The Bucket List
More than a few sources that discuss retirement planning encourage the development of a Bucket List. You know, the things you want to do before you die. There actually was a movie called the Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and if I remember correctly, Morgan kicked the bucket at the end of the movie.
Over the past few years, Dan and I have talked about what would be on our travel Bucket Lists, usually while we're taking a walk in the neighborhood. Last year Dan chuckled when he realized that we were actually coming close to starting serious considerations of these lists.
High, if not the top of Dan's travel Bucket List was a trip to Yosemite National Park. He went to Yosemite with his mom and Aunt Barbara when he was 12 years old. For most of the time we've known each other, over 45 years, he's reminisced fondly about the trip. They stayed in something called a tent cabin. All I can say is if I had managed to book the tent cabin--they were all reserved--I would have looked at Dan and told him we were checking into anyplace other than that. Fortunately we stayed at Big Trees Lodge, built in the late 1800s, a quaint, Victorian set of buildings with lovely wide verandas. We were unable to reserve a room with its own bathroom so we had to walk down the porch to use either the water closet or the shower room. The Lodge provided us with waffle weave robes to wear on the brief journey from our room to the baths.
What can I say about Yosemite that hasn't already been written about more eloquently than I could do here? https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/muir.htm. Really, nothing. Dan posted photos on his Instagram account @dsob and I posted on my Facebook page. We did a ton of hiking, including a climb to the top of Vernal and Nevada Falls, a vertical climb of 2,000 feet.
I may put a wilderness experience on my Bucket List, which would include a couple days at a luxury
lodge following said experience.
Right now I'm writing this while we're traveling on another item on Dan's travel Bucket List. His trips to California as a child were on the Empire Builder, the now Amtrak train from Chicago to Los Angeles. He has waxed rhapsodic about a train trip so when the opportunity presented itself, I booked a trip on the Amtrak Cascades. Following our days in Yosemite, we flew to Portland where we connected with our exchange daughter, Claudia Theisen Mogg, and her family who were visiting her Eden Prairie High School friend, Lindsey Ellison and her family. Another friend, Betsy Rakola,
flew out from the DC area with her family and we were so pleased they offered to share their visit with us. I figured that as long as we were in the Pacific Northwest, we should head up to Vancouver, BC after our Portland visit to see another exchange daughter, Bridget Neal Ford who now lives there with her family. Bridget is originally from New Zealand and she reminded me that we haven't seen each other in 25 years, which feels absolutely impossible to me.
Every day we have been given the opportunity to savor the glory of God made visible to man through nature. It's a gift neither of us take lightly.
So. The Bucket List.
Long before I realized there was such a thing, my dad retired. Actually he was forced into retirement when the company he had worked for his entire career was sold. It was completely unexpected and occurred a couple years before my mom was able to retire due to pension requirements. They had talked about wanting to travel and wanting to spend winters in Florida. Fortunately they were able to do both, although the first couple years it was difficult because my mom just couldn't pick up and go due to the constraints of her job.
My dad didn't call it the Bucket List but he did advise me that once I retired, which at that point seemed like a figment of my imagination, I should not hesitate to travel. Do it all in the first couple years, he said, because you have no ideas how long you're going to be healthy enough to travel.
As far as heeding his advice goes, so far, so good. Here's to a continuation of crossing items off the
Bucket List.
Cooking:
Yes, we've been eating but predominantly we have been drinking wine, first an afternoon in Santa Rosa, then a day in the Willmette Valley region in Oregon where I became enamored of the Pinot Noirs produced by the Chehalem Winery. Call me a member of their wine club.
Over the past few years, Dan and I have talked about what would be on our travel Bucket Lists, usually while we're taking a walk in the neighborhood. Last year Dan chuckled when he realized that we were actually coming close to starting serious considerations of these lists.
High, if not the top of Dan's travel Bucket List was a trip to Yosemite National Park. He went to Yosemite with his mom and Aunt Barbara when he was 12 years old. For most of the time we've known each other, over 45 years, he's reminisced fondly about the trip. They stayed in something called a tent cabin. All I can say is if I had managed to book the tent cabin--they were all reserved--I would have looked at Dan and told him we were checking into anyplace other than that. Fortunately we stayed at Big Trees Lodge, built in the late 1800s, a quaint, Victorian set of buildings with lovely wide verandas. We were unable to reserve a room with its own bathroom so we had to walk down the porch to use either the water closet or the shower room. The Lodge provided us with waffle weave robes to wear on the brief journey from our room to the baths.
What can I say about Yosemite that hasn't already been written about more eloquently than I could do here? https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/muir.htm. Really, nothing. Dan posted photos on his Instagram account @dsob and I posted on my Facebook page. We did a ton of hiking, including a climb to the top of Vernal and Nevada Falls, a vertical climb of 2,000 feet.
I may put a wilderness experience on my Bucket List, which would include a couple days at a luxury
lodge following said experience.
Right now I'm writing this while we're traveling on another item on Dan's travel Bucket List. His trips to California as a child were on the Empire Builder, the now Amtrak train from Chicago to Los Angeles. He has waxed rhapsodic about a train trip so when the opportunity presented itself, I booked a trip on the Amtrak Cascades. Following our days in Yosemite, we flew to Portland where we connected with our exchange daughter, Claudia Theisen Mogg, and her family who were visiting her Eden Prairie High School friend, Lindsey Ellison and her family. Another friend, Betsy Rakola,
flew out from the DC area with her family and we were so pleased they offered to share their visit with us. I figured that as long as we were in the Pacific Northwest, we should head up to Vancouver, BC after our Portland visit to see another exchange daughter, Bridget Neal Ford who now lives there with her family. Bridget is originally from New Zealand and she reminded me that we haven't seen each other in 25 years, which feels absolutely impossible to me.
Every day we have been given the opportunity to savor the glory of God made visible to man through nature. It's a gift neither of us take lightly.
So. The Bucket List.
Long before I realized there was such a thing, my dad retired. Actually he was forced into retirement when the company he had worked for his entire career was sold. It was completely unexpected and occurred a couple years before my mom was able to retire due to pension requirements. They had talked about wanting to travel and wanting to spend winters in Florida. Fortunately they were able to do both, although the first couple years it was difficult because my mom just couldn't pick up and go due to the constraints of her job.
My dad didn't call it the Bucket List but he did advise me that once I retired, which at that point seemed like a figment of my imagination, I should not hesitate to travel. Do it all in the first couple years, he said, because you have no ideas how long you're going to be healthy enough to travel.
As far as heeding his advice goes, so far, so good. Here's to a continuation of crossing items off the
Bucket List.
Cooking:
Yes, we've been eating but predominantly we have been drinking wine, first an afternoon in Santa Rosa, then a day in the Willmette Valley region in Oregon where I became enamored of the Pinot Noirs produced by the Chehalem Winery. Call me a member of their wine club.
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