Fortunate Travel

I don’t know how we’ve been so fortunate to do so much traveling over the past 20 years or so. It can’t be karma. I doubt it’s genes. Part of it’s money, yes (we somehow make more than we should, but so far we haven’t been caught). But much of our travel has been wrapped around our jobs, one or the other of us attending conferences or trade shows or whatever on the company dole and the other tagging along for just the cost of airfare and food. And a few times we’ve travelled just on our own because we wanted to and could get a good deal. About 12 or 15 years ago we decided that we should travel while we could, while we had the money and health and still-living brain cells. But as I look back over our travel of the past two decades, I’m both surprised and thankful:

Domestic

We have of course travelled often in states adjoining Iowa: Minnesota (Minneapolis, Duluth, Grand Marais, several times), Illinois (Chicago, once or twice a year), Missouri (St. Louis, Kansas City), and Kansas (Wichita).

Beyond the upper Midwest: Indiana (Indianapolis), Ohio (Columbus, Dayton, Oxford), Tennessee (Memphis, Nashville), New York (Rochester, New York City), Massachusetts (Boston/Cambridge), Washington D.C. (numerous times to visit our granddaughters), North Carolina (Raleigh/Durham), Georgia (Atlanta), Florida (Clearwater Beach), Louisiana (New Orleans), Texas (Austin), New Mexico (Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos), Arizona (Phoenix), Colorado  (Boulder), Utah (Salt Lake City, Park City), California (San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland), Oregon (Portland), Washington (Olympia Peninsula), Alaska (Anchorage, Seward, Homer).

Foreign

And then there’s the fortunate foreign travel: Canada (Victoria, Vancouver (not far foreign)), Belize (San Ignacio, Caye Caulker), England (London), Ireland (Dublin), France (Paris, Burgundy, Alsace-Lorraine), Germany (Berlin), Czech Republic (Prague), Italy (Rome, Florence, Amalfi Coast), Spain (Barcelona), India (Mumbai, Goa).

It’s not the longest list – we have friends whose would be about twice as long – but we like it, we’ve taken advantage of what we can. And we’re hopeful of more. It’s something of an old saw, but whenever we come back from a trip – here in the US or overseas – we never fail to comment on how much more of the country (the Northeast, the South, Hawaii) or the world (Mexico, South America, Africa, the Far East, Australia) we have yet to see. If one spent one’s whole life doing nothing but traveling I don’t know if you could cover the earth, or even all of the earth that you would want to visit. I don’t think I could. A lifetime isn’t long enough to take in the whole of the world. But we hope that we’ve still got another decade or so where we can at least add to our list and take in what we can of it while we can.