{"id":27913,"date":"2018-02-06T01:26:48","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T01:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27913"},"modified":"2018-02-06T01:26:48","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T01:26:48","slug":"happy-trails-part-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27913","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trails, Part 74"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Grand Retirement Trail has opened up a bit for my wife and me.<\/p>\n

We’ve had plenty of splendid journeys throughout the United States.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen friends and family along the way through all those journeys.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But, yes, we have at least one bucket list journey that we plan to take. It will be to Australia.<\/p>\n

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. <\/em>OK. We get it.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Dad didn’t take the bait. We stayed in Oregon. My desire to visit the Outback hasn’t dissipated on little bit.<\/p>\n

We’ll get there. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

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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 … Continue reading Happy Trails, Part 74<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1936,2138,3920,4058],"class_list":["post-27913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-golden-triangle","tag-hill-country","tag-retirement","tag-rv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27917,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27913\/revisions\/27917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}