If you're going to be traveling to (or living in) an area where there are black bears, staying safe becomes more a matter of common sense than anything else.

Here are some tips for avoiding your own black bear encounter, from someone who's been there, done that.

Yep, unfortunately, I've had my fair share of encounters with black bears!

I live in Tennessee. I was recently diagnosed with Lyme Disease. (In some parts of the country, they call it Lymes Disease, but technically, it's Lyme Disease.)

With approximately 20,000 new cases reported each year, Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States... Lyme disease became nationally notifiable in 1991." Source

It was after a month of "weird" symptoms, several trips to the doctor, and several rounds of tests, that they finally realized that Lyme Disease was the reason for all of my recent ailments. Lyme Disease was actually the last thing they tested for.

But... I'm one of the lucky ones. Typically people go through upwards of 20 doctors and years of wrong diagnoses and treatments before they are accurately diagnosed with Lyme Disease.

With our latest purchase of a mega sized duffel bag on wheels for Jim's travels, I have come to the realization that Jim has more bags than the average human being should have a right to own.

I guess that's because he's got more electronics and gear than the average human being. That, and he needs to have a compact, lightweight, and portable means of getting all of his gear from one place to another.

And when you put 2 gadget-friendly people in the same household... watch out! We have fun (and practical) bags coming out of our ears... and we use them all on a daily basis, too.

When Jim and I were on our 2-week RV adventure in July, we took a side-trip to a couple of malls.

Shocker! I dislike malls almost as much as Jim does. But we both felt that it wouldn't have been right to pass both malls on this particular trip and not stop in to see what all the talk is about.

Here are the highlights from my visit to the two largest malls in the world...

I've written about basic tick prevention and removal methods before.

Since then, we've learned a little secret from the U.S. Military.

It's called Permethrin!

You've probably heard that effective January 23, 2007 you must have a U.S. Passport in order to get back into this country after you travel to Canada or other countries.

That's right... you might be able to leave this country without a Passport in hand, but you definitely won't be allowed back into the U.S. once you leave!

We got our first-ever U.S. Passports this week. And it was sooooo easy.

Here's how to do it...

Packing for our holiday trip this year, I realized: we have some cheap luggage!

It seems we usually buy 1 or 2 pieces in our favorite shapes & styles... every couple of years.

I recently found these fun facts about cheap luggage...