National Parks

2016 Travel

This was written by my husband for our Christmas letter.  Thought I'd copy it and save myself some time!  My last post about Travel was after our 4th trip to Alaska - we're now up to 6 and I'd go back in a minute!

We may have hit our ‘peak travel’ period this year.  After reviewing our 2016 schedule, we’re exhausted all over again, and our energy and money limits will reduce our wandering levels somewhat in the future.  I’m not exhausted from traveling and always ready to hit the road!  A brief summary:  a few days to Tucson (it’s a blast -  who knew?);  Marcia to Xenia to see her cousin on his 70th b’day (he’d outlived his cancer diagnosis by over a year, and finally passed in Aug.); big trip to Melbourne with side trip to Tasmania – wonderful to see everyone - stayed at Pierce’s work-in-progress guest quarters he’s installing in his garage (a bnb it’s not, but it worked for us);  other big trip to American Samoa (59th and last National Park!) for a week – a true south Pacific (tropical) island paradise with wonderful people and a great guide, they love Americans – which they are, sort of – U.S. Nationals, again, you can look it up.    Then to NYC/’Brooklyn’ with Amelia (awesome), Freedom Tower (make the trip, if you haven’t seen it), and our first Air BnB experience (not bad at all);  then road trips to Boise (caught Burning Man the day people were leaving – vignette:  many returning vehicles looked like they’d just driven out of a Mad Max film, and the people too, the getups were fierce – picture a group of these people ordering lunch in the nearby small Nevada desert town grill/bar/honkytonk, the Burners asking, ‘are these hamburgers grass fed’, and ‘is the chicken free range’?  Oh my, scratch the surface and you’ll find a SF techie!, wound up in Boise and then crawled thru lava tubes on the way back (optional);  several days in Whitehorse Yukon following an Alaska cruise with Harry’s family (explored the Alcan Hwy in Yukon up and down for ~200 miles, empty but neat);  and lastly, a big 2 ½ week trip to Galesburg for my 50th year Knox reunion, niece Nicole’s wedding in Ft. Lauderdale to long time beau and ace equine surgeon Ali, and then a Roads Scholar tour to, about, and thru the Panama Canal.  ---------- Whooph!!