The Grand Retirement Trail has opened up a bit for my wife and me.

We’ve had plenty of splendid journeys throughout the United States.

We ventured out west, through California and then to Oregon to attend my 50-year high school reunion. We have ventured the other direction, to Nashville, then to Washington, D.C. We took a trip straight north to the Twin Cities, Minn., to visit my cousin. We toured much of Texas in a circular path that took us from the Panhandle to North Texas, through East Texas, to the Golden Triangle, to Houston, to the Coastal Bend, then to the Hill Country.

We’ve seen friends and family along the way through all those journeys.

Our retirement years, though, aren’t restricted to exclusively North American destinations. One of our bucket list journeys involves a trip through the breadth of Canada, from Vancouver to the Maritime Provinces.

But, yes, we have at least one bucket list journey that we plan to take. It will be to Australia.

Friends who have been Down Under tell me the same thing: You will need to take plenty of time, because it takes a long time just getting there. OK. We get it.

I’ve had a fascination for nearly 55 years. My father entertained a career opportunity that would have taken him to a coastal community north of Sydney. I wanted to go. I thought Dad wanted to go, too. I learned a bit about Australia and tried to persuade Dad to take the job he was considering.

Dad didn’t take the bait. We stayed in Oregon. My desire to visit the Outback hasn’t dissipated on little bit.

We’ll get there. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.

My wife and I have been blessed with being able to see a lot of the world together. We’ve been to Taiwan twice together; we have visited Denmark and Sweden. We’ve been to Greece twice; my wife says of all the places she’s been, Greece is one country she could visit repeatedly. We have seen Israel, too.

I am unsure whether we’ll get back to all those places we’ve seen already. I do know that Australia beckons. Maybe New Zealand, too.

I happen to one of those Americans who isn’t as fond of international travel as I used to be. This post-9/11 world makes it a bit of a cumbersome experience.

It’s not too cumbersome, though, to keep me away from fulfilling this bucket-list journey to the other side of the planet.