Sixtysomething-year-old newlyweds travelling the world together – Adventure Awaits!
We broke our pandemic travel fast by embarking upon a journey to travel the entire Blue Ridge Parkway and Virginia Skyline Drive in just over three weeks. The Blue Ridge Parkway, of course, is a scenic highway, built in the 1930s, that stretches from Cherokee, North Carolina (milepost 469.1) to Rockfish Gap, VA (milepost 0), … Continue reading Travelling the Blue Ridge Parkway: Waterfalls and Mount Pisgah
Two weeks past our second Covid vaccinations and immediately following a week of gray days of below freezing weather and an ice storm, we headed for Florida. As we reached sunnier and warmer weather, we felt like crocuses lifting our little heads out of the snow and ice and turning our faces toward the sun. … Continue reading Unforgettable days on Florida’s Forgotten Coast
A Tale of Two Accidents For so many, 2020 was a year of COVID illnesses and deaths. For us, it was a year of devastating accidents: two bicycling accidents, neither involving a car, but resulting in very different outcomes due to a single, inexpensive piece of equipment: a helmet. Accident #1 On October 23, 2020, … Continue reading An Avoidable Tragedy
Back in April, when most of the world was in shutdown mode, John and I dreamed of getting out on the road again. Realizing that COVID-19 could not possibly disappear anytime soon, we set our sights on an August retreat that would offer cooler temps and a change of scenery in a safe environment. Our … Continue reading A welcome mid-pandemic retreat in the mountains of North Carolina
John and I were ready for a change of scenery and so we scheduled a week in Atlanta. I lived in Atlanta for decades and my three grown children are here, in addition to a number of friends. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Atlanta is still a vibrant city with lots to offer. Skyline of … Continue reading A week in the ATL
John and I left the U.S. on April 2, 2019 and visited 26 countries over 344 days of travel, landing in Houston on March 11, 2020. We later learned that Wired Magazine published an article called An Oral History of the Day Everything Changed – and that day was March 11, 2020 – the exact … Continue reading The Day Everything Changed
Important Note: We were on New Zealand's South Island February 11 through February 25, way before the Coronavirus was declared a pandemic. Since then, we have arrived back in the United States and are sheltering in place, as are millions of others. We started our time in New Zealand’s South Island by flying to Christchurch. … Continue reading New Zealand’s spectacular South Island
The Land of the Long White Cloud, or Aotearoa, is the name the indigenous Maori people gave to New Zealand when they landed there, sometime between 1200 and 1300 AD, about 500 years before Captain Cook “discovered” the islands. New Zealand has so much to offer – on the North Island, accompanied by my sister, … Continue reading On the North Island of New Zealand, the land of the long, white cloud
We were fortunate enough to visit several of Australia’s great cities in our six weeks in the country, including Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Sydney is the most famous of the three, with its iconic opera house and bay bridge, Melbourne is known for a great coffee culture and its livability, being ranked as the world’s … Continue reading A Tale of Three Cities: Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide
John and I enjoy coffee but we are not coffee snobs. We rarely go to coffee shops and when we lived at home, back before we sold our house and most of our worldly goods, we bought good coffee beans, ground them daily, and made a pot of regular ol’ brewed coffee. When we were … Continue reading Drinking Coffee in Australia
