To-Do

Driving home from the Midwest and watching my team play football this weekend I pulled out the old atlas my fiancé keeps in the back pocket of his passenger seat in an attempt settle a debate we were having about the longest east-west interstate (we think it’s either I-80 or I-90, by the way), and I found myself flipping through the pages of the big book of maps longingly. I consider myself relatively well-traveled when it comes to the East Coast. I’ve been up and down I-95 more times than I care to recall. I spent countless summers on a lake in Maine; I spent a handful of Christmases driving down to South Carolina; and I think I traveled to almost every swimming pool throughout the Middle Atlantic region for swim meets and water polo tournaments. I’ve done some more of my own traveling during college and grad school, visiting friends, prospective employers, casinos, and basketball arenas. But in the grand scheme of things, I haven’t really gone that many places. I spent time studying abroad in Switzerland, and I’ve visited my friend’s mountain home in Montana. I’ve been to LA, Palo Alto, and Santa Monica, and I’ve been to all the states bordering the Great Lakes. I’ve been to the Bahamas once, and we’re going to St. Lucia for our honeymoon; but there are so many, many things that I would like to see and do. Sitting in his passenger seat, I found myself fixating on the map of California and the miles and miles of the pacific coast highway, and wishing we had the time to put everything aside for a little while and travel. Perhaps not the same way girl Wednesday did it, but to take the time without any real deadline or set destination to just drive and enjoy ourselves. To eat BBQ in Nashville, drink hurricanes in New Orleans, watch a rodeo in Texas, sip Mojitos in Miami, hike the AT in Katahdin, go for a walk in the rain in Seattle, sit in a hot tub in Tahoe, and watch the sunset in San Diego.
So in an effort to make our goals real, I thought I’d steal the idea from G-Mon’y and use my blog this week to make a list. A bucket list of travels, if you will; a list of all the places we’d like to go as we start out on our journey through life together. So with further ado, here are a few to start, in no particular order:

1. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to San Diego in a Convertible.
2. Play a round of golf at St. Andrew’s, Carnoustie, and Muirfield.
3. See a moose, a whale, an eagle, and a grizzly bear in Alaska.
4. Drive a high performance German sports car on the Autobahn (and perhaps even hit 200 mph, or whatever the Kmh equivalent would be).
5. See the Great Pyramid.
6. Hike the Lauterbrunnen Valley from Grindewald to Murren.
7. Drink wine in Tuscany.
8. Scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef.
9. Hike the Inca Trail.
10. Drive cross country.
11. Visit Hawaii.
12. Sleep in an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora.
13. Go on an African Safari.
14. See the tulips in the Netherlands.
15. Attend lessons & carols in Kings College England.
16. See the Globe Theater.
17. Go whitewater rafting on the Colorado and Arkansas Rivers.
18. Visit The World in Dubai
19. Go sailing in the Greek Isles.
20. Go leaf peeping in New England in Fall.
21. Watch baseball at Fenway and Wrigley Field.
22. Go to the Rosebowl.
23. Attend an Army-Navy game.
24. Bungee Jump from the New River Gorge Bridge.
25. Compete in the Escape from Alcatraz Triathalon.
26. Take a ride in a fighter jet.
27. Go horseback riding in New Zealand.
28. Take a hot air balloon right at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival.
29. Drive the Redwoods in California
30. Visit Tibet.
31. Have a picnic in Napa Valley.
32. Drink champagne in the Champagne region of France.
33. Rent a villa on Lake Cuomo, Italy.
34. Go to the top of the Eifel Tower.
35. Visit all 50 states before we die.
36. Watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.
37. Attend a round of the Masters.
38. Ride a burrow down the Grand Canyon.
39. Find the best Clam Chowder along the coast from Connecticut to Maine.
40. Go scuba diving in Belize.
41. Visit Tokyo and Hong Kong.
42. See the Kremlin.
43. Drink beer at Oktoberfest in Munich.
44. Go to Ireland
45. Have Key Lime Pie in the Florida Keys.
46. Rent Fisherman’s Island in Maine for a week.
47. See Glacier National Park before the Glaciers melt away.
48. Visit Schloss Neuschwanstein.
49. Drive Skyline Drive.
50. Actually stop at South of the Border in South Carolina. Pedro wants you to.