Traveling in Wonder: A Travel Photographer's Tales of Wanderlust

Traveling in Wonder is not your typical travel journal turned book-it's not even a travel guide. Instead, Traveling in A Travel Photographer's Tales of Wanderlust reads like a letter from Autumn to the many countries she's visited, first as a student traveling abroad, then as a flight attendant, a travel agent, and more recently, a travel photographer.

With a gift for storytelling, Autumn invites the reader into what she was experiencing in each country. She also weaves in reflections on a broader level-her thoughts on being bullied, anxiety, falling in love, and how we're all more alike than we may believe.

Explore Autumn's words for tips and best practices on traveling. Discover Autumn finding her identity not in her goal of 30 countries within 30 years but in who she became because of the people she met, both abroad and at home, and what they taught her about life.

Traveling in Wonder is also a love letter to self, and the courage it takes to get on a plane and go, but also in choosing not to run away from your problems in the present, and equally, letting ordinary days teach you more about yourself.

"A Midwest-based author shares her experiences traveling the world as a student, flight attendant, and travel agent in this memoir that includes her travel photography.

In 2013, while attending college in the Midwest, Carolynn took her final semester abroad in England. Since classes met only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she proceeded to take trips throughout Europe via long weekends. This book is a collection of her musings on 15 excursions she took that semester. She includes additional entries on countries in Asia, South America, and Africa as well as various U.S. states that she toured post-college as a flight attendant and later as a corporate travel agent. Each journal entry begins with a summary page highlighting, among other details, both logistical and philosophical lessons learned during her trip. Within these pieces, she also mentions personal issues, including trauma from being bullied as a young girl to being nervous about both romantic and friend relationships, eventually coming to realize, through therapy, that these anxieties, in part, were fueling her desire to constantly travel. In 2022, Carolynn went with her husband to Costa Rica, where they celebrated six years together and she achieved her goal of visiting 30 countries before she turned 30. In her memoir, Carolynn, who now runs a business selling her travel photography, includes lovely examples of her work and striking destination descriptions, from diving into New Zealand glowworm caves to witnessing “the cotton candy sky blend into the waves below” back in Minnesota. She’s refreshingly forthright about her insecurities and offers an inspiring message to be open to new people and experiences, for example by staying in hostels: “It didn’t matter who you were, where you were going, or why you were there—each person was ready for an adventure and almost always invited everyone else to go with them. It was the [most] perfect example of inclusivity I’d ever experienced in my life.”

Insightful observances and tips for fellow journeyers, combined with inward explorations." Kirkus Reviews

"The author's account of her travels, and her determination to travel to as many places as possible, makes for an engrossing narrative." The BookLife Prize