The Search Box at the top right-hand corner allows searching of all Posts on this site. Hence, all posts entered since the site was created in 2014 may be accessed easily by typing in key words, such as a country of interest or – if known – a city, national park, famous landmark, or similarly descriptive words. If we have been there and have posted about our visit, you should see all such blogs and the description of our visit. These posts, in turn, will generally allow you to find the complete journal of the trip in the drop-down menu of the appropriate year, should that be of interest. (Caveat: most journals are fundamentally an “assembly” of Posts but contain more photographs, often some more detailed information on places visited, and more personal details of our day-to-day activities – which may be of little interest to anyone but ourselves. As I have said in the “About” section, our primary purpose in archiving journals on this site is to provide us with a permanent repository or library.
Since there were no Posts prior to 2014, there were no searchable documents and the only record of our trips was in the journals that we have kept (in one form or another) since my retirement in late 1999. This covers the most intense period of our travels – although by no means all, since travel has been a major part of our lives from the time we arrived in the United States (1966) and before.* In order to direct those interested (again, primarily us!) to journals written in 2013 and earlier, I have created a single Post called “Early Trips – 2000 to 2013” in which I provide (or will provide, as this is a work in progress) a brief summary of each major destination for each year with a few details of the specific areas visited. For example, our 2010 visit to China would also mention the cities of Shanghai, Wuhan, Xian and Beijing as well as the Yangtze River, the Three Gorges, the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People. The post would also refer those interested to the “2010 Journals” drop-down where the complete journal will be available.
That’s the plan – time will tell just how useful it might be. As I write in November 2023, I have yet to begin this major update! One final note. As time, technology and my skills with computer software (!) have advanced, the journals themselves have become more extensive, have incorporated more information (thanks to Wikipedia!) and have been retained in more accessible formats. Early works used software that wasn’t always universally available (and is no longer supported) and, unless I created a pdf file, the ability to access may have been lost. A hard copy was always prepared (although, again, these were often little more than words and a few photographs in the “early days”) but inclusion on this site requires scanning – with its inherent quality loss and time consumption. We shall see……………
* For those interested in recollections about all our travels and our life together (perhaps only Molly and me) I am in the final phases prior to publication of my third book (the other two are already posted on this site) entitled “Around the World in Eighty Years – a Memoir of Sorts”, which will ultimately be available here in pdf format. Stay tuned – and come back frequently!