PAINTING OUR TRAVELS: MELBOURNE'S BRIGHTEST BLOOMS

The extended lockdowns have made me reach for things to do, especially because we have had to cancel our trips. In fact, I had so much time on my hands that I was able to publish a book about travels that run deep within us: Cruising Past Seventy. It's Not Only about Outer Journeys. It's Also about Inner Ones. But other hobbies have also taken center stage: cooking and photography. I have thus started three new series on this blog. I kicked off the first in my last post with this: Veggies from Other Lands: Air Fryer Vegetable Tempura.

This week, I begin the second series: “Travel Tales through Pictures.” It was way back in 2019 when I already wrote about photography in Remarkable Photos: Reliving the Story More than Words can Ever Weave. But there is another kind of picture besides photos. And it opens another way of telling my stories. Last Christmas, somebody in the family got a Paint by Numbers kit. My interest was piqued; I decided to try, too. But, I opted for the custom version where you can choose one of your favorite photos and the service provider runs it through their software to produce a pattern just for you.

Other people choose photos of their pets, their grandkids, or themselves as a couple. And you guessed it right. I chose to favorite travel photos, those that had excellently captured the intrinsic beauty of the places we had visited. I came up with ten, some of which have even won awards in the Photo Shows I joined. Surely, painting the scenes is another way to remember our travels. Yes, I can say it with paintings, not just photos! 

To produce my first one, I chose the simplest of the ten photos. It was taken in Melbourne, Australia where I spent a few months babysitting my youngest grandson (he was not yet two at the time) while his parents began their new life with new jobs and a new home after migrating from the Philippines. During weekends, my husband and I toured the nooks and corners of the city, all the surrounding towns in Victoria, the many vineyards, the outstanding beaches, and the different parks and gardens. 

Being an avowed xanthophile  (a person who loves the color yellow), I was hugely ecstatic when I was greeted with huge trees crowned with tons of yellow flowers everywhere I went. Before I had come to Australia, I didn't know that the country's national tree is what they call the golden wattle. It was my tremendous luck that during the few months I was there, they were brightly blooming! 

I have a ton of pictures of those trees but I didn't use any of those. Australia has plenty of botanic gardens and we were able to visit the large and diverse one called The Royal Botanic Gardens. That's where I found a large bush bearing flowers I have never seen before. The flowers had immaculate white petals punctuated by large yellow stripes. After some research, I found out that the flower is aptly known as Superbells lemon slice! Ordinary yellow and white combos such as you what you might find in daisies and plumeria don't catch my attention as these ones did.

I sent the custom paint by number provider my photo and then they sent me the above-framed canvass etched with the pattern. They also sent me two paintbrushes and 34 tiny plastic tubs of ready-to-use acrylic paints. There was no instruction sheet provided so I googled the usual steps to take and asked the family members who had done it for some tips. 

This was my work when I had used about 1/3 of the colors. By this time, I learned that going top to down and left to right made so much sense. It made sure that the side of your right hand does not smudge any new area just painted. Acrylic is easier to use because it dries much faster than either oil or watercolor. By going this way, by the time you go back to the top left with the next color, the areas you had painted with the lighter color are already dry.

This is the piece with about 2/3 of the colors painted in. By this time, I had learned that going from lighter to darker colors made cleaning the brushes for the next color much easier. It didn’t have to be extra clean since the lighter color would not materially affect the next one. I also learned how the varying shades of each color determined the effects. There was a science to the numbers! And I could work at my own pace, making and correcting mistakes. It was particularly instructive.

And the final photo now hangs in my reading corner. It was a good enough first effort to copy the original travel photo. The exercise made me comfortable with the canvass, the brushes, and paint as a medium. But a painting tells a story more than words can ever tell; more than photos can. Whether it be a calming beach or a majestic mountain, the painting may not be as realistic as a photograph but it reveals more of the traveler and how he worked with his own hands to put all the colors together.

I may not be good enough yet, in fact, I may never become good at all, but the process allowed me to relive the ecstasy I felt when the color yellow greeted me everywhere I went around Melbourne that year. Perhaps later I would gradually leave the science of Paint by Numbers as I move from one travel photo to another. First speaking, then writing, followed by photography, and finally, painting. My journey from words to pictures does not really take the place of my outer journeys; it wonderfully complements them.

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Celebrating Cruising Past Seventy in These Trying Times

Today is the day after Thanksgiving in the unusual year of 2020. Coronavirus cases are increasing exponentially in the dreaded second wave. Hospitals are again getting filled to capacities. And travel seems farther off into the future. Still, I am thankful for a couple of things. On Nov. 25, I turned 72. And my second travel book, Cruising Past Seventy. It’s Not Only about Outer Journeys. It’s Also about Inner Ones, was released by Amazon as a paperback on Nov. 24 and as an ebook on Nov. 28.* 

I know that the title is too long. Actually, it should have been Cruising Past Covid. This is because, one, I finished it while on lockdown. Two, I have an important chapter
entitled “Travel during the Time of Coronavirus,” espousing six safe travel rules based on CDC guidelines. But these weren't enough to change the title to the shorter version.

Lessons Learned, Changes Made, and Insights Gained

It is because, although I may not have intended it at the start, the book came out as very relevant for these trying times. We may not have the opportunity to make “outer” journeys but I know that we have a treasure trove of “inner” journeys inside us. The last paragraph of the book says it best: “Even if we are traveling less, we can look back at past trips, and look forward to future ones. And, from each trip we make, let us build our books of lessons learned, changes made, and insights gained.”

These are the three themes I discovered as I compiled all my best-loved and most widely-read posts from this blog after the first 250 that was the foundation for my first travel book, Carolina: Cruising to an American Dream. In this new travel book, Part 1 describes the lessons we learned from eight years of RVing across North America. Part 2 details the changes I went through from those days and also from our travels to forty-eight countries outside the continent. And Part 3 summarizes the insights I gained from all our trips about common travelers’ concerns. These inner journeys are the best gifts and the deep and long-lasting benefits of travel.

As an interesting note, the second part of the book’s last paragraph goes on to say: “The secret has been and will always be simple. Do not deny your traveler’s soul. Let it roam free. And eat lots of chicken wings and, if possible, also chicken feet.” Those two glorious chicken parts are the foundation of my traveler’s soul: chicken wings with which to fly the skies and chicken feet with which to roam the land. I intend to go back to eating more of them when travel will be more open for us.

chicken wings and chicken feet

Aging Gracefully and Shifting Gears

Seventy-two years is the approximate average life span of a Filipina, a female from the Philippines (which is what I am). But after I migrated to the US in 2004 and became an American in 2011, you can see that I am still alive and quite healthy at that. The average life span of an American woman is about eighty-four. Perhaps I have added twelve years to my life, just like that. And having more years means a longer period to age gracefully.

I may have to give up my tank tops and short shorts, as my husband has been urging me to do. But, as a traveler, it means shifting gears to a lower level, or downshifting. This is the overarching theme of the book. There is an acceptance of time getting shorter, energy becoming less, and even money no longer coming in. How do we travel more gracefully?

Mother Teresa's Chapel in Skopje, MacedoniaAdd caption

My bucket list has become shorter now. My husband and I have begun to scrutinize a destination against a higher bar of “Is it a case of been there; done that?” We have become more selective because we want to travel more comfortably and conveniently, even if not stylishly. I have given up the dream of visiting every country. We have even agreed that some adventures may have already passed us. But there are some more explorations to be made and certainly more pilgrimages to be done.

So I thank the universe for all the blessings, celebrate not only aging but also traveling gracefully, and offer my new travel book to all travelers like us.

*Available on Amazon: ebook at $2.99; paperback, $8.99 https://tinyurl.com/y22sfwds

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Today's New Normal for Continuing to Travel Safely

With a traveler’s soul, we just had to find ways to continue going out to breathe clean fresh air.  As soon as the lockdown was lifted, we began to consider our car as an extension of our home. It is a place we can keep as clean as we want it to be and allow no one else to come in. So we created a bucket list of places where we could go and practice natural social distancing like the state, regional, and national parks around us that remained open. When we didn’t see people on the trails, we got out of the car and walked a little. If not, we just continued driving.

Going Home and Staying There

Because of coronavirus, we cut short our annual Mazatlan vacation last March by ten days. The statistics were pretty grim when we left Mexico. The US had become the new epicenter, and the Canadian and Mexican borders were closed to non-essential travel. It took us two days, driving eight hours each day to get home. What was surprising was it took us no time at the Mariposa Border on both the Mexico and US sides. There was not the usual inspection done. But what was scary was that there was no testing done. 

socially distanced queue at the Visitor Center 

But home is the best place to do self-isolation, not on a cruise ship out at sea or a hotel room in a foreign country. We happily completed our 14-day period of self-isolation when the authorities declared a lockdown until the end of April. I wouldn’t say it was welcome news but it was also not a problem. There were a few things we have learned to do to make it a more meaningful pause. And we gradually gracefully adapted to what they have started to call as the new normal.

our Zoom Party, playing Bingo and Trivia, at Viewpoint

It included things like online shopping, grocery pick-ups, substituting ingredients in cooking, exercising with videos, cleaning at new levels, and watching movies on demand. Zoom also exploded, providing online activities to replace physical interactions. I had a one-hour session with my grandkids, ages 4-6, and another one for the two teenagers to help my daughters. There were also meetings with alumni associations and parties with Viewpoint residents. And then, as before, I found another flagship project that made the time more productive. Thus, my second book is in copy-edit mode now, on schedule for an October-November launch.

masked, even while hiking

New Ways of Traveling

The operative principle was to distance ourselves from others, but not from nature. Road trips had become the preferred mode of travel. As a matter of fact, the travel magazine I write for twice a month had started to direct articles to be about road trips in the domestic USA. In the process, we also discovered small Arizona towns that had lots of character. And, because you don’t have to choose hotels or AirBnbs for lodging, RVs had become even more popular. We miss our old RV.

In July, the resurgence of coronavirus cases overwhelmed Arizona just as we had already been terribly missing family. We decided that we could not wait anymore. We thought that we could actually go from our higher-risk home to lower-risk areas near our children in states that accepted us. 

Western Idaho didn’t. Alaska and Australia, on the other hand, would necessitate airplane travel which we felt was still too risky. We chose three mountain retreats in Utah, Colorado, and California and invited our children from the latter two to meet with us there. And we just met with another one halfway between Utah and Idaho to meet for a picnic at the Shoshone Falls in the eastern part of Idaho.

New Rules for Interacting with Others

in separate rooms but dining together

foot-operated hand sanitizer dispenser

But since they were not part of our bubble— the people you live with and share daily activities with, like Bill and I are for each other— we developed certain rules to follow when we were with them. Those rules follow the principles of avoiding crowds, social distancing, staying outdoors, hand washing, and the wearing of masks. And these principles were designed because of the simple science behind Covid-19. The number of virus particles we get determines the gravity of the potential infection And the number is influenced by our proximity to the source, the length of exposure to it, and the quality of our immune system. Each one of us can control of all these three factors.  

For the foreseeable future, especially when we are still under the threat of viral diseases, we will follow these practices, especially numbers one to six. We can see a time when those rules would be somehow relaxed but we hope we can do away with number seven as soon as we can.

1.        Go to areas with lower incidences of Covid-19. It is good that there is plenty of data to drill down to even up to zip codes. We have selected restaurants, groceries, mountain retreats, towns, counties, states, in this way.

2.        Meet only in uncrowded open-air spaces. Stick to patio seating for eating out, drive-in theaters for watching movies, outdoor services for worship, and hiking at off-the-beaten-path trails as a preferred activity.

3.        Do not spend an unreasonably long time with others. They say more than 15 minutes is too long. But, as long as we are masked up, are socially distanced to six feet, and are outdoors, we try to limit to no more than two hours, enough to enjoy a meal.

digital menus for scanning

4.        Do not ride with others in the same vehicle. This makes us stick to our car as our preferred mode of travel, without any others riding with us. We are currently eliminating planes, ships, and trains as trip options.

 

5.         Do not share rooms with people not in your bubble. We no longer stay in our children’s homes and no longer book multi-bedroom units but keep to separate units.  

6. We prefer to stick to our timeshares. As owners, we have an influence on how the property is sanitized and keep to physical safety guidelines. Check-in time is 5 pm and check-out is 9 am, giving time for a thorough clean between bookings. And no cleaner comes inside the room during our stay. 

7.        Do not shake hands or hug, although during rare times we touched elbows (with sleeves) or toes (in shoes) for a second.

We canceled our trips in April-May but resumed our travels in July. We intend to still go to Mexico for our annual vacation in January, still driving to Mazatlan. Self-isolation helped flatten the curve for our community and the world when we had to do it. Creative ideas helped us become productive during a lockdown. But, with these new rules that we have developed, we have found how to continue to travel and still be safe. 

parking lots had alternate spaces open in Big Bear Lake

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What If We Can No Longer Travel

While on lockdown in Arizona during this pandemic, I was able to finish my second book. It was my flagship project during the period of isolation that was forced upon my husband and me. We also did not get into the virtual travel bandwagon. Instead, we insisted on making road trips to state, regional, and national parks that were left open for the adventurous souls like ours (please see 5 Socially Distanced Road Trips to State, Regional, and National Parks). We reasoned they were natural social distancing opportunities, much better than going to the grocery or the mall. They gave us a welcome whiff of the desert spring that we love so much and we discovered small Arizona towns of character along the way (please see PREVIOUS POST).

But each time I came home, I began to think about how it will be if I truly cannot travel anymore. Not because of an external menace, but because of a personal condition. The question I asked myself was "What If we can no longer travel?” In truth, there are still seven years left in my seventies. But, as early as now, I stop to think about if and how I will travel in my eighties, even my nineties. But when I start to feel hopeless, I snap back and get ready for the time when, not if, the lockdown will be lifted and we can travel again.

Walnut Canyon in Flagstaff, Arizona

Although Covid-19 is seemingly exhibiting a second burst of energy here in Phoenix, I firmly believe the spread will dissipate, there will be more effective therapeutics and then a vaccine will be available. We have canceled our April, May, and June trips out of state. But we are going ahead with our July, August, and September road trips. And we wait for the time  that the Canada-US border restrictions will be lifted so we can also visit our Canadian family. Lastly, we are fervently are still preparing for our December-March annual vacation in Mexico. For that to materialize, the Mexico statistics of cases and deaths must ease and the border restrictions lifted.

But I am looking beyond these. There are still seven years in my seventies before I say goodbye to it. This has been a period of traveling more slowly and more comfortably. At the end of this decade, there will probably be another change in the way we travel. Even more comfort and convenience will be needed. As early as now, I stop to think about how we will travel in our eighties; in fact, even nineties; and then perhaps even later. While we are getting ready for the time when the lockdown will be fully lifted, air travel would be safer, and we can travel again to anywhere we would like to go, my wonderings take me to the time when I really won’t be able to travel anymore. 

a Las Vegas display on Chinese New Year

As much as our travels have steadily become less, from twelve months to eight in my sixties to six in my seventies, it will probably just be four in my eighties, and two in my nineties. This will not be because of external circumstances like we have today but because we may increasingly be forced, by reason of our own aging bodies or dwindling resources or both, to spend more months at home. We will probably stay in Phoenix even in early and late summer or early and late winter and not just in spring or fall.

In the end, we will probably be limited to spending our two-three months of travel in Mexico. Since we would also have probably exhausted all the day trips possible here in Phoenix and there in Mexico, they will not really be travels per se but a simple transfer between homes. Even our summers will change from extended road trips to visit family and friends. Instead, we will see them in just two weeks of reunions—somewhere in the US accessible in reasonable drives from Phoenix— one with Bill’s family and another with mine. Hopefully, they will also think of visiting us more than waiting for us to visit. 

at the Aerial Tramway in Palm Springs, California

And, if we will probably still feel some feet itchiness, we will most probably look for places that are closer to home. For example, they can be summer trips to Sedona, the beautiful red rocks city, and Flagstaff, that refreshing mountain town, which are both at higher elevations and much cooler than and only two to three hours from Phoenix. A little farther away are Las Vegas, only five hours, and Palm Springs, only four and a half hours from our Viewpoint home. It is a good thing our timeshares have plenty of options in any of those places. 

Even if air travel will be declared safe again, we will probably also no longer be able to stand long haul flights. That would practically eliminate travel to the Philippines and Australia.  My youngest daughter April makes Melbourne home. I also still have two sisters in Manila. My BFFs also live there. I can imagine that there will be significant events when we will have to make the trip. During such times, we would most probably have to fly business or first-class. 

love this scene in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

My writing will also probably change. In my seventies, I added inner journeys to my writing staple of travel diaries. In my eighties, because we will be going to fewer new places, I will probably be writing mainly travel essays. And in my nineties, it will probably further shift to musings about life in general, albeit in different settings. My overall theme will then transition from “Cruising Past 70” to “Cruising to the End.” I hope there will be enough energy for a third book.

In other words, I don’t foresee a time when I will no longer travel except at the very  end. I have a well-entrenched traveler’s soul. I still eat a lot of chicken feet and wings (please see Do You Want to Know the Secret to My Traveler's Soul?. Thanks for coming along with me on this continuing long ride. I hope I am making a difference to those of you who discovered travel early because you see that it is indeed quite possible to continue well past 70. I hope it has also inspired those of you who discovered it late because you know that it can be done until the end. Let us simply be true to our souls and let them roam as freely as they can.

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