Let me preface this story by saying
that, originally, Steve was dead set on being gone no longer than 6 months. I
was desperately trying to convince him into 9.
The research for our itinerary went
something like this…
For Christmas 2010, Steve bought me two
wonderful coffee table books that ended up being the backbone of our research – National Geographic’s Journeys
of a Lifetime and Eyewitness Travel’s Where
to Go When. We spent months reading through them and marking the places
that we strongly wanted to consider visiting. After all, we have 6-9 WHOLE
MONTHS of no obligations! That is a ton of time, and so let’s just say we
marked desired locations very liberally. I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit
that even Antarctica was on our original list.
One Sunday evening, we had an official
family meeting at the dining table and attempted to prioritize the list based
on our research.
We organized the list into three buckets:
(1) Non-negotiables
(2) Nice-to-haves
(3) If it happens to be along the route
we’re already taking, we’ll stop to see it
It didn’t take long to look at a map,
crunch a few numbers and realize that we had completely and utterly misjudged
how big the world is! We were instantly humbled.
It took a few days to pick our deflated
spirits up off the floor. We went back and read advice on some of our trusted
travel blogs. They pretty unanimously recommended that in 1 year, you should
attempt to see no more than 3 regions of the world. Well that was a problem,
because we had 5 regions on our list, and they all had non-negotiables in them.
What followed were several more long
and tiring dining table sessions of negotiations and compromises. We jumped up
to 11 months, and sadly, had to identify some martyrs.
So here’s to the non-negotiables that
ended up having to be negotiable after all:
- Africa
- Patagonia
- Greece
- Cairo & The Red Sea
It will just make the day that we
finally get to see them, that much sweeter.
Katie, what you're doing is so exciting! I found your blog from Ashley's, and I am so eager to follow along on your travels. What a terrific feat of courage and adventure. Bon Voyage! - Cathy (McLaren) VanNahmen
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