Growing travel site featuring a Content Management System with over 1200 of the top attractions, activities, hotels, and restaurants across 25 of the most popular destinations in US and Canada    

LightedTrek.com is a travel site and blog that includes a comprehensive content management system (CMS) along with articles related to the listings for attractions, activities, hotels, and restaurants found within the site.  Hotels are categorized as either moderately or upscale priced.

The site currently contains a listing of 1200+ travel resources from the 25 most popular US and Canadian destinations and growing.  It adds terrific breadth of coverage to the site whereas the blogs and related articles, once past its infancy, will promote ever greater depth of coverage.

Possessing a versatile skillset, I am an experienced business writer. I have also forever dabbled in creative writing and at one point  contemplated turning professional.  Of course, I will leave it to you to judge the value of both my contents and related articles.

I am also a passionate traveler.  With the exception of New Orleans and Honolulu, I have in recent years visited every region covered in this site.   This site is entirely hand-crafted by myself, an avid traveler.

To ease in making sense and comparing large amounts of information involving global attractions, hotels, and restaurants, my articles might at times include presentations via interactive visual charts and heat maps to reinforce my conclusions and invite you to engage in drawing your own inferences.  I also have an extensive data visualization, analytics and software development background.

Every aspect related to this site from the ground up – researching attractions, hotels, and restaurants for inclusion into the CMS, UI design, the actual hands-on web development, data visualization, content creation & resource management, SEO, blog articles – all have thus far been authored or created by me.

The capabilities of this site are designed to promote superior insights prior to making travel decisions.  Also to discern what each travel destination has to offer in terms of its best attractions, activities, eats, and stays.  Simply browsing through the informative visual listings and digging into the linked websites of interest will prepare you to take an optimal course of action.  It will empower you with the information to book the thrilling and novel experiences you seek. While mindful of your constraints.

A range of experiences and travel resources to help you enjoy the path to self-discovery and the thrill of traveling

Traveling is often about discovering yourself.  It might involve the thrill of surrounding your senses with novel experiences offered by our incredible blue planet, or else discovering your physical limits in a controlled setting with fresh activities that awaken your senses (and muscles) and break away from the mundane.

You might become as thrilled as I was during my first trip to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim when I was reminded that the red canyon I was fixated upon across the divide with the left corner of my eyes was 240 miles away from the other canyon I was observing towards the opposite corner of the stunning, cartoonish landscape.  A surreal masterpiece 240 miles long that took 6 million years for the tiny Colorado River with its tiny paintbrush to paint as it patiently brushed through layers of rock during its descent into the gorge.  A real head rush.

You might also be thrilled by the bone-chilling experience of jumping off a plane along with your guide and momentarily falling into nothingness.  In my case the “novelties of our incredible blue planet” also means discovering and conversing with ordinary folks around the globe who have lived through different life experiences, perspectives, and settings.  You on the other hand might relish the prospect of meeting like-minded folks at a white-sanded tropical beach who enjoy the same activities as you do.

Some of this stuff is hard to put down on a piece of paper but I believe that is the gist of what we mean when we seek novel travel experiences – we discover ourselves as we discover the world.  Testing and discovering ourselves from worldly impressions, in time leaning towards those “experiences” that physically thrill us the most or else drive our intellectual and cultural curiosity.

I don’t believe however that it’s always simply a matter of matching specific destinations and attractions, hotels, and restaurants with personalities – the same person for example who thoroughly enjoyed London’s nightlife this past June might now be interested in exploring the Amazon come December – much depends upon her mood too.  Having said this, I believe traveler interest surveys are still helpful and I will continue to rely upon them.

LightedTrek.com will help you maximize your travel experiences

No matter your interests, by definition in order to maximize your personal travel experiences – or perhaps the shared experiences of your growing family – you must have the means to decide from the list of possibilities and locations “out there” what can best quench what you are thirsting for.   This is what LightedTrek.com excels in – the operative words are methodical, selective and comprehensive when it comes to its research capabilities; comprehensively exposing the possibilities offered by an expansive yet selective list of attractions, hotels, and restaurants; thereby enabling you to effortlessly sift through and gain a bird’s eye view for the best that each destination has to offer.

Now string together a list of great destinations that are responsible for well over 80 percent of the US tourism activity as this site already covers – then you gain a bird’s eye view for much of the best of what our great land has to offer.   If you are not interested in an expansive search spanning many regions then you will still derive great value if you opt instead to only focus within a preset list of activities and locations.

Best of attractions, hotels, and restaurants hand-selected for inclusion, not bot generated

The list of travel resources presented here consists of the best-in-class activities, attractions, eats, and stays that have been hand-selected for inclusion.  Travel resources do not have to be business entities but must add to your experience – Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor for example is a

travel resource categorized as a Natural Landmark.  Each visual card in the resource list contains an image specific to the resource that best communicates the experience or service it promotes – with exceptions where image copyright laws compel me to use a generic pic.  At the core of this website’s design is a user experience that zeroes in immediately to specific locations, experiences and attractions of personal interest.

The current focus is my home base of North America, with plans to extend coverage to the Caribbean and Western/Southern Europe where I have also travelled extensively.

The content management system comprises a listing of hand-selected attractions, hotels, and restaurants, currently numbering 1200+ and growing in geographical coverage.  It encompasses the best attractions, activities, stays, and eats spanning across 25 of the most popular destinations in the US and Canada.  Once the Caribbean and Europe come on board, I am sure the number of attractions, hotels, and restaurants will grow to 2500+ across 60+ global destinations.

Each travel resource has been painstakingly hand-selected by me for inclusion using human research and judgment instead of via bots or similar.  Each entry is then created and entered into the system manually, brick by brick, with the countless weeks, months, and overnighters having enabled me to gain even greater familiarity regarding the depth and breadth of attractions, hotels, and restaurants available within each region.

Are you looking for a diversity of experiences in one single trip?  This site focuses upon the convenience of urban travel destinations with their greater regions hosting natural sites and outdoor activities

Most of the destinations listed here cater to my personal style of travel that values a diversity of experiences in one single trip.  Most destinations are anchored upon large urban areas that offer its own set of traveler conveniences, choices, and attractions but their greater regions also spawn an incredible diversity of natural sites and thrilling outdoor activities exhaustively covered here.  Denver is a prime example – the western part of greater Denver should be nicknamed the playground of the West – did you know there was such a sport as river surfing? Using a short board to work the river waves? I had missed that one!  So for example you can check in to an upscale hotel that a city the size of Denver can accommodate such as the Ritz Carlton. Perhaps also visit the zoo and the Denver Art Museum to see its special exhibition regarding Modern Women/Modern Vision this summer.  Then the next day head out for some whitewater rafting and a trip to the fascinating Garden of the Gods natural wonder.  The last time I was at this natural rock laden “garden” my hands were sweating just watching the brave rock climbers.

Selective list of activities, attractions, restaurants and hotels to ease and optimize your research.  Not a complete directory of regional business listings

Each destination must surpass a subjective threshold in terms of the quality of attractions, hotels, and restaurants and experiences per a specific activity or type of attraction in order for that category to be included for the destination.  To provide an example, you will find wine tours for Napa but not for Flagstaff, AZ.  Nor boat tours.  I haven’t covered the NY Finger Lakes region yet but when I do I will be sure to include wineries and vineyards.  Atlanta is not as renowned as Napa for wineries and tours but it does have a list of significant wine tours with a fan base and I have thus included the most popular wine tours in the list of attractions for Atlanta.

Site designed for your ease of use.  You can zone in quickly on activities and attractions that most thrill you

All the attractions, hotels, and restaurants for a particular destination can currently be accessed via the “US Canada” main menu item.  The same set of attractions and activities – with the exception of hotels and restaurants (Stays and Eats) – can also be accessed via their respective main menu entries encompassing Activities, Sightseeing, and Culture.  Here they are broken down by type of attraction or activity instead of by destination.   So in this alternate presentation, the resources are listed in isolation to the specific type of attraction or activity and spanning across the entire set of travel destinations covered within the US Canada main menu.  Thus both these set of listings essentially key off the same set of attractions and activities, only organized differently.  The Luxury section showcases some upscale hotels, resorts and beachfronts found in the general listings.

Listings for travel destinations also includes each region’s best restaurants, the top few very best ones for each of four cuisine types broken down by Steakhouses, Seafood, Sushi, and Oriental. Inclusion into the listing is based upon web research for strong reviews by culinary experts, regional review sites, and customer feedback.  Albeit in a place like New York the few selections here could have easily included 50 restaurants.  Similarly, each travel destination also includes a listing of the best valued hotels broken down by moderate or upscale pricing as highlighted in the

visual cards – with a heavy focus placed upon the economics here given that hotel prices have shot through the roof.  Hotels (Stays) are also carefully reviewed here given that affiliate links to Stays is a core element of this site’s monetization model.

To avoid clutter and enable you to efficiently carry out a thorough yet expedited research, I have of course not included every single entity in the listings for attractions, stays or eats – simply the ones that based upon extensive research are a few of the very best ones for their category within each destination.  This site is not designed to provide a complete directory of regional business listings.   The objective of LightedTrek.com is to impart upon you the traveler a comprehensive knowledge for the very best of what each destination has to offer, and complementary to this goal is for you to be able to extract the optimal destinations for an inclusive set of experiences of personal interest to you or your family. 

Regardless of your age, demographics, travel style, the experiences you seek, or your budget, you will become a much more informed and adventurous traveler with a plan of action ready to fulfill the thrilling experiences you wish to undertake by making use of LightedTrek.com’s growing capabilities and resources.