#146. Nomad Diary. 5-11 August 2023. Newest Granddaughter. A Special Luncheon for Me with Friends. My Favorite Places. Some Details of Traveling with Unexpected Events.
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| Daughter-in-law Erin reading with Owen |
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| Our Family (3 more are in Maine) Met for Lunch at Sushimi in Huntsville, Alabama. Me, Darrell, Eric, Owen, Erin, Samuel and Wes |
Saturday. 5. Lunch with our kids at a Sushimi, a newish restaurant in Huntsville, Alabama. A walk with Darrell. Living at Eric and Erin's house.
Sunday. 6. We have colds. A few days ago it was Darrell and Owen. Today it's me and Eric. So far Erin isn't affected! Hopefully she can not get it and Eric can be well in time for the baby's birth later this week. We went to church in Harvest where our former church group combined 2 groups into one. The congregation is quite large now. Over 200 with many people we don't yet know.
Monday. 7. My cold cleared up. At lunch I was invited to my friends’ house, Cathy and Sissy Nash (also Sissy’s teen daughter lives there and Cathy’s husband). Cathy and Sissy had an elegant table set with a multicourse salad and dessert luncheon for six. We were all friends of Cathy and Sissy, but some of us were meeting for the first time. Because we have attended similar churches, we have connections with people and places that were surprising. Cathy said that I was the guest of honor! What an honor with this amazing table of women, I was very honored to be there with them. Dinner at Samuel’s. He made pot roast and we took green beans and mashed potatoes. It was delicious.
Tuesday. 8. 1pm online Bible class with our English friends in Kent. Studying Romans 11 today. I baked a gluten free orange drizzle cake today, and made dinner. We had chicken with mushrooms spiced with garlic and basil, roasted turnip, sweet potato, cauliflower and broccoli.
Wednesday. 9. Erin going to the hospital tonight for the baby delivery. We are staying at their house with Owen. We are under a severe thunderstorm watch with expected 60 mph winds.
Thursday. 10. Today is a very special day! Our granddaughter Esther Mae was born. She’s beautiful! 7lbs.11oz. 20in. I wrote a song to sing with Owen while we wait to meet her in person.
A song written for Owen the day his sister Esther was Born on August 10th 2023.
By Grandma Sherry
I Love My Esther
Tune: I Love My Savior Too
I have a sister now
Her name is Esther
God gave her to me for
My whole life through
Happy to sing my song
All the day long
Esther is here to stay
I love my Esther
She loves me too
I get to help her (grow and play)
Learn everything I do
We will go on and play
Esther and me
I love her so, you see
Now and always
We are a family
Mom, Dad and me
Now we have Esther too
I love my Esther
She loves me too
I get to help her (grow and play)
Learn everything I do
Friday. 11. Babysitting Owen through tomorrow when Esther and her parents come home from the hospital. Darrell finished fixing a piece of furniture that belongs to us, and has been sitting in Eric and Erin’s garage since about February of 2022! They will be happy for us to get it out of their garage. We are happy to get it to a new home.
Nomad Notes:
Questions heard the most:
What’s your number 1 favorite place you’ve been?
Where would you return to?
How long will you live this way? We have no plans to stop our current way of living. It suits us.
Rome. I could return here many more times.
My answers to this and Darrell’s answers to this vary. We spend time coordinating and knowing what we each like that overlaps. Experiences at different places are difficult to compare because each is so unique and our responses are unique too. For many years my favorite top spot I had traveled to was Rome. I still get pretty excited and giddy thinking about Rome. I went with my sisters and brother in law for 5 days in Rome. Later Darrell and I spent about 1 ½ days going around Rome to my favorite places from my first trip. We didn’t get to every place I wanted to see again. This is common for us. We go to a location for a few hours off of a cruise ship, or for 1-3 days on our way to somewhere else. We don’t see everything. Many years ago we decided to not be disappointed because we didn’t see something. We decided that we saw something and that is good and amazing for us.
Cinque Terre. On the coast of Italy. We had an unexpected cruise stop in 2022 here for one long day. The weather was beautiful and we had the most exhilarating hike over a mountain on ancient stairways along a most beautiful coastline with five connecting villages.
Peru: Machu Picchu. Ollantaytambo. Cusco. Sacred Valley. Lima.
We had 2 cruise stops in Peru years ago. We had amazing excursion tours. Later in 2019 we went for a 6 day tour with a group of 12 people including my two sisters and their husbands. My sister planned this trip with people from our work. This was an amazing tour that had so many highlights of Lima, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu all with friends and family. Besides these highlights, we also did a chocolate making class went to an animal rehab where a condor flew straight at us, and ate lots of local foods.
In no particular order, I love so many places we have been! Each one has special memories and times in my life and in my heart. I would go back again, and see the same or something different. Early travels are sometimes forgotten or overshadowed by later experiences that seem more spectacular than the last. The enjoyment we get is in the moments together and in the memories. There are many places I have yet to travel that will likely make my ‘favorites’ list. There are many places I’ve been that are not on this list and they have their own unique memories.
In the US:
San Diego (Torrey Pines National Reserve has a great coastal hike down to the ocean); Alaska (Been twice on 7 day cruises. My favorite stop is Skagway and going into the Yukon. All day OOO’s and AWES at the mountain scenery!)
Ithaca, NY (The local motto is: Ithaca is Gorges. We did a self tour of about 10 waterfalls. Lucifer Falls was hard for us to find and was surprising and energizing for me.)
Coast of Maine. We visited our kids in Portland one summer and went to so many lighthouses. We drove up the coast to see Acadia National Park for our second time. Love it!
Tennessee Parks and Waterfalls. We drive through often and find some really cool places to visit. Most recent one was going to several waterfalls near Mcminnville.
Wyoming. Scenic byways can be dirt roads leading into the beautiful and unique landscapes. Thermopolis had a free hot springs experience that we remember along with a dinosaur museum.
(Too many loved spots to mention! Every coastline and all the mountain drives hold unique history and scenery.)
Other Places:
Costa Rica. Just go! I’ve been several times and on many tours. Exhilaration with my memory of swimming across a large round pond to the base of a three story waterfall! Later that day our guides presented a climbing and diving show at this gorgeous waterfall!
Santiago, Chile. Long way to go. The three days we spent there reminded us of a California climate. The view of the snow-capped Andes and loads of history and places to enjoy.
Canada. I’ve enjoyed everywhere I’ve been here for their unique histories, people and scenery. Montreal. Quebec. St. Lawrence River. Ontario and the North Shore of Lake Superior.
England, Scotland and Wales.
Whitley Bay near New Castle on Tyne. We went back to this area for the month of May 2023. I would go again. We walked the beautiful coastline between towns. We done parts of Hadrian’s Wall near here, and so much more.
English Channel towns! I want to do more of these.
Edinburgh. Yes! And anything in Scotland. Love the people, the history and scenery.
Conwy, Wales and the Coast. Yes! I would love more please!
Bath and area. Ahhhh! Love it!
Riding electric bikes in Norway mountains and coast! Very exhilarating and thrilling!
Some details of traveling that increase my happy time and happy memories.
Who I am traveling with. This ‘Retired Nomad’ status is self-proclaimed and it is all about Darrell and I enjoying travel together while we live day to day. Over the past 10-20 years I have traveled for work or vacation with my two sisters to some exotic places, and together was definitely more fun and memorable. My Dad and his wife traveled on a 2 week cruise to Hawaii with us during his 75th birthday and our 30th wedding anniversary. I treasure my memories from this trip!
Why I am traveling. Before retirement outside of vacations, my trips were either for my work or for Darrell’s work. We were on a schedule of arriving, leaving and getting work accomplished in some plain locations and in some super-nice locations like San Diego, California.
The tempo of our travel. Our schedule now gives us way more freedom than when we were working. We have been able to take advantage of drop and go fares on cruises, off time flights, and have flexibility for stays.
Because we are living our everyday life while we travel, we are finding our niche for how long we stay in a place, what we do as tourists in contrast to when we stay in our apartment cook, do laundry, work on our projects and keep up with old and new friends,etc. This past March we took a two week trans-atlantic cruise Ft. Lauderdale to England. We booked two one-month stays to revisit churches we enjoyed and wanted to encourage. We also booked a 5 day stay on our trip between the two stays. We were in Kent for April, then went to Cambridge for 5 days on our way to Whitley Bay for a month on the North Sea Coast. We found that staying a month was really nice and relaxing for us.
Unexpected events can be so amazing and heart-touching. That time in Deal, England we ate at a tiny Polish restaurant two times and loved their food. When we left, we said our goodbyes because we would be traveling on to a new place. As we walked about a block away from the restaurant, the husband and cook ran to catch up with us. He handed us a bag and said here are some snacks for your trip. We were wowed! We said thank-you and good-bye again. I almost cried thinking about their immigration journey from Poland to England.
Teaching the children’s Bible class four Sundays in Newcastle on Tyne. There were 6-7 children ages 3-13. They were so interested and happy to learn and sing with me. On our last Sunday, seven year old Livie drew pictures and wrote a big thank-you note. She went around to each person there (about 20) and asked them to add a good-bye message on her note.
That time many years ago I met my son Eric in New York City and my two sisters came as a surprise and spent the three days with us!
Just last month we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast in Manitoba, Huggybears B&B. We went because our kids in Maine had stayed there once. The owners are parents of some of their friends from church. We got there and were visiting and found out that Luc was from Belgium and they had lived there many years. Darrell told them that we were in Belgium in October and met with a nice church group there. Come to find out, it was his hometown and we had met his 99 year old mother and one of his brothers in Roselare. A big wow! We even had pictures of his family to share.
A day after we checked out of our stay in North Dakota, 0ur airbnb host sent me a text and asked if she could send me a little gift if I would share an address. Sure, I sent her our son’s address and said we would be there all of August. I received a big box with several gifts wrapped in different colored paper like a party! It made me giggle and smile for a long time. I kept texting her with my thank-yous and thoughts, and we never met face to face.
Our airbnb hosts in Tunbridge Wells England invited us to dinner and cooked an amazing meal!
Our cruise friends we visited in Wales, took us all around to their local sights and cooked a homey traditional lamb dinner for us.
In May we stayed for a month in Bells Yew Green, England and were invited to the village tea across the street at the community center. It was in honor of King Charles coronation.
This list goes on and on and on!! Great memories and new friends.
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