We are survivors!

 We are Survivors! The Sydney security line for Auckland departure 2HOURS! Auckland arrivals security queue - 1 hour. Couldn’t take any pictures- security would have hauled us in! Patience is a virtue flying through these countries!

We have been riding the bus or walking here in Aukland - our bus driver said we were the first foreigners he'd talked to from the US since before COVID.

Day 1 we hiked to the top of town and then followed the Lonely Planet walking tour back towards our hotel. Auckland has many parks and is really quite lovely. We stopped at the Art Museum then walked through the Albert Park with the Victoria and Albert statues and remarked that we should tell our grandkids to take a semester or a year here at Auckland's University which circles around the park area. We got sidetracked however when we reached Vulcan Lane and needing a rest succumbed to the siren call of pubs and beer. Vulcan Lane used to be the hangout of prostitutes and sailors we were told by the barkeep.

The next day we visited the Aukland Museum - or Aukland War Museum via bus. Aukland is just too hilly, and it was a bit of a hike. The museum has much of the history of New Zealand and many Māori artifacts. They also have a cultural show we paid to see. It was good... but truthfully, not as good as the one at the Waitangi Treaty grounds, but we wouldn't know that till the next day.

We'll return to Auckland at the end of our OAT trip, and hopefully visit the tower and go out to Devonport, an old Victorian suburb the book says to see.

Larry's clamoring for his computer, so I'll add pictures later when I can upload them. Hope all is well with you my friends!

                 The Antipodes - A Brief Ancient History

In ancient times, explorers traveled from place to place far from their home looking for new wealth and treasure. Some of them claimed that the earth was flat as they moved around. However, Greek astronomers, later on, concluded that the world is spherical with southern and northern hemispheres.

In 150 AD, a mapmaker and Greek astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy, came up with the idea that the earth is kept balanced by the unknown land in the south. He then drew an imaginary land that represented the unknown land on the map. Over this time, it was referred to as the unknown land in the south. The Antipodes.

During this century, Europeans were certain about this land in the south, but they were yet to figure out how to get there. In 1570, a map was drawn with a vast imaginary land mass located in the south that was proportional to the land on the top of the earth. For about 200 years, European explorers searched for this unknown southern land. Some of them sailed past it while others bumped into it, but they didn't realize as thy expected a lot of wealth to be in this fabled land.

While explorers from Europe still searched for the unknown land, Aborigines had already settled there. The Aborigines were the first people to settle in Australia. They are thought to have arrived on the continent 50,000 years ago. Aborigines' ancestors are believed to have left Africa 60,000 years ago and have wandered through Asia before they stumbled in the ocean between Australia and the other continents. Since there is no evidence of boats and canoes, it is still uncertain how they crossed to Australia.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand the Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriari.

                                We are off for the Antipodes!

(Australia and New Zealand and Tasmania.)  

Our first crisis is Larry can’t take his Pay Days with him.  Rumor has it New Zealand will confiscate them and have even fined previous OAT tour members $400 for not declaring them in their luggage. Now that’s serious business!  However, this isn’t nearly so bad as the first explorers who found themselves attacked and eaten … the Maoris didn’t like interlopers.

It is also amazing that the first explorers looking for the fabled continent (Australia) managed to sail right through the Tasman Sea and not even realize Australia was there landing in New Zealand instead! 

“In their search for the vast ‘terra australis incognita’ (the unknown southern land) thought to lie in the Pacific, explorers made daring journeys across uncharted waters.

They did not find the fabled continent, but they did find New Zealand. First sighted by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the country was later mapped by James Cook, the British seafarer who dominates the story of the European discovery of New Zealand.”

I expect you won’t hear from us for several days; we leave October 19th and cross the International Date Line and then after 15 hours and 20 minutes then another 4 hours to Auckland we’ll be zonkered.  But I do hope to keep up to date as much as I can on our journey and even add pictures if I figure out how.

Merry Christmas 2014 from the Wandering Stevens!

Merry Christmas 2014

We hope you had a prosperous year, and that you and your family are healthy and happy. It’s been a good year for us, we’ve dodged the health bullets pretty much… Patrice had a run in with a tic at Buffalo River National Park in Arkansas and spent 3 days of our beltway vacation hanging out in West Virginia being treated for ehrlichia (a tic borne disease.) She just can’t stay away from hospitals on her travels LOL.

This year we took Serendipity (our travel trailer) on several trips ... a couple of 3 day escapes to Mueller State Park which is on the west side of Pikes Peak (the fall colors there at the end of September were stunning!) and a couple of short jaunts to New Mexico and Eastern Colorado. We visited Pueblo, New Mexico home of Kit Carson for many years and Bent’s Fort in Colorado… another hang out for Kit.  We were lucky to meet Kit’s great grandson at Bent’s Fort where he spends summers as a docent.  He’d find it hard to deny his heritage, he’s the spitting image of his great grandpa – short, slight and sandy colored hair.

Our big trip for the year was an 8 week long journey across the America’s midsection. We headed east out of Colorado and wound our way through the middle states- Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, dipped down to Mississippi as part of our Shiloh Battlefield Visit (we had to see the infamous train crossing that provoked the battle), then on through Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Mary- land, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska… and finally home to Colorado. On the way we stopped at as many state capitols as we could, and all the presidents homes we’d missed on previous trips and of course went back to Jefferson’s Monticello. We followed the National Road heading west out of West Virginia and visited the site of George Washington’s first battle with the French. We visited Fallingwater - a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pennsylvania, did some genealogy research in Cambridge, Ohio, went to Springfield, Ill. to

visit the new Lincoln Library and Museum, Mark Twain’s home and Louisiana, Mo – where Larry’s great grandfather Levi Ruggles built several mansions prior to the Civil War … whew I could go on and on!

What we learned on this journey is what a wonderful country we live in and how much more there is to see.  We feel like we just scratched the surface and are itching to head out again next June for another long journey to our northern and eastern states this time.

 

  We finished off our travels for the year with a fall colors cruise Of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. The weather was great (if a little nippy) and we found many places we’d like to revisit with Serendipity for a more leisurely and in depth tour of the area.

   In between or travels to see North America this year, we found ourselves in California on 

frequent visits. After all, our children and my parents haven’t deserted the state unlike the     run-away Stevens. My mom has bounced back from her terrible car accident last October and while she still needs a walker and has vertigo issues, she’s doing great. She plays poker, bridge, and any other game that comes up at Mission Commons and has found relief in the fact that they handle most of my dad’s care. My dad continues to slip under the blanket of Alzheimer’s so we share as much time as we can with them while we can.

 

Jennfer and Brian Berg spent all their vacation time on a trip to watch the FIFA World Cup soccer playoffs in Brazil this summer. They found time to get in some sightseeing and a visit the Amazon in between games and had a marvelous time! They continue to remodel their house when they find the time, are AVID Galaxy fans and enjoy the Southern California lifestyle.  They've informed us they WILL NOT be following us to Colorado.

 

We spent Thanksgiving with Mom, Dad, Richard, Mike and Heather and Jennifer’s families and plan to spend a belated Christmas dinner with the same gang as well as my brother Steven and his wife Rhonda and hopefully some of their family added in for good measure. 

With all our gallivanting around, sometimes I think we don’t really need a house but we have all this stuff and we need some place to put it. Larry isn’t buying my proposal to sell the house and get an apartment in both Calif. and Colo. (He really  wants a barn for his workshop and Serendipity and to hike the gorgeous mountains so abundant here) so we’re settled here in Colorado with all our dear friends, and the squirrels and birds Larry has adopted for now.

 

   Finally, we exhort you to Come! Visit! We love having company and showing off our beautiful state!

 

Cheers to All!

         May you have a happy, healthy and

                 peace- filled year to come!

         Larry and Patrice Stevens

 

 

 

 

 

OP-Ed on Gun Control

Patrice has been on a tear of late regarding gun control and background checks, and while I have been sitting on the sidelines since many of my thoughts regarding gun limitation are far more restrictive than anything our legislators have passed. 

What changed my mind to action and speak out?  The recent photo in the Wall Street Journal depicted here.  I have to ask: “Is this the America we want as a nation?”  When I saw this picture I thought it might have been a photo from Eastern Ukraine, Syria, the Gaza Strip or a host of other Third World countries who are engaged in running conflicts – CBS Evening News reported that there are 41 shooting wars around the globe today, but no it was taken in Midland, Texas.  We have traveled to Third World countries where this would not be a strange sight, the Yucatan Peninsula comes quickly to mind where local “authorities” in civilian clothes walked the street with sawed off shotguns slung over their shoulders.

It is time to stop this nonsense; we need to push our Constitution back to the intent of our Founding Fathers, before we become a lawless state where we will find the Old West – two guys in the street drunk and shooting at each other, in a street near your home.  Despite what the “Supremes” have ruled, if you go back and review the six Second Amendment drafts that were rejected in favor of the current one, I think anyone untarnished by the tripe of the NRA will readily conclude that it was the intent of our First Congress to provide for a well-organized Militia (what we now refer to as our State National Guard units) that would be organized, armed and disciplined to “suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”  From my reading of Section 8 of the Constitution,  Congress has the authority to “provide for the common Defence” with the Militia being the vehicle for such defense.  To carry this thought a step further, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, as President Thomas Jefferson, proposed that the federal army be disbanded with all defense being delegated to the State Militias.  Congress didn’t agree, but certainly it is hard to question that Jefferson was a knowledgeable participant in the inception of our Nation and a voice in the constitutional process.

I see little comparison between the Founding Fathers view of citizen soldiers armed with single shot muskets who would respond to an impending threat by the clang of the town’s church bells and today’s xenophobic, undisciplined, and often untrained rabble that call themselves the NRA.  To make my point, I hiked into the national forest yesterday – signs along the road said “no target shooting next 12 miles,” “no target shooting next 11 miles” – I assume these admonitions continued until you left the national forest: Could anything be more clear?  When I reached the top of Mount Herman, I could hear random shooting from the west where there once WAS a shooting range.  Occasionally the shooting broke into bursts of 5 to 15 shots, where I suppose these would-be Rambo’s enacted some fantasy of glorify, death and mayhem.  Is this the NRA’s view of trained, responsible and sensible gun use?  And to add to this unauthorized, irresponsible target shooting, there is a trail loop just behind their “killing zone” – one of the reasons the shooting range was closed.

Our country saw the threat in driving cars without proper training on the laws of the road, the practical training of the novice in safe driving habits and a testing and licensing procedure that would demonstrate your knowledge of the laws, mental stability behind the wheel and competence to meeting reasonable standards of performance on the road.  Cars don’t kill people any more than do guns, yet prudent minds realized the danger of sending an ignorant, untrained and undisciplined novice onto the road.  The same is true for gun enthusiasts, no one wants to limit their rights to responsible gun ownership and use, we just want to make sure they know the rules of the road and can demonstrate that they understand them, and will obey them.  Like my Rambo friends in the forest who didn’t follow the clearly posted rules, were acting irresponsibly and showing their ignorance of prudent gun use, they should lose their license until they can show that they have been trained in some good sense and maturity.  By the way, how often does a hunter effectively bring down a deer with a 15 round clip?  Like the car enthusiast who often shows his machismo with more horsepower, I sense these 15+ shot clips displays the same high levels of testosterone.

If this example isn’t enough, how about the recent story of a Michigan man who shot and killed an inebriated black teenage girl with a shotgun blast to the face through a locked screen door; he is now claiming “stand your ground” amnesty.  It’s hard to imagine a reasonable gun community supporting such irresponsible behavior.  All he had to do was close the front door, click the lock and call 911; he was not inebriated, or hasn’t alleged it, he was old enough to have some good sense, and he should have shown maturity in defusing this less than threatening event.

For the gun community, the paranoid thought that 300 million weapons would be confiscated by the federal government is absolutely ludicrous to me.  We live in a world of instantaneous social media, any attempt at mass confiscation of guns would turn into a civil war assuming the army would even obey such an order.  And the argument of dictators collecting guns as a first act to total power assumes that Congress would stand for it, the military would stand for it and that the American people would stand for it.  If these groups didn’t stand their ground against such a tyrant, we have much bigger problems than just the confiscation of weapons.

So I guess my question remains: “What kind of United States do the America people want?”  The Third World gun photo of gun totting Americans accompanying this opinion, or a less threatening world where guns are registered in case they are stolen, shooters licensed to prove competence, guns being left under lock and key until your next hunting adventure or trip to an authorized target practice shooting range, and a shift from “stand your ground” laws to the less bellicose laws on the right to self-defense.

Another Civil War?

I've been watching the debacle over paying the bills and the debt ceiling in congress this last few days and last year as well.  While I find the House of Representatives' posturing to be maddening I can't be too surprised.

In my mind there are at least three things causing this downfall of functioning government. 

Number 1:   the US has grown far to big for it's own britches. There are regions in the US larger than most countries in the world.  The Northeast is different from the Southwest is different from the Southeast is different from the Middle of America... then there's the Northwest and oh.. Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  Each of these regions has their own version of what the US government is good.. and bad for.  The OC doesn't care much about what farmers are faced with, it has it's own problems. And vice versa.

Number 2:  We've been gerrymandering senate and house districts for years all in good faith that districts should be homogenous, not heterogeneous.  When the House and Senate were set up, this was definitely not the case.  Senators and Representatives had to take into account many different points of view and find ways to compromise within their district.  Ain't so anymore.  Now when a pig headed congressman decides he can get re-elected if he only supports or fights one cause, he can get away with it because he knows HIS constituency will go along with the gag.  How can Congress solve any big problems when the small ones are the only ones representatives focus on?

Number 3:  There were no political parties when the Founding Fathers created our constitution. George Washington, John Adams and in fact the whole crowd were adamantly against the idea. But there were two parties by the time Thomas Jefferson ran for office. (In  today's terms he was a democrat.)  Now you could say there are five - The Tea Party, The Republican Party, The Socialist Democrats, the Democrats and the Libertarians.

If we can't find agreement, and it seems more and more, we can't, pretty soon we're going to find one group saying... we've had enough of those yahoos who only want xxxxx and don't want to pay for yyyyy.... let's secede.  One group pulling one way, one group pulling another and pretty soon the whole pie breaks into pieces.

I hope I'm wrong. Tell me it ain't so.

The Winner Takes It All

We went to an ABBA cover band concert in Colorado Springs tonight. It was a so so concert, the cover band was Swedish and while they supposedly had been performing around the U.S. for 20 some years, they're onstage patter was stiff at best, and the sound was echoing.  Too bad, I like ABBA's music even if it is a bit monotonous.

I was struck by the song "The Winner Takes It All" especially tonight.  It really is true, you know.  The winner does take it all, and write the history.  We've been watching the PBS Special Presentation of Latino Americans.  The Spaniards came into Texas and California and took the land away from the Indians.  Then the U.S. won the Mexican American War and despite the Treaty of Guadalupe, white Americans started pouring into Texas and California and soon they had taken away the lands owned by the Spanish and Indian families in those areas. 


While I really sympathize with the Latino plight, I don't condone the Americans' behavior in any way, I have to point out that the Californios and Tejanos did the same thing to the previous residents... the local Indian populations.  It's been true throughout man's history.  The victor takes it all, and writes the history so it looks like they were doing the previous owners a favor by taking away their holdings.  Europeans have been extremely good at this.  They "colonized" the Americas, Africa, India .... and of course the native population was really only there holding the land till the Europeans got there. The United States was just following a pattern of colonization and subjugation.   After all, they were the winner and "the winner takes it all."

I could become a communist in my old age, from each what he can to each what he needs.  But mankind doesn't work that way.  They are always looking to win, at the expense of anyone in their way.  I know that. So I'll just protect my little corner of the world and hope a new winner doesn't take over the United States - Colorado in particular and start appropriating the previous landowners' lands - including mine.

Serendipity's First Run!

The Crags/Pikes Peak from Mueller State Park

Larry and I took Serendipity up to Mueller State Park - a beautiful Colorado State Park in the shadow of the Pike's Peak massif - for her first run this week.  We figured we needed to do a shake down run before we stored her for the winter, and while out we could enjoy the aspens as they changed their colors to the beautiful golden hue they take on before dropping their leaves for the winter.

We are tenters, have been for years. But the summer of 2012 ended that part of our life.  We took Heather and her kids - Aiden, Brooke Lynn and Connor camping to Zion National Park where it rained, poured actually, and filled our tents with water, then flash floods rushed down the river and we watched from our riverside campground as the river rose and rose and rose... and we were within inches of having to grab everything and head for high ground when it finally subsided.

And then our trip with H and the kids was aborted on the way back to California at Mesa Verde where I woke Larry and Heather up in the middle of the night with heart problems and ended up in the hospital, first in Cortez where my left ventricle quit working altogether, then Durango where they gave me a pacemaker to keep me alive and kicking.

That was it.  We were through with tent camping!  But we have always loved seeing the U.S. by road and campsites are often much more scenic than hotel rooms.  And we had always said we would like to tale long leisurely trips to different areas of the country taking in the sights and culture of the place.  So we evaluated our life, and decided we were old enough to buy a trailer and sleep off the ground inside a "box" with a kitchenette, a bathroom steps away - inside our abode - not down the trail.Serendipity was the outcome. In a previous blog I waxed on about how we found her.

So we found ourselves at Mueller State Park camping with our friends the Golondziniers - who have a much more luxurious trailer,  a fifth wheel. And were we planning on traveling with four people regularly, we might very well have bought something quite similar.  But we couldn't quite leave our tenting roots behind, and we don't think we'll have too many hitchhikers with us on our future travels. So we brazenly used their trailer for the night time card and board games we played but were contented with Serendipity for our own use.

 It was lovely to stumble down the length of the trailer to the toilet in the middle of the night (we are older) and to be able to plug in the computers and work at the table after dark - with electric lights.  Or watch TV... had their been dish coverage (yes we have a t.v.) or had we thought to bring a DVD with us.  I think we're going to really enjoy travelling around the country with Dippy.  We do need to get a couple of camp chairs so should we invite someone to play cards inside Dippy, we can and not be users all the time.

Maybe in a year or two we'll succumb to the lure of a fifth wheeler, but for now we're quite content with our choice for an entree into the RV world.

Serendipity (the table comes out giving a direct shot down the trailer bed.)

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling - Rule #1

I just got home from our shakedown run with Serendipity to Mueller State Park, and that's certainly a subject for my next blog, but while cleaning out my inbox I came across this gem:  Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling.  

 Why didn't someone give this to me years ago?  Most of the rules make a lot of sense.  If I'd had them then, maybe my efforts at writing would have been much more successful.  Instead, despite several attempts at getting "published" in travel reviews or professional magazines or ..... I remain an aspiring writer.

Rule #1:  You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

Does this include my attempt to hike Elk Meadow Trail yesterday?  I started off jauntily, convinced that with my maintenance asthma drug and my rescue inhaler would get me through. After all, the day before we had walked the park road down to the Visitor Center and back -- a very successful 2 1/2 mile trek.  Yes, I had to stop towards the end and inhale, but then I strolled along and celebrated with a glass of wine at the campsite.

So on the Elk Meadow Trail (which was shorter by far, although a little hilly) I did fine for the first 1/2 hour, then things started to fall apart.  The wind picked up tremendously and as we started up towards the beginning or ending, if you prefer, (it's a loop trail) I started to wheeze. OK. No problem.  Inhale... that's what rescue inhalers are all about.  And it got me through the day before.  But I found myself walking shorter and shorter stretches before I had to stop and catch my breath.  Larry had lots of time to take pictures of chipmunks, aspen leaves ripped from their trees and shimmering on the ground, thankfully not of me however.

I was down to talking myself around the bend, to the next clump of aspens, over the next rise, each time stopping talking to my legs, telling them and my lungs we could do this.  When we got to the top of the last rise and I saw the kiosk ahead I rejoiced!  I had made it!! No Larry said, that's a different trail head.  We have .6 miles to go.

I am sorry to say I shouted at him.  I didn't know I had the breath for it, but I shouted "I can not go any further!  I can't!  I won't!!!"  He nodded, went down the 6/10 of a mile trail to the next trail head to get the car and brought it back to pick me up.  

 

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Crunch time!

 It has always been Larry's and my plan to buy a small travel trailer and set off around the U.S.  seeing it all at a leisurely pace.  We had finally decided that now was the time to take action and had been trailer hunting in California while we were assisting our kids with the first two weeks of back to school stress.  We actually found one that suited our needs perfectly.  It had a full bathroom (great for late night visits) a short queen bed that did not have to be folded up each morning, a well designed kitchen and a bump out for a couch/seating area.  So we kept the brochure, came home to Colorado and promised ourselves next spring we would begin this new version of travel.  After all, we still had our trip to Argentina and Chile ahead of us to keep us busy this fall.

But then I decided to browse through Craig's List.  Lo and behold, there was a trailer with almost the exact same floor plan as the one we fell in love with.  It was two years old, never used, and it was $10,000 less. So we called the seller, checked it out, and of course we bought Serendipity.

The trailer had a sad story behind it.  The previous owner and his wife, like us, had planned to travel the country in their retirement, leisurely checking out our wonderful country.  But then his wife died suddenly.  So in his grief he decided to fulfill their plan.  But no sooner did he get Serendipity home than he had a heart attack and was unable to use her - even once.  The kids were now selling the trailer as part of his estate. We think they were happy that a couple close to their parents age were going to use it finally, and we promised to use Serendipity faithfully and well.

So now we are in the process of equipping a "brand new" trailer for a shake down run 31 days before we leave for South America.  The shake down run will be 5 days, but we first have to de-winterize the trailer, fill the tanks (propane and water), stock the trailer with all the amenities needed to live for 5 days, including the 1 time items one usually adds.... sheets that fit a short queen bed, racks to hold things, bins to keep stuff from running amok during travel, towels, dishes, etc. etc. etc. Then re-winterize the trailer before we take Serendipity to her winter home.

In the meantime we have the trip to Argentina and Peru to finalize.  Yes, we have the flights booked, the cars booked, the first night or 2 after each landing booked, and a basic itinerary in mind.  There are after all the must sees to plot on the map. We have bought books on the history of each country, and books by Isabel Allende, as well as books by others on their travels so we can be well informed when we get there.  I'm a fast reader, but that's still a lot to get through in... did I say 31 days?


But have I mentioned before that Larry is a Libra?  In his world, we cannot leave without a complete day to day itinerary in place, even though we never get 4 days into an itinerary without being 5 days behind because what you find on the ground seldom matches what you planned.  There's bound to be a festival in one town, a farmer's market in another, a waterfall never mentioned in the guide books that the locals say is spectacular or .....

So now we are in crunch time, the story of our life.  Blogs?  I'll get them up in between all the other stuff going on,  I hope!