Celebrating the Big 6-0

Wednesday, 11 April 2018
ADVANCED RV RESORT — PEARLAND / HOUSTON, TEXAS
TEMPS: HI 78 (26C) / LO 48F (9C)

Without new experiences, something inside us sleeps.
The sleeper must awaken.
~ Frank Herbert ~

I’m not in the habit of posting to the blog when Mui and I celebrate a birthday or an anniversary.  Not even when it is a milestone event … which this year’s birthday was for me.  Yup, I embark upon a new decade … one that I hope will see us collecting more travel memories from around the world.

Making the Blog Whole

Sunday, 1 April 2018
AdVanced RV Resort — Pearland / Houston, Texas
Temps: Hi 79 (26C) / Lo 60F (16C)

It's the sum of the parts that make up the whole …
~ Pankaj Patel ~

The story of our RTW voyage may seem complete … but it’s not.  At least not for me.

Yes, I wrote about the days leading up to the voyage … the planning.  Yes, I wrote about our port experiences.  Yes, I brought us back home in words.  Yes, I wrote a retrospective.  And yes, I also provided a visual of our overall travel history … the countries we notched on our travel belt.

Now it’s time to go back and add the missing days … the days at sea that I skipped after a while in the blog when time became too precious … too valuable a commodity when there was so much to see and do and experience.  I continued to keep notes in my daily journal, however … unpolished words … unsuitable for public consumption without some plenty of wordsmithing.

Frankly, I don’t remember if there’s anything in those missing words that others will be interested in reading.  But the blog is as much for Mui and me as it is for others.  Actually, it is more for us than for others since it is our memories that will be tickled most by these words.  It’s important to me that I make the blog whole … tell the full story, if you will.

My plan is to add the missing posts to the blog as time permits.  I’ll be backdating them so they fall into the appropriate timeline in the archive.  I don’t know if they will appear in RSS feeds.  Or if readers will be notified of these posts via email.  If neither happens, anyone interested can find the posts in the archive in the sidebar … starting with Day 54 … 1 March 2017.

Happy travels to all … whether virtual or real.

© 2004-2018 All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.

Merry Christmas … Happy Holidays

Sunday, 24 December 2017
Advanced RV Resort — Pearland / Houston, Texas
Temps: Hi 67F (20C) / Lo 40F (4C)

Merry Christmas … Happy Holidays
Wishing all a happy, healthy, and enriching 2018 shared with loved ones.

Will Continue to Come Along … But More Slowly

Friday, 11 August 2017
United Club — George Bush Intercontinental Airport
Houston, Texas

[Now that the story of our RTW is complete, this post is unnecessary.
But I don't want to lose the comments, so I am going to keep it.]

A mere five weeks after returning home from our 180-day RTW voyage, the time has again come to lace up our travel shoes and head overseas.  In fact, even as I write this post, we’re at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, awaiting our flight to London.

Every year we make a pilgrimage to visit family in Turkey for a month or two.  As we’re wont to do, we’ve tacked on some additional travel adventures to our trip, stretching out our time away from home … this time to 100+ days.  Combine those days with the RTW and by the time we return to the USA in November, we will have been out of the country for 286 days this year.  That’s a lot of days … even by our standards.

Our three cruises are all on Celebrity.  Sightseeing plans for the
cruises are in the works.  What we will do while in Turkey … that is still TBD.
[Base map courtesy of the Celebrity Cruises website.]

All this is neither here nor there where this blog is concerned.  Except that going a-travelin’ will impact my ability to process photos and put up more posts in this already-behind-the-times blog.  I am not abandoning the blog entirely, however.  I will continue to work on it in bits and pieces where and when time permits.  So take heart … keep that email subscription going or stop by every once I while to check on my progress.

© 2015-2017 — All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.

Where Have We Been?

Tuesday, 1 August 2017
Advanced RV Resort — Pearland/Houston, Texas

Friends often ask if there’s anywhere left in this big wide world of ours that we have not been to.  The short answer — plenty!

I have a general idea of the places we’ve traveled to, but I haven’t tracked them per se.  It got me thinking.  The continents are easy.  The number is finite and I can easily say that we’ve set foot on all seven of them.

Countries?  Well, that’s another matter.  For one thing, there are different ‘country lists’ based on various criteria.  I decided to use one of the online mapping sites to get a quick map of the countries we’ve visited … together.  Mui’s number would be a little higher as he has been on assignment to places like Saudi Arabia and Kosovo … to mention a few.

The map below proves my point.  We’ve been to 90 out of 250 countries thus far … that’s just 36% of the countries of the world. The map is misleading, of course.  The online tool marks the entire country even if we've been to just a city or two. Nonetheless, it's a decent visual of the countries we've set foot in … were I so inclined to notch them on our travel belt ;-)

We’ve got a long, long ways to go before we make a real dent in the world it seems!  I’d better go see about planning some more trips ;-)

© 2004-2018 All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.