We decided about four years ago to travel around the world. As we did not have the wherewithal nor time to do so in one trip, we broke it into three portions.
The rules were that we would minimize plane travel, as it diminishes the sense of planetary size and removes the sensation of actually going through various geographic changes, and that it would include places we had never been.
Stage One was from Seattle to Sydney, via Oahu, Maui, Fiji, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia.
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| Bondi Beach, Sydney |
Stage Two was from Tampa to Morocco, with stops in Key West, the Canary Islands, Malaga, Grenada, and Barcelona.
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| The Medina in Marrakech |
Both trips were great.
We are currently beginning Stage Three. We'll tell you more about it upon our return. Here's hoping it'll be a corker. We'll be back in about four weeks.
An aside:
For those younger than I, the photo above is of a television test pattern. When the broadcast day was done, back when we had only three channels from which to choose [ABC, CBS, and NBC], the station would shut down from about 1 or 2 am until 5 or 6am. Our local stations would begin their day with the farm report and end with some clergyman reading a prayer followed by scenes of soaring eagles, jet fighters at full cry, and the American flag being lowered while the National Anthem played in the background.
So, if you turned on the set at 3am, one would not find infomercials or bad movies, but the chief up there accompanied by some silence and a little static. Since The Coracle is signing off for awhile, this seemed an apt illustration. We'll see you all again, barring something untoward, by early February.