World Tour Countdown Begins!

It is May 1st and we are in gear getting packed up to leave on our World Tour May 24th. Kate finishes school on May 19th; Doug and Jenny finish work on May 14th. On Tuesday we ship our Toyota Sequoia to Long Beach, California so we have a car to drive across country. As you can imagine there are many details and loose ends to pay attention to but it is all coming together. Here is our intended plan for our tour. It will be interesting to see how it actually plays out.

May 24th: Leave our Big Island paradise for Oahu. We will spend two nights on Oahu to see Pearl Harbor and some of the other sights on the island.
May 26th: Fly to LA to visit with our great friends Scott and Laurie Powell and to pick up our car.
May 29th: Leave LA and head east to the Grand Canyon via Las Vegas and Hoover Dam.
June 1st: Leave our car at the South Rim of the GC and take a shuttle to the North Rim in preparation for our rim to rim hike.
June 2nd-4th: Hike down, hang out, hike up.
June 5th - July 1st: Tour the SW and head east visiting family and friends, spend some time in our great capital, D.C. and then it's northern VT for a large family gathering.
July 7th or so: Head to Maine for 2-3 weeks to visit our old stomping grounds and get organized.
July 23rd-July 27th: Portland, ME to NYC via train with Gray (Jenny's step-mom) to see the sights and shop for the next segment of our tour.
July 27th-August 3rd: Board the Queen Mary 2 for our 6-day transatlantic voyage to Southampton, England. We are very excited!!!
Aug 3rd: Arrive in England and spend the next 2 weeks with Paul and Michele White, great friends of ours who live near Southampton.
Aug 21st-28th: London for a week.
Aug 28th-31st: Northern France/Normandy then to Paris
Aug 31st-Sept 7th: Paris
Sept 7th - 11th: Travel to Umbria, Italy
Sept 11th-18th: Spend a week in Montefalco (small town in Umbria) with Doug's sister Carol and brother-in-law Bob.

After this it gets fuzzier. We think we will spend the rest of September in Italy then head over to Portugal via the French Rivera and Spain. We'll spend most of October there and then head back towards eastern Europe to visit Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary etc... We are thinking of spending Christmas in Salzburg, Austria. We had hoped to go to Egypt, Jordan and Syria but that is looking less and less likely because of the unrest. Oh well.

After Christmas we are thinking we will fly to Tanzania and are looking at an 18 day adventure with Intrepid Travel, an "off the beaten path" tour group that does adventure tours all over the world. Then we may head to India from Nairobi. Not sure our mode of travel yet, whether plane or freighter.

Now it gets really fuzzy. India, Nepal, Bhutan (possibly), then down to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. We are thinking of a bike tour from Saigon to Hanoi. Then into parts of Indonesia. Hop to Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps Palau. Then back to Hawaii by the end of June.

It is hard to imagine doing all this and we may end up doing something very different. We have a few goals, however. 1) Try to stay on the surface as much as possible; fly only when necessary.
2) Less is more....try to spend time in one place and not try to see too much. We know we will miss many "must sees" but we can't do it all. 3) Set aside time to relax and re-energize. 4) Try to make sure that Kate does her school work so she can move on to 9th grade when we get back.
5) Try not to run out of money. 6) Try to live in the moment and let the trip unfold naturally. 7) Have fun!!!

So there you have it. As we sit in our comfy home with all we could ever need or want, it is daunting, but liberating, to think about heading out with just a back pack. We plan on traveling very light once we get to England.