Chris and Debbi's Adventure

A recent social media trend posits that many men regularly think about the Roman Empire. The idea is that the empire’s perceived strength, military prowess, leadership and enduring influence on politics and architecture “speak to the male psyche”. As with most social media trends, the whole idea could be completely false. Chris claims he has almost never given any thought to the Roman Empire, and I am certain that I haven’t, because when we traveled to Portugal in 2017, I was astounded that we encountered occasional ruins from the Roman Empire – I had no idea its control had ever extended into Portugal. Our first Roman ruins. We wandered round and round Evora, Portugal, in 2017 to find these fenced off, poorly marked Roman columns hidden on a side street. AMAZING (we thought at the time)! Since our first stop in Europe more than a month ago, we have seen Roman ruins galore - two amphitheaters, a bit of a surviving circus, a couple forums, some temples, a theater, living quarters, bat...

Chris and I left Omaha two months ago today. We are having a great time seeing and doing  beautiful and interesting things daily. But my travel news updates to share our experiences with you have been pretty sparse. That is because traveling is often mentally draining. It can include so much stimulation, decision making and, sometimes, anxiety, that it frequently doesn’t leave adequate energy for contemplation and creativity. My encounter with this bird yesterday is a perfect example of where my attention and brain power often go. Notice the partially eaten croissant this sparrow is guarding.   It is late May, and we are spending a week in Avignon, France, which is a beautiful and historic UNESCO site and where, in search of safety and political stability, seven successive Catholic popes lived and worked in the 1300’s. This "vatican" is a wondrous complex of buildings and gardens called the Palais de Papes. View from the Palais de Papes in Avignon, France. Not far from Avig...

Chris and I have used pet sitting for eight years to trade accommodations in downtown apartments, water front homes and desert adobes for care of someone's home and pets. We’ve been able to live like locals in Argentina, blend with US and Canadian expats in Costa Rica and escape Nebraska winters by playing pickleball in Arizona and Florida . We learned about house and pet sitting on a trip to Portugal, where we met a couple from New Zealand who spent half the year on house sits near their daughter who lived in the UK. We were immediately intrigued with the idea - we had been considering living at least part of the year away from our hometown and this seemed like a great opportunity to find out what it was really like to live in, not just visit, other communities. A stubborn and greedy bulldog who snored all night. and peed a gallon right inside the front door, but still delighted us with his personality.  Within a few months we had joined a pet sitting platform, created a profile ...

The list of decisions that must be made before beginning a year of full-time travel includes everything from where to go to how and how to get there to what to pack and how much to spend. But one of the biggest decisions is deciding what you do (or do not) leave behind. What will you come back to? For a decade, Chris and I have lived in the house his parents built more than 50 years ago. We meant it to be a short term stay while we cared for his father in declining health. But his father died just weeks before our planned move, and we spent the next year in transition as we cleared out 50 years of accumulated possessions, updated the home and pared down our own belongings. Somehow five years passed as we both changed jobs, lost more family members and spent several months traveling each year when we took up house and pet sitting. Then…Covid. Finally, in 2023 we began to seriously plan for lifestyle in retirement. What type of home did we really want and where did we want it to be? ...

Chris and I have always enjoyed traveling but actually didn’t do much during the first 20 years of our marriage. Too busy working and raising a family, too little money, too limited vacation time. We took a few family vacations, accompanied each other on a few work trips and took some long weekend trips to a family reunion or wedding. But in 2016 our youngest daughter spent a semester studying in Cuzco, Peru. She planned a two-week tour of the country at the end of her studies for us and her boyfriend. The trip included the Sacred Valley, Nazca Lines and, of course, Machu Pichu. Travel to South America had not been anything we had ever envisioned, but we found the country fascinating, the logistics manageable and the cultural differences not at all overwhelming. We followed it up the next year with a trip to Portugal, where we met a couple from New Zealand who introduced us to the concept of house and pet sitting. We were immediately intrigued with the idea of trading free acc...