I was greeted this morning with a picture of Santorini on the 1000 Places to See Before I Die Calendar and memories of our Venice to Athens cruise last year. It has been a good travel year between birthdays, even though not all of my goals were completely fulfilled. We got back to Austin for the first time since we left five years ago. I took also took my wife to Napa and The French Laundry to fulfill one of her bucket list items. In fact, I was in California a record 5 times this past year, including I.U. soccer in Santa Barbara, the Santa Monica Pier, and Disneyland in Santa Ana. Ho…Ho…Ho. In the Great Northwest, we covered Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, Mt. Hood, Bend, McMinnville, Cannon Beach, and Walla Walla. We also spent several nights in Phoenix and Tuscon over Valentine’s week. On a wider scale, it was adventures in Bangkok, Phuket, and Maui. 

We passed through Chicago six times on our way to and from Indiana this year, including a game at Wrigley Field and dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab, our Windy City favorite. I met four half-sisters in Scipio, Indiana, after discovering the identity of my birth father. Unfortunately, we also had to attend the funeral of my wife’s mother, who died a month before her 98th birthday. It will be our last trip to Indianapolis for a while, that has been a four-times-a-year tradition throughout our marriage. As a result, we’ll be celebrating Christmas somewhere else this year. My birthday year ends with a trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and the next year starts with a wedding in San Francisco, followed shortly after by Broadway’s Moulin Rouge in New York City. Coast-to-Coast…Pacific to Atlantic.

We’re typically on the go, as I end an unusual 45-day stretch of being a home body. We have big plans for the year 2020, including Cairo, one of this week’s pictorial destinations, and a cruise down the Nile River. We will probably not get to some of these other worldly sites on “The Calendar,” like Vietnam, Japan, Isle Royal National Park, Sicily, India, Laos, and New Zealand, but perhaps another year “before I die.” I do know we’ll be in California visiting the newlyweds on several occasions, and Florida multiple times to see my family and friends. This of course will include a few days at Walt Disney World.

I would like to do a car or train adventure through some of the National Parks once we sell our house. I’d like to see Yosemite, Glacier, Arches, Craters of the Moon, and more of the Grand Canyon. I’d also like to re-visit some of my childhood memories of Yellowstone, The Black Hills, and the Wild West. I should really be taking advantage of my lifetime National Parks pass, even though I’ve never been much of an outdoors-man. I also need to get to Alaska and Maine, the two last states to cross-off my list, and want to spend some time exploring the area around Albuquerque, outside of airports. Maybe the hot air balloon festival?  

I never got to Marfa or Big Bend while we lived in Texas, or The Keys when I had a Florida home. This is why we’ve made every effort to cover the Northwest while we’re here. We’ve talked of a week in Palm Springs and renewing our wedding vows in Vegas. Maybe a rental near Lake Tahoe and another drive down Highway 1? There are so many places to see and re-visit before I die, that I don’t really need a calendar to remind me of how little of this world I’ve actually seen. It’s time to pack those bags and make more plans.