A New Year, A New Direction

Jim and I love Seattle, as we tell our family and friends, it is the one place we consider home. This leads to a new question, why are we kicking off the new decade in our basement sorting through all of our stuff deciding what to keep and what to put in a yard sale??? Well beginning in May we hit the road. We have dreamed of the day when we would be able to see the world before we are too old to enjoy it! How did we arrive at this decision, you may ask.....well, for that I have to go back just a little and review:

Several things have brought us to the point in life were we no longer care about or want the material stuff around us as many of us know by the last few years of economic conditions, all of the material stuff around us is very fleeting and for us it was unsatisfying.

We have always LOVED to travel. I know a lot of people can say this, but travel is truly something that feeds our souls. We learned that early on in our relationship and have been fortunate enough to visit some amazing places like South Africa, Australia and around Western Europe, not to mention most of the U.S. It has long been our desire to travel for an extended time period without the restraints of only having a week or two off for vacation. Our travel will be very basic, backpacking, and looking for very low or no cost accommodations.

In addition, we had three cats that were part of the family and over the years they have passed on and are no longer with us, sadly, our youngest "Violet" died in October.

So, with the culmination all of the above factors, we realized now is the time...

Initially, we were going to basically throw a dart on the map and pick a starting point (actually, there probably would have been a little more thought put into it than that, but I'll spare you the boring details) and go from there. The idea being we would get to a

beginning country as cheaply.....excuse me....ahem......frugally as possibly and then work our way other places overland. Then, as luck would have it, Jim shared our dream with a friend of his at work who is part owner in an eco lodge in Puerto Rico. She asked if we had ever considered being innkeepers and what evolved from that is a perfect arrangement where we have agreed to manage her property on the island for six months out of the year and then travel/backpack the other six months.

So, here's what we've developed so far: In May, we'll pack up the Subaru and leave Seattle spend a couple of days with our friends Bill and Tracie. From there we'll continue our drive down to Texas. From Texas, we'll fly to Toronto with our good friends Tina and Sharon for a couple of days and then on to Iceland. Finally, we'll work our way back to Texas to catch up with family and friends before flying down to Puerto Rico. Our first stint will be for three months, then we'll be off for five months or so, then back when we'll start the six months on and six months off.

We'll do our best to plan ahead about where we'll be on our six months off so that any of our friends or family who want to meet up with us somewhere will have some time to plan their trip. In addition, I'll do my best to update the blog regularly but I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most disciplined person so it could be a challenge! I will certainly endeavor to update it regularly.

Since this is an initial post, I thought I would experiment by inserting some pictures of the sunset from our house that we're renting here in Seattle. I may periodically insert some other pictures in future postings between now and when we actually start our travels just to break up the monotony. Looks like we can also post videos!

So there you have it! As we like to say..........

We can't lie to you - we're hoping to have a crackin' good time!