Travel Bucket

I just finished finally putting 3 years worth of travel photos in albums. I am caught up. I usually did a pretty good job of getting prints and writing information on the backs. When we moved in July 2011, I stockpiled my photos from our June 2011 trip to Hocking Hills, Ohio and the aviation museum in Dayton, and then it was downhill from there. I didn’t even order prints of some of our trips until last year.

We regularly get catalogs of trips from Roads Scholar now. There are a few that interest me: Branson, Christmas at Colonial Williamsburg, San Juan Islands off of Washington state, covered bridges of Indiana. I found I didn’t like the historical lectures on our Quebec trip as much as I thought I would. I did enjoy being exposed to some of the local culture though. I usually learn something on trips thru site seeing and walking/boat tours and reading the tourism literature; often that kind of learning is less expensive than the Roads Scholar trips, but to be fair, they do expose people to people and places to which the individual tourist wouldn’t have access.   I suspect many tour-company trips cost more than independent travel, despite their claims of package savings.

I learned Okefenokee means “trembling earth”; that “colonial blue” does not represent the true colors used by people in Williamsburg (the colors were more vivid than historians originally thought).

    

Truer Williamsburg paint jobs

I learned what a baggywrinkle is:

That stringy mop-looking thing that protects ropes/lines from wires and metal parts.

 

I learned that the H.M.S. Bounty had an unusual below-deck because of the movies filmed in it.

 This is what FotoSketcher did with my photo of the Bounty. I like it.

 

The last two years on Hilton Head and Amelia Island, beachcombing and identifying the specimens has been very educational. I hear Sanibel Island area on the Gulf is a great shelling place. I may need to add that to my bucket list of trips. We have considered the Gulf Shores (Alabama)for a winter break.

In July, my husband and I will visit family in Southern California. We hope to spend a few days in San Diego on that trip.

I would like to tour Springfield, Illinois some day, too. Kauai, Hawaii was not on our previous journey which worked out well as about 2 weeks before our trip Hurricane Iniki closed that island to tourists. Another bucket list possibility. I spent a few days in New York City, but didn’t get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another possibility.

My brother-in-law is trying to get his sibs and spouses to cruise the Hurtigruten along the coast of Norway in 2015. With all of the hassles of overseas travel these days, I had sort of given up on trans-Atlantic trips, but maybe we will go. My husband’s grandparents came from Norway early in the 20th century.

 

What kinds of places are on your travel bucket list? Do you like tour packages/groups or independent travel?