About Wendy

Wendy VanHatten grew up traveling by van throughout the United States with her family. By the time she was a senior in high school, they had visited  48 states. Encouraged to take notes and keep a journal during the family travels, it seemed only natural to continue that practice into adulthood as she continued her love of travel.

After she retired from a successful healthcare administrator career, she turned her focus back to writing about her travels. Her travel blog can be found at https://www.travelsandescapes.net where she offers practical tips, suggestions, photos, and trends as well as showcasing her travels. She is a past board member of The Bay Area Travel Association, https://batw.org/ and a current member of International Food Wine Travel Writer Association, https://ifwtwa.org.

She posts travel articles and photos on both https://travemedia.com and https://travel massive.com.

Since VanHatten and her husband also enjoy wine and food, they incorporate both into their travels in the U.S. and in Europe. Being an accomplished cook, wine taster, recipe developer, and cookbook author, it seemed only natural to add a food, wine, and beer blog to her travel blog.

She co-founded https://www.forkscorksandbrews.com with her daughter-in-law. Together they feature their latest recipes, professional photos, wine suggestions to pair with those recipes, and reviews of kitchen products and gadgets. Both women are in the final process of developing large charcuterie boards for private parties.

VanHatten writes regularly for WE Magazine as a food, wine, and travel editor, https://www.wemagazineforwomen.com  and for Women of Wisdom Magazine, https://womenofwisdom.com. She contributes to a variety of other publications with her travel and wine articles.

She is a published, best-selling author of children’s books, the Max and Myron series. In addition, she has authored several mysteries and some cookbooks. VanHatten lives in southern California with both her husband, who travels and enjoys wine with her, and tests her recipes and Shadow, her Maine Coon office cat, who knows what a suitcase means.

As travel has opened up again, VanHatten has several trips planned in the upcoming months. Look for articles on the Santa Maria wine region, Washington D.C., Las Vegas beyond the Strip, and wine tasting in Champagne, Burgundy, Saint Emillion, and the Loire.