Leaving on a jet plane

It's hard to believe that we only have one week left at home in Northern Ireland, the time has just flown by and yet we have already been back almost three months!

Time at home

There isn't much to say about our time at home except that it has been lovely being able to see friends and family on a regular basis for the first time in about 7 years and we are very thankful that we have had this opportunity. Alistair has been working flat out trying to do as much as possible before we leave and I have been busy getting myself a job for next year (bring on GP training in Wigan, Manchester!) as well as planning our next adventure.

I would say that we are perhaps not quite as organised for this half as we were the first trip but I think that has come from knowing we are going to developed countries with internet and transport readily available and from having done the first half, we can feel a bit more relaxed in a way about this bit.

We do have a rough itinerary though and have booked our first couple of weeks in Canada so that we can settle in easily to the whole travelling thing again!

So here you have it, our next four months:

• We will be starting on the west coast of Canada, landing in Calgary and spending a couple of weeks exploring Banff and Jasper national parks on the east of the Rockies.
• We then have about 10 days to see Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler before heading into the USA.
• We begin our grand adventure of the states by travelling down the west coast, stopping in Seattle, Portland, San Franciso and Los Angeles.
• Then we hit the road trip part of the trip; (hopefully) picking up a car in LA we will start our drive across the states seeing places such as Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and some national parks in Utah and Arizona before we head south, cutting through New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and finally West Virginia.
• We are going to probably drop the car off in Washington DC and then bus up the east coast from there seeing NYC, Boston and going into eastern Canada to visit Montreal and Toronto.
• Finally we fly to Florida to spend our last couple of weeks and where Alistair's siblings are joining us for exciting adventures in Orlando!

Another great place to find tips and ideas

As a side note, some good friends of ours are also heading off for 4 months travelling and will be keeping a blog detailing their adventures. They are visiting places that we haven't such as China, Japan and much more of South-east Asia so definitely check them out to see how they are getting on and to get some different ideas about where to go in the world!