On January 3, 2013 we’ll leave the US to embark on our first cruise. Over the next five months we’ll experience a total of seven cruises totaling 59 days at sea. Later, we’ll post more details about these upcoming cruises and house rentals.
First 5 months after leaving the US:
San Diego to Panama to Miami 15 01/03/13 01/18/13
Fort Lauderdale to Belize Cruise 8 01/21/13 01/29/13
Belize to Miami Cruise 3 04/09/13 04/13/13
Miami to the Caribbean 7 04/13/13 04/20/13
Miami to Barcelona 11 04/20/13 05/01/13
Barcelona to Mallorca 3 05/01/13 05/04/13
Barcelona to Venice 12 06/04/13 06/16/13
Total cruise days 59
Placencia, Belize 60 01/29/13 03/29/13
Ambergris Caye, Belize 9 03/29/13 04/09/13
Majorca, Spain 30 05/04/13 06/04/13We’ll spend November and December, 2012 living in a lovely first floor condo overlooking the pool in Scottsdale Arizona, a commitment we’d made long before we decided to travel the world. That commitment created extra expense and inconvenience but we chose to honor our agreement.
To take advantage of these two months we’ll prepare as much as we can of our 2012 taxes, forwarding everything to our accountant in Minnesota. We’ll get new passport photos taken (outdated after six months), apply for our second passports and visas, download 100 or more movies onto our portable external hard drive and get Tom’s new eyeglasses at Costco (great deal).
Tom’s sisters spend the winters in Arizona, about an hour’s drive and we’ll visit them. In the first half of November we’ll drive to Nevada to establish residency, apply for NV driver’s licenses and visit family, later to spend eight days at Christmas in a house we’ve rented in Henderson to be close to family and friends for one last time.
We’ll celebrate Thanksgiving in Arizona. In Nevada, on December 20th we’ll have our teeth cleaned. We’ll observe the Mayan Calendar’s End of Time on December 21st (hopefully, not really the end!), Tom’s 60th birthday on December 23rd, and of course, Christmas, away from “home,” the first time as true vagabonds.
Here we are, packed to the gills, totes filled with memorabilia currently scattered about the house for our kids to store for us. Our paperwork and photos are scanned, our documents and spreadsheets bursting with pertinent data stored in Dropbox for safekeeping, accessible from anywhere in the world.
Yesterday I spent an entire hour scanning a lengthy booklet from our well known national bank on wire transfer procedures, accounts which we’ve set up in both of our names. I inquired as to whether this booklet was online to be downloaded. “No, not yet,” they say. “Gee…kind of behind the times,” I thought.
One month and eighteen days from today we close the door to our home one last time. We leave behind our loved ones, the lives that we’ve known, our three little dogs buried in the yard, the friends on the peninsula, the eagle swooping in the trees in the summer, the coyotes hovering hungrily in the winter and the gentle fluttering call of the loons.
On a lighter note, we joyfully leave behind six foot snow drifts often trapping us for days and, mountains of goose poop. Yes, mountains of goose poop!