The Solo Weekend Traveler Handbook: Plan Unforgettable Solo Getaways That Fit Your Life and Budget

Grace Smith is a travel writer, photographer, and solo travel advocate whose work explores the intersection of accessible adventure and intentional living. Over the past twelve years, she has taken more than two hundred solo weekend trips across six continents while maintaining a full-time career, a journey that began with a last-minute Friday night train to Philadelphia and a single question: how far can a weekend really take you?

Her writing has appeared in Afar, Travel + Leisure, Lonely Planet, and Fodor's, where she covers budget travel strategies, solo travel safety, and the art of the compressed itinerary. She is the creator of _Weekend Elsewhere_, a newsletter reaching over forty thousand subscribers with weekly guides to two- and three-day trips built around real-world schedules and realistic budgets. Her approach rejects the aspirational excess of traditional travel media in favor of practical, repeatable strategies that fit within a working life.

Grace holds a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and spent a decade in marketing before transitioning to travel writing full-time. That professional background shaped her systematic approach to trip planning, which treats weekend travel not as an occasional luxury but as a sustainable practice supported by efficient systems, smart budgeting, and intentional habit-building.

She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she plans her own solo weekends from a desk overlooking a garden she mostly neglects. When not on the road, she can be found hiking the Columbia River Gorge, experimenting with recipes collected on her travels, or mapping out her next escape on a wall-sized calendar dotted with sticky notes. _The Solo Weekend Traveler Handbook_ is her first book.