Celebrating Christmas 2010 & Sketching Travel Plans for the New Year 2011

the altar of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church with elegant Christmas decor

a cute little manger with a cute little angel

Happy Holidays! We had a White Thanksgiving this year but Christmas was quite colorful! We transferred to the Travel Inn RV Resort in Elma, Washington (also about 2 hours south of Seattle but closer to Olympia, the state capital).  It specializes in planned activities. Tuesday nights are always poker nights. Then a Soup Nite, a Wii Night, and a Waffles Morning are all planned for the next days leading up to the breaking of 2011!

the celebrated choir and Fr. Jack singing classic Christmas carols

Bill beaming with his gift!

But we spent Christmas Eve with my granddaughter Krishna and her boyfriend Randy and his sister Diana. The following day we had lunch with Father Jack after mass at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in West Seattle and in the evening we had dinner with our good old friends Benjie and Fides before they left for the Philippines. Then on the 29^th I will meet my former ‘Estrogen’ Book Club pals for dinner.

the noche buena, a Filipino tradition after midnight mass!

New Year’s Eve will be even more colorful!  The ushering of the new will be accompanied by the roll of a thousand drums and the sparkle of a million fireworks!  Floating excitedly in our minds are thoughts of the next phase of our travels? First, we will be in Asia, specifically the Philippines, where my youngest daughter lives. Also we need to attend to some unfinished business regarding our properties there.

TRAVEL PLANS FOR 2011

Hopefully, we will be able to visit the famed powder beach in Boracay, the best dive spots in the world in Palawan, and the chocolate hills of sandy Bohol. Maybe we will even have the time for the most perfect cone of Mayon Volcano. We went to Baguio and Tagaytay the last time we were there. Then, we may even be able to visit the neighboring countries of Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore!

Travellerspoint Travel Community

Above is a link to the map of our Phase 1 travels, almost 25,000 miles! When we come back in Spring, we shall resume our cruising in our RV headed to the southeast through the Glacier National Park in Montana, Mount Rushmore and the badlands in South Dakota, where Bill bought the home in which all 3 children were born in Nebraska, reunions with former colleagues and somerelatives in Chicago, Illinois, the sights in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, and then to another Florida winter!!! The link to this new map is below!

Travellerspoint Travel Community

TRAVEL PLANS FOR 2011 AND BEYOND

We need to cover about 23 more states in the next 18 months after we get back from the Philippines, about as many as we covered in the past 18 months before we stayed awhile for the 2010 Holiday Season in Washington. The plan is to cover 10 states in 2011, and the rest in 2012, including four more provinces of eastern Canada and of course, the clustered New England states.

By the time we finish this next half of RVing in North America in 2012, we would have completed 45 American states, 6 Canadian provinces, and, of course, the 6 Mexican states we did in the first half. Then we feel we would be ready for RVing in Europe!!! From research we have done, there are 10,000 campgrounds in Europe and that the best way to cover more of Europe is through these backdoors.

Who knows? Maybe we will even be able to cruise Australia and New Zealand in an RV! Our bucket list may be unbelievably long and we may be growing in years but our spirit is strong! After all, we dedicated this blog to the Z Generation, the ageless and ultimate generation that blooms in the lifestyle of cruising. Maybe I can even publish a book about the happenings behind the scenes!  

Next Thought: Wonderings on Wanderings!