PORT ANGELES — Those who want to get out and see the world can get a little help from a retired Port Angeles couple who are staying home to write about travel.
Ron and Betsy Snipe have published two pocket-sized Traveler’s Passport guidebooks, a road trip guide for the U.S. and Canada, and their newest publication, a guide for passengers of a cruise ship or yacht sailors visiting the Caribbean and South and Central America.
Next year, they plan to release a guidebook for Hawaii and Oceania. Soon to follow will be books on Europe, Asia and Africa.
“No one’s ever put it all in such a compact format,” said Ron, 71, the author and photographer of the books.
“The main thing was to make it compact so it fits in your pocket or your purse and make it inexpensive.”
$7.99 for books
The guidebooks sell for $7.99 each.
They can be found on Amazon.com, the Coho ferry or at Port Book and News, 104 E. First St. in Port Angeles.
“[Port Book owner] Alan Turner was the first one to buy our book,” Ron said.
They also are sold in gift stores at such iconic places as the Statue of Liberty in New York City, in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and at the U.S. Strategic Air and Space Museum in Nebraska, the couple said.
Well-traveled
Ron spent much of his life researching and editing geography books for a major textbook publisher and was an American Automobile Association travel consultant.
“I’ve been really blessed,” Ron said, claiming visits to more than 200 countries.
The two moved to Port Angeles in 2001. Betsy, 66, taught Spanish at Port Angeles High School for 13 years, retiring last year and becoming editor-in-chief of the Traveler’s Passport guidebooks.
Before both retired, the couple, who have been married for 47 years, traveled extensively because of his job.
They found it difficult to track their travels. Travel guides had plenty of information, but they often were thick and heavy, and had little space for notes and records.
So they created a family business, using their skills to create a guide that met their standards and pulling in other members of the family.
Family business
Their son, Zachary Snipe, 32, an attorney living on Mercer Island, is the designer. His wife, Vikki Snipe, is the copy editor.
Brother-in-law Mike Burk of Port Townsend is the graphic artist.
The finished product is the size and shape of a U.S. passport.
The guidebooks contain information about each state, province or country for each region, and space for diary entries or dates to keep track of travels.
Cruise ship guide
“On cruise ships, they don’t even stamp your passports anymore,” Betsy said.
When large numbers of cruise ship passengers get off a ship, there is little time for the process of stamping each and every passport, so there is a master list that is approved by the officials in each location, she said.
She said that without the passport stamps, travelers may later forget exactly what countries and islands they visited or when they were there.
The guidebooks provide not only a way to record their visits but also a map so they can understand the relationship between the locations as the cruise ship traces a winding path through the blue Caribbean waters.
“There are 13 independent and 17 dependent countries in the Caribbean,” Ron said.
Knowing which one they are in and a little bit about each country, such as what monetary system they use and popular foods, can enhance the trip for travelers, he said.
The booklet includes regional food guides and identifies the languages spoken in each country, with useful phrases in Caribbean languages.
U.S. and Canada guide
Their first “passport” was designed for the cross-country road trip, with games for families or individuals, such as checking off licence plates from each state or province, trivia games and handy phrases translated into French and Spanish.
It has proven unexpectedly popular among motorcycle enthusiasts because of its small size, Ron said.
On the other end of the spectrum, for families traveling with school-age children, the Traveler’s Passport becomes an educational distraction as children play the licence plate game, watch for state or provincial signs and trace the map to follow their progress.
There is also a section for each state or province’s statistics, information about the state, photographs of locations in each state and a box to mark a date for when the book holder crosses a border into that state.
For those who travel farther afield, there are also sections for U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Marianas Islands.
So far, their first guidebook, which was released in June 2014, has sold about 6,000 copies, Ron said.
The second was released in June this year.
Awaiting profit
The business has yet to make a profit, Ron said Friday, but he’s happy with the price.
“The guidebooks are $7.99 all the way through,” he said. “It’s going to take awhile to make a profit.”
Once they do, the couple plan to donate 10 percent of their profit to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Ron lost his father and Betsy her mother to the disease.
“We want to try to help a little,” Ron said.
________
Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
Executive Editor Leah Leach contributed to this report.
