The Joys of Travel

I love to travel. And my travels have brought opportunities to do some things I never have done before.

Here are some of my top experiences (in no special order).

• Ride a camel (in Jordan and in Morocco at sunset)
• Go snowshoeing in Yellowstone National Park
• Touch a baby elephant
• Get 'kissed' by a Rothschild giraffe
• Have tea with a Bedouin family
• Fall asleep to the sounds of lions roaring, hyenas laughing and hippos snorting
• Hear wolves howling from both sides of a road
• Ride in a helicopter over northern Kenya with the side door open
• Visit the Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza, Egypt
• Stand just yards away from a mother grizzly bear and her two cubs
• Do a service project at Auschwitz death camp
• Visit the Church of the Nativity in the Palestinian Territory
• Ride in a restored, hot pink 1957 Chevrolet in Havana, Cuba 
• Walk on Omaha Beach, France, scene of the D-Day landings in 1944
• Sit among a large group of gelada monkeys in Ethiopia
• Watch a tiger from just a few yards away
• See two lionesses catch and kill a wildebeest (not something I want to see again)
• Spend days learning about the Auschwitz death camps and going behind the scenes to learn about preservation and archive efforts
• Be in a 4x4 vehicle as it was chased by an angry bull elephant
• Live in a private home with a Cuban family
• Stand just a few feet above polar bears in Churchill, Canada
• Serve as a perch for meerkats in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana
• Tour Highclere Castle, aka Downton Abbey
• Photograph endangered Ethiopian wolves
• Visit the American Military Cemetery in Normandy, France
• See the aurora borealis in far northern Canada
• Visit Jerusalem's Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
• Complete 50 miles of the Camino de Santiago in Spain
• Walk on a glacier in New Zealand
• Visit the Wansee Center, where Heydrich, Eichmann and their fellow Nazis planned the 'final solution' to rid Europe of all Jews
• Stick my foot into the Jordan River in Israel, then see the river again from the Jordan side
• Walk among the magnificent ruins of the ancient city of Petra
• Visit ancient Roman ruins in Turkey

Yes, it's expensive and sometimes exhausting to reach some of these places. But the experiences I have had while traveling are priceless. My travels also have allowed me to make some good friends. I can't wait to see what 2020 will bring.