At the start of March, 2002 we left our jobs, put all our stuff into storage and hit the road. We returned about 10 months later, after travelling through the South Pacific, Asia, Europe, the United States, Canada and Central America. It was everything we hoped it would be...the trip of a lifetime.

We spent about 5 months outside of North America, mostly travelling on an almost daily basis. Our time in North America was spent largely in Canada, where we took our time and explored the wilderness. We were very fortunate to have good health, excellent weather and no major problems. We maintained a daily journal, an on-line Travel Journal (for a while anyway) and have posted some Pictures of the trip.

Some brief details about the trip:

• We were gone for 288 days total, during which time we visited 20 countries, and 31 of the 50 US states.
  
• We travelled over 82,000 miles total (the circumference of the earth is about 25,000), including roughly 49,000 by plane, 23,000 by car, 5,000 by train, 2,500 by boat, and 2,000 by bus.
  
• We stayed in 102 different hotels, paid for with one of 15 different currencies.
  

Answers to some of the questions we get asked:

What were the highlights? (in order that we visited them)
Coasts of New Zealand, particularly Abel Tasman National Park
Great Barrier Reef in Australia
Agean Coast in Turkey
Austrian Alps
Norwegian Coast and Mountains
Utah desert and canyons
Alaskan Inside Passage and Glacier Bay
Vancouver Mountains and Coast
Historic castles in Wales
Rainforests of Costa Rica
The chance to visit and meet up with numerous friends along the way

Where would we go back to?
Many, many of the places, but most definitely New Zealand, Turkey, the Alps, Scandanavia, British Columbia and Central America.

Our Favorite Cites (in order):
Vancouver, Canada
Innsbruck, Austria
Bruges, Belgium
Vienna, Austria
Auckland, New Zealand
Sydney, Australia
Berlin, Germany
Stockholm, Sweden
Singapore
Instanbul, Turkey
Inverness, Scotland

Food Highlights:
Fresh crab and fish caught in Alaska
Black Pepper Crab in Singapore
Bountiful Farmer's Breakfasts in Austria (Breads, Cheese, Juices, Fruits and Jams)
Fresh Shrimp in Bergen, Norway
Fresh Baked Bread in Turkey
Full English Breakfasts in the UK

Most Expensive Places We Visited:
Norway
London, England
Venice, Italy

Cheapest:
Turkey
New Zealand
Everything in China except hotels

Things we didn't like so much:
Mosquitos in Australia and the Everglades
Pushing and spitting in China
Crowds in Venice, Italy
100 Degree Temperatures in Utah

How as the Weather?
The weather was overall great. We sort of "followed the sun", starting in the Southern Hemisphere in March and working our way North up to Scandanavia and then Canada as summer came. As Fall approached we headed back South to the Carribean, Central America and Hawaii. We had about 20 days of rain total, most of it thundershowers in Florida, Costa Rica and Hawaii.

Was it Easy to Get Around?
Yep, suprisingly so. We did some basic planning ahead of time and then pretty much winged it as we went from there. The Internet made it easy to make reservations or book things ahead of time if we needed to. We were also aided by the fact that we were mostly travelling slightly off-season when we were in popular tourist destinations, so crowds were never too much of a problem.

Some details of the practical aspects of the trip: We used a One-World Alliance Global Explorer ticket as the basic round the world plane ticket, which turned out to be a great bargin. AirTreks provided additional tickets to help fill in the gaps, and had a lot of information about taking a long trip like this. Travel in China was largely arranged with the help of Travel Design. who was great in helping us put together a last minute China itinerary. For Europe, we used Eurail train passes. We rented cars in New Zealand, England and Ireland, and had a rented camper van in the Australian Outback. Once back in the United States, we loaded up the good old Toyota Camry with storage and bike racks. It made it to the tip of Nova Scotia and back to Los Angeles with no problems.