Traveling

 Edward and I did a lot of traveling just the two of us in the time period from the late 1990s to 2019. We put on thousands of kilometers in our various cars and we flew mostly every year from 2004 on until 2016 which was our last flight. Just various places and various reasons for all of those flights although a lot of them were European and British Isles Tours. Edward had a number that he still wanted to do but COVID did rather get in the way but also his health was becoming less predictable and actually booking tours was not in the books after 2016 particularly. 

My children are surprised that I have no interest in traveling as they always thought I was the one driving all of that travel. Actually I tried to persuade Edward to go to Europe from 1966 on as I thought it would be a fun thing to do first when we finished undergrad and then when Edward finished his PhD but he kept saying oh no I do not want to fly across the ocean. I finally made it across the ocean in 2001 when I was invited to the Consecration of the ECUSA Bishop of Europe as a member of the world wide Anglican group (mailing list) and it was simply wonderful. I saw it as my pilgrimage to Rome actually and saw so many of the Christian sites there always going to St Peter's Basilica on the way back to the Monastery where we stayed (Christian School actually but part of a large monastery). It was truly my lifetime dream to do that and then it was presented to me and I quickly signed up and bought my tickets in August before 9/11 but I was determined to go and it was a life changing event for me really. 

By 2007 Edward was finally convinced to take a tour of the British Isles but cancelled that year however 2008 I decided I really wanted to visit my cousin in England as he was getting older; I was getting older and so he finally decided that it was time to fly across the ocean. It was a nerve racking experience for him for sure both ways across that ocean but he had a wonderful time there. It was six months later when he finally said to me that he wanted to go again. You could have knocked me over with a feather to be honest but Edward became the one pushing us to fly back to Europe/British Isles time after time after that. I had gone to see my cousin and really it was nice to see everything but I was not as enthused as he was by all that touring for sure. We had some wonderful tours though and the food was quite wonderful (particularly our French Country Tour where I gained about ten pounds!). We continued with our driving tours as well and in any year we had at least five or six trips here and there. 

Will I travel again? I want to do the North West Passage for my 80th birthday and I would like to go to Iceland for a week but that is pretty much my travel plans except for taking the train from Edmonton to the Pacific Ocean at the top of British Columbia and into Vancouver. That way I will have been to every province in Canada and whatever places we manage to stop at Territory wise on the North West Passage tour - I think we stop at all of them plus we fly to Greenland to start. So my travel plans are pretty well localized to the Western Hemisphere unless I am persuaded to go to Europe once again by one of my children.