The Beginning of our Newest Adventure

We (Karen and Jay) are within a few days of going on an around the world trip. We will be leaving Fort Wayne on September 17th (Lord willing) and will be heading to Israel for about 8 days, then to France for about a week and finally on to Australia for two weeks returning October 19.

The trip idea started over a year ago when our new friends from France, Joel and Nathalie Meyer invited us to come to France to visit them in 2008. Originally our daughter Clarice and Son-in-law Jon were going to travel with us in the spring. In the mean time Clarice got an assignment from work to spend a year in Australia.

So the plan changed to, "go to France and then to Australia". As the planning matured the question was asked, "as long as we are going to be traveling that far what else would you like to do?" My first response was to say well I have always wanted to travel to Israel and since is in the general line between Europe and Australia it should be a piece of cake. The travel agent said "you want to do what"? As it turns out since there is no good way to get from Israel to Australia we are going to Israel first then to France and then to Australia via Singapore. Makes perfect sense to me.

I said at one point as the dollar signs began to pile up that I could have bought an nice used sports car for what this trip is costing. Well we did that too, we bought a little gray Pontiac. We sold our house in Lafayette and will be using about everything we cleared to do this trip. Interestingly back in 1974 we were house hunting for our first house when we came on the crazy idea to go to Europe instead. We did Five week in Europe and, when we got back from that trip we ended up buying a lake cottage and a year later a house (the one we just sold to go on this trip). Oh well easy come easy go.

We both are really looking forward to the adventure. We will try to keep you posted as we are able along the way as we are able.

Jay