The Itinerary

Getting to Hawai'i being the established goal, the rest of the itinerary then was built around getting there and then going on to complete the circle. Getting to Hawai'i by flying east means flying over a lot of destinations in Asia that many of my friends, family and acquaintances have visited and recommended we also visit. For us, though, the logistics of traveling with our personal restrictions formed the route we have ultimately build -- more of an outside-the-box itinerary. Razelle has a lot of orthopedic considerations to accommodate. Her first requirement is that we not be in flight more than 8 hours at a time. Her second proviso (stated with humor) is no air travel on the Sabbath. As she puts it, "We don't want to be flying through the heavens so close to God on the day of rest." Since we drive on Shabbat here, land travel will be OK on Saturday, but not air travel.

Although I'm the one with the ring around my stomach, Razelle is the one whose menu is limited -- food allergies. And keeping kosher is another dietary challenge we will have to meet. So neither of us are interested in the culinary experiences that other travelers go in for. We will pass ourselves off as vegetarians when we are offered things we can't or won't eat. But, don't worry about what to feed us if we show up on your doorstep; we've never had a problem finding things we like to eat wherever we go.

Putting these factors together, the route we have strung together from flights available in the round-the-world package we've booked includes stops in Amman, Mumbai, Singapore, Perth, Alice Springs, Sydney and Fiji on the way to Hawai'i. More details will follow in future blog entries about how long we will spend at each of these destinations and what we have planned. I will say here that the bulk of our time down under in Australia will be spent living out of a camper van, experiencing winter weather in July, driving on the opposite side of the road (in other words: upside down, mirror image, and meteorologically-disoriented). Should be lots of fun.  The zodiac constellations we will see in the night sky in the outback really will appear upside down compared to how they look in the northern hemisphere. I'm told that swirling water going down the drain in Australia swirls in the opposite direction too. I'll have to try that out while I'm there.

After Hawai'i, the rest of the itinerary will include a massive road trip of the continental United States and Canada. We've rented another camper van that is waiting for us in Agoura Hills, California, near Los Angeles. We will criss-cross the US and Canada in this "portable motel" for 74 days visiting everyone and everything we can manage to during that time. I have a provisional map in my head of the path we will take across the continent from west to east, ultimately returning the rented camper van at the New Jersey franchise of the rental agency (located near New York City). This mental map basically involves going from southern California, to Arizona, to New Mexico, back through Colorado, Utah and Nevada, to northern California, up the west coast to Seattle and Vancouver, across to Banff, back into the US to see Old Faithful and Mount Rushmore, onward to Minnesota, Upper Michigan into Ontario as far as Toronto, back into the States again at Niagara Falls to reach northern Ohio, then to Kentucky and along the Ohio River Valley westward to Missouri, southward to Arkansas and Louisiana, along the Gulf Coast all the way to Alligator Alley to reach southeastern Florida, then, turning north, through Georgia, the Carolinas, the remaining Atlantic Seaboard States and on into New England, finally ending the road trip in New Jersey.

That's the provisional plan of the North American segment. I imagine as it unfolds it will dictate to us which parts of this plan are doable and which are not. As you can see, wherever you live along this proposed course, if you recognize yourself along this route it is because you are one of our planned destinations. We will have to pace ourselves and maybe this is too ambitious for a 74-day road trip but we won't know that until we try.

I've been to many of these North American destinations before, but this time I want to show them to Razelle. Correct that. This time I want to share them with Razelle. And I want to share these experiences with you --  through this blog (and in person wherever possible).