The Process of Getting Ready to GO!!

Most of you, who will ever look at this, know that we are embarking (Nov. 26th, 2007) on a self designed year long + adventure that we have nicknamed "A Miraculous Oddessy". I am amazed a little each time I find out, when talking to friends, that I have not told them yet or that they didn't know we were leaving. We have been intensely planning, for what seems like, so long now that it is hard to imagine that someone who knows us doesn't know we are leaving. We had been thinking about this and world traveling, more specifically, for quite some time and in a variety of different formats.

The urge to travel, see the world and meet it's people, has been strong and has motivated us to GO when ever we felt like we could afford it, before and since we began our life journey together. In the beginning of our relationship, prior to marriage, we traveled to Grand Cayman and the way pre-Katrina New Orleans and often to places in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Often we would take off for long weekend car trips, just the two of us. Once we did a long car journey to Maine, a pilgrimage of sorts, to find the latest place where Scott and Helen Nearing lived, in the middle of January. Only to find that she, who survived Scott, died the previous October, in a head on auto collision accident returning to her home from a public radio interview about their lives. (Scott and Helen were the livers and the authors of "The Good Life" a book about social justice and living simply on this planet. They and there model continue to inspire us http://www.goodlife.org/http://www.amazon.com/Good-Life-Scott-Nearing/dp/0805209700 )

Later, we started going to and working on our own land in southern Vermont each weekend and building a place there that we thought we would eventually move to but let go of for the sake of the kids education. Mostly we would travel in the northeast on the other weekends. But as time went on we have traveled extensively. We have gone to Florida many times, to Iowa several times to visit our very close friends (Jeff, Kara & Kai), We have been to Chicago, Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Northern Mexico, the California wine country, Muir Woods and the Sequoia National Forest, to name a few.


One very memorable trip took us all the way to Jasper, Alberta, Canada and back by car towing a utility trailer with our camping gear and bikes in it. We went about 5000 miles on that trip and had the pleasure of meeting our good friends Dan and Laurie there and seeing Rani, Scott and the band play at the Calgary folk festival and watching Quinn for them, whilst on stage, when he was so young that he would never remember it. This trip was for a little more than 3 weeks in duration and was one of the best experiences of our lives. We have been very fortunate (intentional about creating) one other phenomenal month long trip in the fall of 1999 when we (Jasper, Megan and Bill) went to Western Europe.


Jazz was just a bit over age one and he made the trip with ease. We landed in Madrid, Spain and rented a car there and headed immediately to northern Spain, into the Basque Country and spent an absolutely wonderful week there, with a previous exchange student we had hosted and her family (in Beasain and San Sebastian - click on the link below to see Beautiful San Sebastian http://www.travelphoto.net/photos/pictures/spanien/i19.jpg)
before heading off into the Pyrenees Mountains, on the border between France and Spain, on our way to Italy. In France, .... Once in Italy, we stayed and visited in Florence twice on separate occasions, visited Roma and Venice and then headed off to find distant relatives of Megan's family (who did not know we were coming to town) in Caserta and then on to Caiazzo (where we had the best Pizza to date)

I remember that we used to talk about traveling the world and thought often that we could or should just pick up and do it. But being sensible parents (I know this is debatable) of these five children the one agreement that we made with each other way back in 2000 that sticks in my mind...
We would not leave Middletown to do any extensive traveling until Sara was out of high school.
Well, she very well established in her sophomore year at LIM in Manhattan and we are now making our first attempt at extended travel.

EXTRA, EXTRA, Read all about it.