Happy Anniversary to us!
Posted by Jodi on Monday August 18th • Life Category![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
It seems like only a few months ago that we were saying our vows on the secluded beaches of Kalaloch; how quickly a year goes by . . . We spent nearly two years planning for our wedding, and by the end I felt I could write a book on the ins and outs of such planning. I feel much the same with RTW travel.
We are now self-proclaimed experts in RTW insurance coverage, visa coordination, and airline ticketing. This may sound to the uninitiated as no big deal, but trust me - I think we will be logistics masters by the end of this trip. Our biggest challenge in this arena is coordinating visas for Vietnam, China, and Russia, respectively. Traveling to each of these countries in succession is the trifecta of all visa coordination. If we pull it off, I feel it will be one of our greatest successes on the road. Michael Phelps has his gold medals; we have our visas (if only there were a stage to show them off!). This process is complicated by the fact that none of these countries “officially” allow one to apply for a visa outside his home country, and one cannot apply 90 days before travel in that country. As we will be traveling in Asia during the 90 day application window, I have one word—Tricky . . .
If we managed to pull off a beautiful wedding in a bare bones location, I am optimistic we can pull off our RTW travel coordination with just as much vigor. Here’s to one year under our belt and many more to come!
Reminder to all: We could not do this trip without your encouragement and support. If you would like to help us stay on the road, please click a few google ads (on the right). We earn $0.30-$1.00 per click. Thanks!



Since we are leaving for a year, we really needed to whittle down our possessions. This a necessity for storage reasons, but it also just makes me feel good ridding ourselves of excess baggage. Overall our yard sale worked out pretty well; we advertised online using craigslist, and we put up signs the day of to entice some of the neighbors and random people who were driving nearby. We could not host the sale at our house since it is on the market, and we figured people would be coming through in droves to preview it. Fortunately we have some friends with a nice front yard and it just happens that they were out of town, so they generously offered up their yard for our sale. It took three good car loads but we managed to get everything over there for our 10am start. While I was out getting our final load, Jodi was busy setting everything up. I do not think she was totally ready for people to show up at 9:30am for our 10am start but people do like a good deal. There was tons of haggling going on throughout the day and some “holding my ground” stands, mostly from me. Everything was going just fine until 3pm when it started to rain, and we decided to pack it in. We ended up taking most of the remaining items to Goodwill. Overall, we sold three-fourths of our stuff and came out with nearly $200 in sales. So, I would say it was a pretty good day. In WTER (world-travel exchange rate) that amounts to two Bolivian visas, 10 nights in an Ecuadorian hostel, or two RT bus tickets from Mendoza to Patagonia!!





