Introduction

We have been traveling our entire lives. Jane traveled to 48 states by the time she was 13 years old. It wasn’t until our honeymoon that she got to her 49th state, Hawaii. She had to wait until she turned 50 that she discovered her last state, Alaska. During her junior year of college, Jane did a semester in Austria, this allowed her to galivant through other parts of Europe.

Darryl’s childhood travels mostly consisted of road trips to state and national parks while pulling the family 23 foot trailer. There were also trips to California and Florida. Darryl has only been to 49 states. One of these days he will visit the Cornhusker state, Nebraska.

Jane and Darryl met on the beach in Rehoboth Beach, DE. At that time, Jane was planning a big whirlwind trip around the world. As the relationship grew stronger, Darryl told Jane that she had to go on this trip as he didn’t want to hear regrets decades later that she missed out on this adventure. Jane wound up spending 4 months exploring New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and Japan.

Darryl took his first big trip to Europe the year before meeting Jane. After spending a month in Western Europe, Darryl got the international travel bug. He followed up this trip by spending two weeks in Germany just after the fall of the wall.

We have been fortunate to visit many amazing places due to personal and business travel. Business travel allowed us to capture hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles and hotel points. It also has given us elite status on airlines and at hotels.

When our kids were younger, we would take driving trips as well as trips to California, Pacific Northwest, and the prerequisite trips to Disney in Florida.

Our first international trip with our kids was to Costa Rica. Soon after we became adventurous and headed to Europe. Since that first trip to Italy and Spain, we have done multiple trips to Europe with the kids. Our most recent big adventure with them took place in 2018-2019 when we visited South Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Japan.