We may not be young; we may not be hip; we’re certainly not rich. But we love to travel and we’re making good on a promise we made to ourselves, and each other, a long time ago.

I don’t want to live in the past, but just for a little background, you might like to know that our lives were very different a few short years ago. Ray was working in international finance, I was painting and writing and studing literature just for the fun of it. Then a few crazy things happened and it all changed. Suddenly, our plan to retire young and travel extensively were shot down in one great big ponzi scheme. Ray retired, not really on his own terms, and I went back to work just for health insurance and to keep the wolves from the door. Then we were slammed with some pretty scary health problems, just to add insult to injury. But as a very wise woman once told me, “Nobody wants to hear about your troubles.”

That’s the end of “then.” Let’s talk about “now.” BECAUSE…a funny thing happened on the way to rack and ruin–we found out what was really important!

So, after some reevaluation and recovery, we are going to travel anyway, albeit on a very very tiny budget. Time is the ultimate luxury–after health, of course. I’ve left my job and we are hitting the road for awhile, not to visit every place on our bucket list, since financing that fantasy is just not going to happen. But we’re planning to have a great time, eat amazing food, drink lots of good wine, meet fun people and learn a lot along the way. The first leg of our trip was in Western Europe. Now we are off to Latin America in 2014, and a road trip in the U.S. is on the drawing board, but we’ll plan that after we get back from our current adventure.

We hope you’ll follow along, share your own travel knowledge, and wish us well on our journey. We’ll be in touch!