Renting a car in Croatia is one of the best ways to see the countryside and get around. The roads are good, and directions are easy to follow. My friend Beth and I drove from Plitvice Lakes National Park a couple of hours down to the small city of Zadar, which is near another national park called Krka (yes, that’s how it’s spelled, although it may seem to us English speakers to be missing a vowel or two). Zadar is filled with...

The US may have its faults, but it also has places of stunning beauty, much of which can be accessed for a song in the form of our National Parks pass. $80 gains you entry for a year, and is one of the best deals in our country in my book. Over the past couple of years, while criss-crossing America between my adopted state of California and my birth state of Michigan, I was fortunate to see some of these astonishing places, including Zion,...