Stride Destination Experts
Clark Norton, Content Director
Expertise: River Cruises, Europe, Yodelling (just kidding), African Safaris
BIO:
Clark Norton – our Cruising and Europe Envoy – likes nothing more than to be out on a river. Clark, who is also Stride’s Content Director, lives near the Delaware River in upstate New York, where he goes kayaking, and his house overlooks Ten Mile River, a tributary of the Delaware. Clark is a professional travel writer with over 30 years experience contributing to magazines, newspapers, and guidebooks including: Outside, The Washington Post Magazine, Fodor’s Guides, and Porthole Cruise Magazine.
For Clark, nothing beats a river cruise, where he can relax on deck and watch the world pass by – whether it’s the Rhine, Danube, Elbe, Thames, or the Gôta Canal in Europe; the Amazon in Brazil; the Nile in Egypt; the St. Lawrence in Canada; the Yangtze in China; the Chao Phraya in Thailand; or any one of a dozen others Clark has sampled. He’s also a big fan of small-ship cruising, having explored Patagonia, Alaska, Greenland, Croatia, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Fiji, French Polynesia, India, the Galapagos and many other destinations from the water.
Favorite travel number: 118 – the number of countries Clark has visited
What keeps Clark awake at night plotting trips: 1 – continent left to visit (Antarctica); country left to visit in Western Europe (San Marino)
Most brag-worthy trip: Taking a tour through the Ecuadorian and Brazilian Amazon, traveling with native guides, sampling live grubs from coconut palms and swimming with piranhas at a jungle lodge.
Next trip: a small-ship cruise through the southern Caribbean.
Favorite travel memories: biking with a group down Haleakala volcano in Maui at sunrise, the world’s longest downhill bike ride (38 miles); climbing Mount Lassen in Northern California with his wife and then-young kids; cruising the Galapagos and encountering incredible close-up wildlife; rappelling down a mountainside in British Columbia; every river cruise ever taken.