500 Days-a-Vagabonding
Highlights of 4 continents, and 80,000 miles… so far.
“We began mapping our plans four-and-a-half years ago, but more than a few of those ideas have been flattened, thanks mostly to our ubiquitous fellow traveler, COVID-19. There’s a lesson here: when traveling at the fringes of a pandemic, a flexible nature is useful. So I’ve been forced to wedge new words like ‘adaptation’ and ‘acceptance’ into my personal vocabulary. My mind doesn’t care for them much, but failing to roll with the punches seems an otherwise excellent way to pop an artery. I’ve often lived under the misguided belief that the modern world provides us control. It doesn’t. I’m sure our pending odyssey will make that clearer than ever in the next couple of years.”
Are We There Yet?
When you have no destination, the question has no answer. For a Vagabond, this is liberating. Sometimes, it’s also nerve wracking. And since we often don’t know where we’re going, we often don’t know if we are “there”. This fact has a way of centering you. It helps us live in the moment. Instead of getting hyped on destinations, we can simply be. You’ll understand when you take your own Vagabond Adventure.
Not that all we do is lick a thumb and test the winds before moving on. Planning is sometimes necessary. For example, we had to make arrangements in advance for our recent adventures in Antarctica (it’s not like you can lasso a migrating whale and aim it south). And we assembled some waypoints for the upcoming route from Lisbon. We’ll be there soon, by the way, following 21 non-internet days at sea. But we’ve played most things by ear, often arranging transportation and lodging on very short notice. Remember: adaptation and acceptance are assets (along with a hefty sense of humor and a trooper like Cyndy for a fellow traveler).
Mostly the approach has worked. It took us to Newfoundland and through New England, across North America’s Plains, its wild West, down the Baja 1000 and up coastal California to Victoria and Vancouver before heading one more time into Montana, then back to New York to hop the “the pond” by way of the Queen Mary II to western Europe and three magnificent weeks in Moroccan Africa. By that time we had racked up more than 30,000 miles on our adventure. Then it it was time to sail into South America, hike wilds of Incan Peru, and plow onto Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and the life-changing exploration of the 7th continent.
And that was where we reached our 500th Vagabond Adventure day. If you’ve been following us closely, then you’ll recognize this view.
We spent Day 500 visiting Cerro Castillo. This is one of the views along the way.
The day passed quietly. We did not give much thought to what 500 days means in the big picture. Really, not even a year has passed on Mars yet. If we played games with the calendars, the 500th day on Mars would be equivalent to September 22. We’ve just hit the autumn solstice by that reckoning. Winter is coming? Well, that is true here in South America where only a few months earlier we were moving from North’s winter across the equator to the austral spring; now autumn has just begun. Over the course of the next few weeks, as our ship takes us north across the equator again, we’ll have wound the calendar backwards, moving from summer to spring. Bodily rhythms are not suited to rapid travel. Ask anyone with jet lag! I expect it to be disorienting inhaling spring odors following a long hot summer.
The Length of 500 - What else can happen over the course of 500 days?
A great romance can ignite and expire
The Pony Express comes and goes
Most infants become fully ambulatory
The brief presidency of Zachary Taylor
How do 500 Vagabond days compare to the length of history’s greatest travel expeditions?
8: Apollo 11 to the moon
132: Norgay and Hillary to Everest
225: Columbus to the West Indies
500: A Vagabond Adventure
549: DeGama to India
602: Amundsen to South Pole
863: Lewis and Clark to the American Northwest
1051: James Cook to Australia
1126: Magellan’s mission to circumnavigate the globe
1742: Darwin and the Beagle
2100+: Livingstone’s hunt for the Nile
9000-ish: Marco Polo going everywhere
We have a long way to go to catch Marco, but we’ll give some of the others a run for their money.
The Adventure So Far
Before the Adventure, at the height of our anticipation, came the dreaming and the planning. Even with the challenges, our ambitions have never waned. We planned to reach around 100 countries along the way. So far, the number is much closer to a dozen. That just means there’s still a lot ahead of us. Any fatigue from the first 500 days is buoyed by the excitement still to come.
Our early hopes had us heading south immediately, through the Panama Canal, Peru, Patagonia before finally reaching Antarctica. Everyone’s not-so-favorite virus had other opinions so we headed for Northeastern America. If you’ve been following us closely, you know that we finally made it to Antarctica - about 500 days late, as it happens. As of this writing, we just departed Buenos Aires for Lisbon on that very long cruise. We’re hoping for gentler seas than we found in the Drake Passage, some of the roughest waters in the world. Fortunately, we have more reliable locomotion than the days of Magellan. It took him a rather uncomfortable and unpredictable month to reach South America. We’re not expecting a mutiny…
Since the travel realities of COVID made us reconsider, our journey began a little closer to home. We’ve made 4 segments so far, each ending with a little bit of “shore leave” to Nana, Cyndy’s mom in West Virginia.
Northeast USA and Maritime Canada (2 countries)
Midwest to western USA, Mexico and western Canada (3 countries)
Morocco, Spain, France and England (4 countries)
South to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru, Patagonia and Antarctica (6 countries)
Dispatches from the field tell some of the great stories from our destinations across North America with more to come for Europe and South America.
I. Announcement - A Vagabond Adventure Around the World
II. Adventure Update - A World-Sized Curveball
III. Pittsburgh to NY - On Our Way!
IV. New York to Vermont - New York & Beyond
V. Maine (Portland) - Into Maine
VI. Maine (Rockland, Bar Harbor) - Mainers
VII. New Scotland (Nova Scotia) - New Scotland
VIII. NewFoundland - New FOUND Land, At Last
IX. NewFoundland - Vikings!
X. NewFoundland - Trekking One Corner of the Flat Earth
XI. Pittsburgh to Chicago - The Night Train West
XII. Minnesota to S.Dakota - Corn Stalks, Wind Gusts & Country Music
XIII. Badlands - Oddballs & Badlands
XIV. Rushmore and Black Hills - Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills of Dakota
XV. Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse - The Legend of Crazy Horse
XVI. Deadwood, South Dakota - Killers, Gunfighters and Calamity
XVII. Sturgis, South Dakota - Cathedrals and Motorcycle Heaven
XVIII. Medora, Roosevelt N.P. - Cowpokes, Roughriders and Teddy Roosevelt
XIX. Wyoming, Devil’s Tower, Huelet - Spirits, Devils and Wyoming
XX. News & Updates - Something Different
XXI. Denver, Grand Junction, Arches, Monticello - Riding the Zephyr, Skirting the Colorado, Exploring Arches
XXII. Four Corners, Canyonlands, Mesa Verde - Thelma, Louise, the Ancient Ones and Four Corners
XXIII. Monument Valley - Monument Valley, Movie Magic and a Special Navajo Friendship
XXIV. Coming Soon!
Follow the Adventure on PolarSteps
Our trip is also logged in real time through PolarSteps, journal-style, so you can catch all the details where the Dispatches leave off. Start here.
Reflections on traveling for 500 days
What we’ve learned from a long travel adventure:
When you travel with a person for 500 days you learn a lot. Even if you’ve been married a couple of decades, the surprises keep coming. Here’s the thing about Cyn: she’s an indestructible trooper, rarely cross, almost always smiling, more centered than the planetary core, willing to try almost anything including walking over log “bridges” above dangerous Andean rivers; a remarkable eye for detail and a knack for keeping me down to earth when I might start thinking dangerous thoughts. She loves learning and will try anything, a legacy, perhaps, of growing up with two roughneck brothers. And when the going gets tough, she just gets tougher and we get through it, because in the end, it’s all about the experience. That’s why we chose to travel this way. To soak the world and its people and cultures up and do it at a speed that your brain can keep up with where you’re going.
The highlights:
There are so many. Peggy’s Cove, and the Viking settlement in L’anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland; Monument Valley, awe-inspiring. Everywhere in Utah for it’s raw beauty. Traveling the length of Baja by car for its fine people, and rugged landscape; Rolling up the coast of California by train and then into Vancouver Island and Victoria by ferry. Crossing the Queen Mary II was a step back in time and Tangier, Fez, Chefchouen, the Sahara and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco were splendid and mysterious. Walking the Camino Way in Spain was hard but soul-cleansing. Squeezing through the Panama Canal and down to Lima; the trail to Choquequirao and the spectacular views of that ancient palace were life-changing; NaviMag through Patagonia, then visiting Cape Horn.
Some favorite Images, exhibiting the many different environments we explored:
La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico
Elqui Valley, Vicuna, Chile
Monument Valley, California
Bonavista, Newfoundland
Expectations for the next 500 days
When we set out on this expedition, we knew that the world would shape us more than we shaped it. Despite humanity’s best efforts, we’re never really in control. Nature rages around us in her own passions and we acquiesce. This is even more true when we’re not on home turf. We make our plans, but in fact, we are merely merchants of opportunity. North or south, left or right? The decisions pursue us as we pursue the next adventure.
So, are we halfway there? One quarter? Will our meandering circumnavigation last longer than Magellan’s? We’ve embraced 4 continents so far (5 now, with Antarctica), but we’ve just barely scratched the surface. After all, did we really just spend an entire summer in South America, yet somehow miss 10 of its 14 countries, including Brazil? That’s a crime in some jurisdiction. Fate will answer all of these questions for us. We invite you to continue along to find out as we go.
A peek ahead:
The next 500 days really kicked off with a crisp and frigid blast, as we took the adventure farther south to Antarctica. Check in often to see how our waltzing with Penguins went. Here’s an amazing preview of what’s to come…
Final excursion in Antarctic waters