light. The heat of the day dispels rapidly, and I shiver in the sudden cold breeze as I bike home from work, past my neighbors’ orchards, the fields I haven’t combined yet, and my cousins’ trucking business.…
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The Last Days of the Iceland Adventure: Reykjavik, Blue Lagoon, and a Local Church
Sunday. We’d been in Iceland for over a week now, and here we were, back in the capital city of Reykjavík. What should we do? What should we see? What museums were worth checking out? Personally, I had a hankering to go to church. Here’s an interesting fact I realized: my trip to Iceland was…
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The Golden Circle
That first morning in Selfoss, I could immediately tell it was going to be a lovely day. The Sells got up shortly after I did and went out to breakfast and then to a yogurt museum, while I did my usual procedure of eating a granola bar and drinking tea while working on my laptop…
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East to the Land of the Glaciers
It was late when we pulled into our campsite at Vatnajökull National Park, and I felt a distinct chill in the air as I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and give my phone as much charge as I could. It was too dark to tell that the chill came from wind blowing…
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South We Go: Wandering Vik, Iceland
When you plan a trip in three days, and when you take along a baby and a toddler, there’s only so much you can plan. All we managed to do that first Sunday was get the camper van and drive 30 minutes to our campground in Reykjavik, and the only scenery we saw was fields…
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The Trials and Triumphs of the First Day of Iceland
Well, here I am in Iceland. It’s Monday morning, and I’m sitting in a hostel drinking tea. It’s been an adventure so far, though perhaps not kind you’d envy. Our flight from Atlanta landed in JFK Saturday night, massively delayed, and we stood up, backpacks on, ready to dash to the next gate and beg…
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A Last-Minute Trip to Iceland
Life is a funny thing sometimes. If you read my book, The Highway and Me and My Earl Grey Tea, perhaps you remember a time when I drove to Nashville, met up with my cousin Jason, and we stayed in a mansion with the Sells, a couple I didn’t know. When I asked Jason how…
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Never Such Devoted Sisters
Nothing makes you feel settled in a new place like having someone come visit you. I see everyone in my family at least once a year, but we’re rarely all together at once, and Amy and Jenny are the hardest to get in the same room. Amy teaches in Thailand and Jenny teaches in Virginia,…
The Girl in the Red Rubber Boots 