Travel Guides and Plans

---

My desk is littered with travel guides. There are so many places I want to go! Fortunately, we have a few trips already in the planning stages.

My husband, Rod, and I run our own business (it’s a constant nurturing process) and have come to a time where we can begin traveling again in earnest. Being photographers, we are always on the lookout for interesting places to explore ... happily, that leaves the whole world open to us!

While we love land tours (and have already done quite a few), our mode of transportation at the moment is by cruise ship. With the offerings at hand today, it seems to be both an economical and effortless way to see a lot of places in a short period of time ... which right now is important to us and our business. Plus, there is just something alluring about sea travel that calls to me.

One of the trips we are heavy into planning at the moment is a cruise to Alaska in 2012. Neither of us have been to Alaska before and we are both extremely excited by the prospect of the glacial formations and wildlife we will be able to experience and shoot (with a camera, of course) while there. While this cruise is exciting in itself, it has also been the culprit for what is becoming an obsession.

While researching the Alaska cruise, we’ve become more open to other exotic ideas, cruise lines and itineraries. This led us to a cruise experience in 2013 that will take that much time planning for us to be away from the business. If we can get all of our ‘ducks in a row’ we will be spending 28 days cruising Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti and other South Pacific Islands. I can’t even begin to explain the exhilaration I feel when thinking about the reality of this trip.

With these two trips looming in the future, we do have one short cruise coming up. In August we will be enjoying a 4-day cruise from Long Beach aboard the Carnival Paradise, visiting the ports of Catalina Island and Ensenada before returning back to Long Beach. I’m really looking forward to this trip. I’m looking forward to spending time with Rod, exploring the ship, photographing the ports and coming home to share our adventures.

But, most of all I’m looking forward to the journey that embarking on this portion of our life together will bring ... and I hope my desk is always filled with travel guides.

---