The Birth of a Notion

This trip we are now planning has part of its roots from when I retired back in 2003. Susan gave me the entirely unexpected gift of a trip to Aruba… just her and me. I don’t think the kids were really thrilled at being left behind, based solely on their nearly constant ragging us about it for a while, but they don’t often mention it any more. However, I knew then that when Susan’s time came, the boys would definitely be going with us.

Aruba was lovely… I have never in my life spent an entire day doing absolutely nothing, but I did do it for one day during that trip. It was marvelous! The other days were spent doing the Aruba stuff… snorkeling, touring the island, having some rum drinks...

This is the view from our hotel room.

click to enlarge

After our return home, I began to think of where she might like to go when her career is done. I had in mind a place that, like Aruba, starts and ends with the letter “A”…

Alabama.

She had a slightly different place in mind…

Australia.

Well, if she wants to miss out on the myriad learning opportunities associated with an in-depth visit to our 30th largest state… who am I to stand in the way?

So, Australia it would be. Neither of us has been there and both of us have thought for a long time that we would like to go. I set about gathering information and doing a little initial planning but, up to that point, it was all geared toward a “there and back” type trip and the biggest question was: for how long? Surely, for all that distance, no less than three weeks. A month, maybe?

…Then Susan said, “Well, we will have all summer available.”

All summer, eh? We certainly could cover a LOT of Australia in that amount of time. There’d be no reason to hurry. We could spend as much or as little time as we wished with nearly every facet of such a long trip. The entire summer… hmmmm. I wondered if that might be too much time to spend.

Why, that’s even longer than the trip I took when I was ten years old...

That’s when the thought entered my mind, and I mentioned to Susan, “Ya know… Australia is halfway around the globe. Whadda ya think of going to Australia, and then just keep on going the rest of the way to get home?”

It took no convincing, and now here we are… less than a year away from starting out on a trip around the world. The new biggest question became: which way to go to get to Australia… west or east?

All for now… more later.