This has been a very important year for us. Our daughter Rosanna married Evan in June and now we were celebrating our 40th Anniversary, both in high style and very much budget busters! But you got to do what you got to do. We have been planning this trip for over 330 days in order to use our frequent flyer miles for the flights. Originally, we planned to use our miles to fly from Colorado Springs to Sydney, Australia, with a free stopover in Auckland. We would then spend about a week in Australia and three weeks in New Zealand. However, when I set a goal to visit 100 countries, and then discovered what a deal repositioning cruises were, we changed our plans to: - fly into Honolulu a couple days before the ship sailed and ... read more

9 June 2012 Saturday. Crossing the Great Plains. In 1895, following a visit to the top of Pikes Peak, the mountain that looms a mile above Woodland Park, Colorado (where we live), Katherine Lee Bates penned the following lyrics in America the Beautiful: "O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!" We descended from the "purple mountain majesties" down to the "fuited plain" otherwise known as the Great Plains that stretches from Colorado Springs to Kansas City. We did not see any fruit; mostly "amber waves of grain." So we consulted Webster's dictionary to see if one of the definitions of great is fruited. Websters defines great as: 1) notably large in size; 2) large in number or measure; 3) remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness; ... read more

My daughter Rosanna visited us from Virginia from July 12 - 26. The primary reason for her visit was to pick out a gown for her wedding scheduled for next May or early June. Her first day back we made appointments at several bridal shops, and then the next day she tried on many gowns. She found two finalists, and took the next week to decide. On July 17 and the morning of the 18th, Marilyn and Darryl visited with us on their way from Viriginia to California. 18 July 2011 Monday. So at noon Tamara, Rosanna, Will and my grandson Liam, and I loaded into the car and headed north for the six hour drive to Casper, WY on our way to Grand Teton and Yellowsrone National Parks. Rosanna was the first to drive. The ... read more

26 March - Friday Sunshine again. We stopped in East Grinsted for a McDonalds sausage and egg McMuffin because it was the convenient thing to do. We then walked to a bookstore to buy an AA road atlas. We could have just flipped a coin to decide which way to go as we just wanted to see the countryside. However, we headed in the general direction of Bodium Castle, a National Trust property that has a nice tea house and gift shop. Seeing at least one castle in England is mandatory, so we checked off that square. We then headed to Rye, one of our favorite towns, for a walk, some shopping, and delicious fish and chips. Then it was across the Romney Marshes, and through many quaint villages to our next Premier Inn hotel near ... read more

March 24 - Wednesday Another nice day. This time we where greeted at the break of dawn with song birds. I turned over and slept another couple hours as the bed with the duvet was the most comfortable yet. We still got an early start, with our first stop being Cortona. We walked all over town and to the top of the hill, and found none of the settings from the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun" that was supposed to take place here, but wasn't filmed here... a Hollywood fiction. We had another gelatti with two more flavors and bought some souvenirs and a gift for my wife Linda. It was then off to Montepulciano for lunch. This is where some of the best Italian wine comes from, so we sampled several with lunch. We bought ... read more