photo by: Contributed

Lawrence travel writer Beth Reiber is pictured in Kurashiki, Japan, in 2018.

Lawrence resident Beth Reiber knows how lucky she has been to combine her two great passions — writing and traveling — into a long and satisfying career.

Recently, though, she had the added satisfaction of her work being honored as the best travel blog by the Society of American Travel Writers. The competition for the prize is stiff — any writer in North America can enter — and Reiber said she was in shock when her name was actually called.

“For me, it was like winning the Pulitzer,” she told the Journal-World.

The announcer at the society’s North Carolina convention in October — which she mainly attended because one of her sons lives there, not because she expected to win anything — listed the honorable mentions, and she was “like, oh dang,” she didn’t get named this time. She had made that list a couple of years ago.

Then came the bronze winner’s name, then the silver’s. And then hers: “the gold!”

She couldn’t believe it. “It was hugely satisfying,” she said, especially “in this age of AI writing so many guidebooks and articles.”

Reiber, who graduated from the University of Kansas in 1975, has spent four decades writing guides for Frommer’s, mostly about Japan, and has published widely in numerous magazines, books and websites. Her blog, though, is a more personal endeavor — one she does mostly for herself, not for a paycheck or advertising revenue.

Titled “TravelReiber: The World as I see It,” the blog features long-form, first-person narratives on travel experiences in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, including plenty of destinations not too far from Lawrence.

Reiber started the blog in 2011 after the Japanese city of Fukushima was struck by an earthquake-induced tsunami that led to a nuclear power plant meltdown.

“It was just so devastating for me that I had to express myself somehow,” she said. The blog is now in its 15th year.

One of the contest judges described Reiber’s blog as “a blend of deep expertise and seamless user experience … with unparalleled knowledge of destinations, especially Japan and historical domestic road trips like Route 66. Rather than reading like a standard guidebook, the audience connects with her distinctive, warm personality that frames world exploration through an experienced lens.”

photo by: Contributed

Lawrence travel writer Beth Reiber is pictured in Florence, Italy, in 2023.

Reiber estimates that she’s been to about 60 countries. Her world-curiosity was first sparked by having an Austrian grandmother and relatives who spoke German. At 16, as a Girl Scout, she visited her first foreign country, Sweden, where she was delighted to find that scouting was co-ed.

On returning home, her first thought was, “I’ve got to get back to Europe.”

A few years later she studied abroad in Germany, where she met a love interest who would be the reason for her staying in Europe for years and embarking on a freelancer career.

Like many with wanderlust, she had more desire than dough, but she found budget-friendly ways to get around, including backpacking and driving a “beat-up old Datsun” from Canada to Mexico, writing about every place she went. She pitched travel articles to newspapers and tourist offices “all over” and eventually made a name for herself, especially through her travels to Japan, for which she was eventually asked to live in the country and write entire guidebooks.

Her most recent trip to Japan, just a few weeks ago, was for the purpose of writing an article on free things to do in Tokyo. Her next project also concerns Japan, but with a Texas twist: sumo wrestling in Austin, where she’ll be writing about a championship bout of the ancient martial art.

“It’s hard to wrap my head around that, sumo in Texas,” she admits, but she’s clearly eager to try.

photo by: Contributed

Lawrence travel writer Beth Reiber is pictured in front of Tokyo Station in 2023.

Reiber is keenly aware that the world of travel has changed pretty dramatically since she was first kicking around Europe on a few dollars a day. There are cellphones now. The internet. Selfie sticks. Language-translation apps. TripAdvisor. Euros instead of a dozen different currencies. Chain hotels. Cheaper airfares.

Many more people travel now, to the extent that some places — Venice and Barcelona are the oft-mentioned examples — are simply overwhelmed with tourists.

Reiber is sensitive to this phenomenon. She has seen “magical” places like Boracay in the Philippines turn from a “pristine island with just huts on stilts and no electricity” to a vacation resort boasting high rises and a Ritz Carlton. She doesn’t know if she could bear to return, though she acknowledges that tourist dollars are welcomed in such places.

Another example is Kyoto, with its ancient temples and cherry trees. It’s her favorite city in Japan, and she doesn’t begrudge anyone the desire to see it, but she is mindful of not adding herself to the tourist hordes.

“The locals can’t get on their local buses because they are so packed with foreigners,” she said, “and so I just kind of feel like if I’ve been to a place I should let the people go who have never been there.”

Telling people they shouldn’t visit somewhere because a lot of other people want to go there too isn’t something she could comfortably do. Paris, for example. People should see it. “Especially for young people,” she says, “it’s not their fault they weren’t around 40 years ago.”

A couple of places that Reiber hasn’t been to yet but hopes to soon are Costa Rica and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. She recently crossed off her to-do list the Sandhills of Nebraska, where she satisfied a long-held desire to see a majestic sandhill crane fly.

When asked what her favorite place of all time is, she doesn’t even stop to think: “I always say it’s the place I haven’t been to yet.”