Travel Musings - Volume 1

A little bit of an introduction as to why I’ve set up this travel blog.  I have been extremely blessed to have been able to see and experience 42 countries on 6 continents around the world with some cool ‘bucket list’ items along the way. From running with the bulls in Pamplona to hiking the Inca Trail leading into Machu Picchu in Peru, it has been amazing to see and experience some pretty remote parts of the world. I’ve also been able to experience 46 of the 50 US States [missing Kentucky, Alaska, Oklahoma, and Kansas].

This blog is my attempt, moving forward on to the remaining countries of the world and those four elusive US States, to capture those sights, sounds, and experiences of our travels [local, national, and international]. Part of the impetus to this blog is to provide my nephew with a digital record of our trips and hopefully instill in him a similar wanderlust that I have had for a few decades.  Since he was a baby, I have sent him a postcard from every single trip I’ve been on [he has a stack!]. Now, he’ll have a digital “postcard” to augment the paper ones.  The other part is that the older I get the more I want to remember some of the details of some really cool trips.  Little things like the name of a great restaurant or a small tidbit on what you really NEED to do while attending a certain event or visiting a specific city [note: if you ever run with the bulls in Pamplona, get to the arena.  You’ll see what I mean.]

I’ve been travelling since I was a baby – literally. While pregnant with her third of three boys, my mother was part of the official US host delegation of delegates from the former Soviet Union [Ukraine and Georgia] to observe the 1972 Presidential election of Nixon vs McGovern. The delegation members, with my mom included, traveled all around the country: New Orleans, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Greenville, MS, Durham, NC (Duke University), NYC and back to Washington, DC.  So from an early age I was on the move!

Fast forward a few years and I have some vivid travel memories like traveling to Toronto, Canada in our family station wagon for one of my brother’s many soccer tournaments up and down the East Coast.  In fact, for most of my first 14 summers of my life, our annual family vacation was to travel to Singer Island, Florida to stay at the Colonnades Beach Hotel [which is now the site of the Marriott Ocean Shores Resort].  I loved those trips.  I remember being so eager to get into the ocean when we first arrived at the hotel, waiting for my older brothers to get back with freshly caught fish each night which we’d hopefully be able to eat for dinner, or just having a blast as a typical young kid on a beach building sand castles and getting sunburned.  I suspect, though, that my current disdain of long-distance driving probably emanates from those 1,004 mile one-way trips [not that I’m counting] – in a car – with an entire family – in the summer heat.

Part of the travel bug was also instilled in me by my father who took me on some pretty incredible trips around the country.  We hiked Pikes Peak [14,110 feet] when I was thirteen years old [I turned yellow and slept most of the way up the mountain, BUT we made it to the top!].  At fifteen, I went river rafting with dad down the Colorado River – six nights, seven days on pontoon boats camping at small beaches along the way down the river. We also made our way to the Pacific Northwest hiking up Mount St. Helens to the very edge of the rim of the volcano and visiting small towns like Cougar, Washington along the way. For a young teenager, these were very adventurous trips, somewhat dangerous at times, but ones that I vividly remember to this day.

With that said, that is a small snapshot of my love of travel instilled in me at a very young age continuing throughout my life. My wife and I hope you find our glimpses of our travels somewhat amusing, fun, and informative as we make our way traveling through life [Percursatio Vitae].