Ashley Harrell Ashley Harrell is an award-winning Northern California travel journalist with more than two decades of experience as a writer and editor. Between 2010 and 2015, Ashley worked as a writing coach at Stanford's Graduate School of Business in Palo Alto. Between 2012 and 2015, she served as the editor-in-chief of the bilingual inflight magazine Nature Landings, in San Jose, Costa Rica. For the last seven years, she has been a Lonely Planet guidebook author, reporting from 15 countries and co-authoring 48 guidebooks. For the last two years, she has served as an associate editor for SFGate, covering the outdoors in California.• Won the 2021 SF Press Club Bay Area Journalism Award for environment/nature report (second place)• Won the 2018 SPJ Sunshine State Award for best magazine feature (first place)• Won the 2017 FMA Charlie Award for best feature writing (first place)• Won the 2017 SPJ Sunshine State Awards for best magazine feature (first place)• Finalist for the 2013 Livingston Award for Young Journalists• 2009 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference speaker in Grapevine, Texas• Won the 2009 AAN Awards for best long-form news story (first place)• Won the 2007 AAN Awards for best feature (third place)• Won the 2006 California’s Better Newspaper Contest (first place) About Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure, a Dotdash Meredith Brand, is a top travel media brand with a mission to inform and inspire passionate travelers. Our expert team includes a network of hundreds of writers and photographers across the globe, all providing a local eye on the best places to stay, eat, and explore. We reach an audience that takes 76 million round trips annually, offering valuable travel tips, ideas and inspiration, and products you need to get you to your destination — whether it’s a small town or big city, beach or lake, national park or theme park, road trip, cruise, or long-haul flight, and everything in between. Learn more about us and our editorial process