Category: About

Dan Leeth was a full-time travel writer and photographer whose words and images have graced newspapers, magazines and books across the United States and Canada. 

Growing up in the American West, Dan developed an early love of the outdoors and wild places.  He has hiked, camped, backpacked, floated, crawled and climbed into and out of wilderness canyons, deserts and mountains around the world.  In the winter, Dan is an avid downhill skier.

Dan was bitten by the travel bug early as a child.  As a teenager, he put 60,000+ miles on his first new car in less than two years.  Since then, he visited, photographed and written about travel experiences on all seven continents of the world.  His specialties include Antarctica, adventure, skiing, city walks, historical sites, natural places, road trips and sharing the lighter side of travel.

Dan has nurtured a love of photography since he was knee high to a lens cap.  Largely journalistic in style, his work has graced nearly every article he has had published.  His stock images may be purchased through Alamy.com.

Escaping from the Denver metropolitan area, Dan and his wife, Dianne, now reside in Fruita, Colorado.

After 26 years of full-time, freelance travel writing, I’ve decided it’s time to finally hit the brakes.  Instead of researching stories, I’m going to visit places just for the sheer joy of being there.  No more interviews to schedule.  No more copious notes to take.  No more casting for storylines. 

It’s been a good life.  I’ve sailed all five oceans and visited all seven continents.  I’ve taken a 127-day voyage around the world on a World War II-vintage ship, sailed on a luxurious private yacht through the Greek isles and ridden an icebreaker into the southernmost navigable body of water off the coast of Antarctica.  I’ve rubbed shoulders with famous people and bunked in countless four- and five-star hotels and resorts.  My stories and photographs about these adventures have been published nearly 2,000 times across the U.S., Canada and beyond.

While the travel opportunities have been dazzling, transcribing notes, outlining storylines, crafting openings and pounding out progressively improved story drafts on the computer is pure drudgery.  To that I say, “good riddance.”

Okay, I’m not going to totally go cold turkey on the travel journalism.  I’ll still be photographing sites and submitting them to my stock agency.  And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally get around to writing a fun narrative about my around-the-world cruise on the “Ship of Peeves and Thieves.” 

As for travel plans, I’m hoping to make a fourth, expedition-ship cruise to Antarctica with a stopover on South Georgia Island where my hero Ernest Shackleton lies buried.  I want to visit some dark-sky setting in the Southern Hemisphere where I can photograph the southern Milky Way, and when Covid allows it, I’m hoping to use my arsenal of frequent flyer miles to book first-class tickets on a flight across the Pacific to either Australia or New Zealand.

Beyond that, I will be traveling across the country with my wife in our travel trailer, relishing the fact that I don’t need to write the place up for some publication.