Mother's Day is just around the corner. And this mother wants…a girlfriend's getaway. Oh yes, and I want those sweet homemade cards from my little ones too. But there's nothing like travel with your friends. So impossible to arrange with all our busy lives, but so impossible to forget too. 

In this story for WestJet magazine, I round up four places that are ideal for girlfriends' getaways from the fields and horse paddocks of Ontario's Ste. Anne's Spa to the trails and rivers of Banff, Alta, above. 

Often I interview successful types who make me feel a bit like a slacker that the most I get done beyond my work day is the dishes. Take California surfer Rob Machado. Besides a dozen World Championship Tour victories and an induction into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame, he's involved in so much more: film making, surf board shaping and charity work focusing on children and the environment. Here, in this Insider for The Globe and Mail, he plays tour guide, sharing five places he'd send a traveller on his home turf of San Diego. And doesn't surfing sound like a nice change from snow about now?

Southern Ontario’s Prince Edward County is populated with grape growers, cheese makers and soon one more outpost for stressed-out condo dwellers: the Drake Devonshire Inn. Connected with Toronto's Drake Hotel, an artsy urban mainstay, the inn will trade big city hustle for big lake vistas, while keeping cottage goers in style (as you can see from these sneak peek photos and more). (The Wellington property opens Sept. 15)

Chris Loane, the new innkeeper for the Drake Devonshire and an urban escapee himself, shares five ways to experience this popular county in my new Insider for The Globe and Mail.

Kids seem to have a certain way of keeping track of time. I think this originates in the family road trip, as in, Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet Now? How About Now? 

These six road trips featured in the summer issue of Today's Parent nip that in the bud with itineraries that keep the peace in the backseat. Read about my family's journey along Quebec's St. Lawrence North Shore, a road trip from Quebec City into the Charlevoix region that's full of adventurous stops of whale watching, suspension-bridge crossing and cheese-curd consuming. (Hey, who says Quebec agritourism isn't an adventure?) Click on Classic Road trips  to start planning your trip into other corners of Canada with the help of my fellow travel writers. 

PS: This was my first byline as a "mom of three." Which perhaps is rather appropriate as my son looked at my luggage tag the other day and said: Where's your name? It doesn't spell, M-o-m. 

Illustration by the talented Patricia Cavazzini

Hobbits, golden rings, sheep. Yes, New Zealand is all that. But what do locals love best?

Here in my Globe and Mail Insider, rugby star Tim Bateman (captain of the Maori All Blacks and midfield back for the Hurricanes) reveals his favourites stops in Wellington. 

The photo there looks so... (gorgeous, tempting, beautiful) Hawaii. But what about a slice of 800-degree-cooked pizza or a neighbourhood of murals or a late-night noodle bar? 

Honolulu mixologist Dave Newman from gastropub Pint + Jigger reveals those local stops in my new Insider in The Globe and Mail. And he also mounts a strong defence for the classic mai tai. Cheers!

It offers the excitement of speed dating, without the inevitable letdown. After all, who can be disappointed with the aroma of fresh roasting Hawaiian coffee beans or the crisp flavour of a sea-shucked oyster? 
Read my story from the October issue of up! magazine on Culinary Match, which takes you from Chicago to Charlottetown and beyond. So much better than a sparkless dinner date.

Illustration by Wes Dauncey

How do you capture the beauty of trees uprooted? The knots and nubs and weathered patina? Emily Carr did with her spiritual Trees in the Sky as did Lawren Harris with his sculptural North Shore, Lake Superior. Me? (Hmm, maybe leading with Canadian master artists is a bit ambitous.) Still, I was taken with the bleached branches and fallen logs in B.C.'s Wells Gray Park.  Here, I canoed past a massive cedar rising like a totem out of the vivid-green Azure Lake. And I was drawn to a beached log washed up against the shore of Clearwater Lake. On its sheltered side minnows and waterbugs hurried away at my approach. In the background I could hear the kids playing in the canoes and the crackle of the camp fire. But in front of me was quiet mountains and calm water. Nature's beauty.