Overview For years we heard a lot of good things about taking a river cruise in Europe. After sampling the river cruise experience for a few days in Egypt on the Nile in 2023, we decided to take the plunge and go all in with Viking's 23-day Cross Europe cruise called European Sojourn (their longest river cruise). Go big or go home as the saying goes! So, we even front-ended and back-ended this cruise starting [...]
Overview In 2016, we visited the Island of Crete in Greece for several weeks and had a blast, however, we've never been to mainland Greece. High on our bucket list was the Acropolis in Athens as well as a number of other famous archeological sites such as Olympia, Delphi and Mycenae. We started planning for this trip by reaching out to Insight Guides, a company that connects travelers with hand-picked local travel experts. On their [...]
Overview After a lifetime of thinking about it, we finally pulled the trigger on going to Egypt and visiting this part of the ancient world - and our son Carl was able to join us. We planned the trip 5 months in advance and 2 weeks before our departure, the "war" between Hamas and Israel erupted at the Gaza Strip, just 6 hours from Cairo. We did some research (including talking with someone whose husband [...]
Overview For us, there is nothing like a road trip and we kicked off our fall 2023 travel with an Italy road trip that focused on picking up several places we didn't get to see the last time we were here in 2016. Our friend Carole retired to Italy about 9 years ago and she's helped with a lot of the travel planning. It really beneficial when traveling to have a "local" who knows some [...]
Overview It's early spring in Virginia in March and Nancy and I have gotten cabin fever after being home for 3+ months from our 6 1/2-month cross country road trip to Alaska and we ready to hit the road once again. This short 1-month trip down through the south enabled us to experience spring through summer and then back to spring again while we travelled down to south Florida and back to our home in [...]
Overview We live a few miles outside of Round Hill Virginia up on the Blue Ridge and this is within easy striking distance of a great deal of the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia. I grew up in this area of the country but have travelled widely across North America, and I still believe that the Shenandoah Valley is still one of the most beautiful areas. The last few years we have been road [...]
In our part one post we covered the first leg of our Key West to Deadhorse Adventure which took us from our home in Virginia down to Key West and Back. The second leg of this adventure covered in this post takes us from Virginia out to Bellingham Washington where we will catch the Alaska Ferry up to Alaska. Normally, we don't travel cross country at this pace, but the wedding described in first post [...]
Overview Prep work and planning for our upcoming Alaska Adventure is finally done and we now have time to start blogging again on some of our past adventures. This Wisconsin trip we did a few years ago is one of our all-time favorites. We did such a variety of activities and we came away feeling we only touched the surface and will need to go back and fill in some of the gaps in the [...]
Background We have always dreamed of an Alaska road trip but given its distance from our home and the geographic size of this destination, we intentionally left this off the plate until we had time to do it right. So now that we're both retired and have more flexibility, it was time and as a result, we have put a travel framework in place where we will leave in the spring and return home just [...]
Overview of the Oregon Road Trip Part Two This is part two of our 3,248-mile 13-day road trip we did in Oregon in 2013 that covers a great deal of the state and really gave us a flavor for its diversity of geography and culture the state has to offer. This post picks up in Burns Oregon and continues all the back to Portland. Part one can be found here. Oregon Road Trip Overview [...]
