All,
Welcome back, and lets get ready to be Lost on a Journey again. It's been nearly 8 years since I was on my journey around the world solo and lots have happened since then.
I have had 5 different jobs, lived in 5 different cities, GOT MARRIED, and been on a roller coaster of world tragedies including but not limited to, Wars, Pandemics, Elections (Political warfare), killer bees, monkey pox, recessions and booms, and of course shortages of what seems to be all consumer goods, but especially toilet paper and baby food.........
Although there were, and still are, tons of horrible things happening around the world there were lots of positives, such as family time, growing closer with nearby friends, enjoying the outdoors, and doing my best to keep my wife on her toes. The most exciting is getting married in June 2019, Nicolette (My Wife) graduated as a Doctorate in Nurse Anesthesia in May 2022 and Accepting a Job in that field starting in September 2022.
You may be asking yourself why is she starting her job 3 months after she finishes school, well that has to do with why I am kicking this blog back up again.
We decided that we were going to travel all summer to enjoy eachother's company since she has been in school since we have been married and we needed some 1-on-1 time to enjoy the time together and remove ourselves from the daily grind and take a peek at whats going on in the world around us beyond what is stated in the ever untrusting media. Since we were not able to take our Honey Moon due to Covid we have carved out 3 months in our schedule to get lost in the world.
As you can imagine this is not an easy task to be planning right now, with the forever changing Covid Protocols, especially between different countries, and the war between Ukraine and Russia that seems to be growing every day. We began planning our trip in December 2021 and at that time half the countries we wanted to visit were still locked down from international travel due to Covid, not to be disheartened we continued looking at the restrictions and keeping our plans extremely fluid.
We finally bit the bullet and purchased the first lag of our trip to Singapore in March, luckily Nicolette was reviewing our flight details over Easter weekend in April and realized that United had cancelled the our flight from Rapid City to San Fransisco (en route to Singapore) without letting us know. No Email, No Call, No Notifications, she was simply looking at our seats for the flights and noticed that they had cancelled the first few legs of our flight plan. After multiple hours on the phone we had to reschdule our departure. The trip was back on.
Although this could have been a major set back we caught it early enough that it wasn't the end of the trip. As stated earlier in the blog our trip is extremely fluid and its hard to plan any more then 4-5 days in advance with Covid Protocols changing weekly.
Our tentative plans are listed below:
South East Asia in June
Europe (Mediterranean) in July
South America in August (Hiking Macchu Picchu, was originally our Honeymoon in 2020 but was cancelled due to Covid)
As of right now (5/2/22) we have 2 dates locked in, Flying to Singapore on May 27th and starting our 7 day hike to Macchu Picchu in Peru on August 3rd, we will be getting back into the USA end of August. As for whats happening between those dates, is completely up in the air and will have to be sorted as we travel and figure out the restrictions, weather, and war that will forever be present.
Yesterday (5/24//2022) we made a few more decisions on our travels, we will be spending 4 days in Singapore then flying to Phuket to begin our adventure into Thailand and working north, as seen on the below map. As always time and destinations are tentative.
We have been busy packing our house up and trying to decide necessities vs wants as we are only packing a carry-on bag each for the 3 months of our trip. We are AirBNB our house while we are gone and have hired Nicolette's little brother, Jordan to Property Manage (cleaning, mowing, customer care) it through the summer.
See listings below if you need a place to stay in Rapid City, SD this summer.
https://airbnb.com/h/grandmasgetaway
https://airbnb.com/h/stjamesjourney
We are extremely excited for our summer and please follow along as I do my best to update the trials and tribulations as we trek around the world.
Nicolette's Packing vs Mine
