This was our second trip of the year to England, most of which was spent again at our nephew’s flat in Ilkley. Molly attended her annual sibling reunion at Leamington Spa with Fran, Robert and Richard.  I was able to do a lot of walking and cycling in the surrounding are and visited Gargrave, Malham Cove, Grassington, Steeton (famous for its male voice choir), Skipton, Bingley, Shipley, Keighley, and many spots on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. Molly and I also took a trip to Whitby and we visited York with Elizabeth and family when they joined us for a few days.

We were in England for a total of nine weeks – by far our longest vacation ever!

The journal can be found under the “Early Trips heading – 2012.

For this Holiday Season we decided to spend Christmas at home and then leave to enjoy the New Year in England and stay for the month of January. As usual, our time in the apartment in Ilkley was very enjoyable, with lots of walking (Ilkley Moor, Keighley, Bingley, Skipton), pleasant dining and relaxation. We were also able to visit many of our relatives and friends in Ilkley, Ripon, Sheffield and other parts of Yorkshire. This trip was a little different, however, in that Geoffrey had arranged for us to spend a week in Tuscany at his son Mark’s villa. This was a First Class experience in every sense and a very memorable visit to a beautiful part of the world. The villa is in Tuscany, which allowed us to visit the surrounding towns of Siena, San Gimignano, Mensano, Pisa and Florence. The whole was a wonderful trip and a great way to start a new year.

See the full journal under the “Early Trips” dropdown menu (2012)

We were fortunate to get together with ALL our family twice in 2011 – once here in Ohio and at my birthday celebration in Orlando (Disney World!).

We also had a brief visit to a local theme park (Great Wolf Lodge) with Elizabeth and family.

It’s a rare treat to get everyone together and we really enjoyed having two in one year and extra visits with both Ohio and California families.

We had visited Cambodia a few years ago but only for few days in Siem
Reap with the sole purpose of visiting the Angkor Temple complex
there. We had never visited Vietnam but it had been on our list for
some time so when Viking River Cruises initiated a cruise on the Mekong River that covered both countries, we signed up immediately. We
had used Viking for our trip to China in 2010 and had thoroughly enjoyed the visit and the service we received so we were anticipating a
similar experience this year.
We were not disappointed. The organization was superb and the local
guides were very informative and entertaining. The five star hotels in
the cities were, of course, exceptional and the river boat – somewhat
smaller than that we had experienced on the Yangtze – was well-appointed and comfortable and meals were once again excellent.
The visit started with a two night stay in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
where we saw the commercial center of the country and experienced
the cosmopolitan mix of Asian culture with that of French Colonial, as
well as the Western influence resulting from the large American presence in the 1960s and 1970s.
The cruise on the Mekong River began just a two hour drive from Saigon in the Delta and continued upstream in Vietnam to the border with
Cambodia. In Cambodia, still on the river, we made a number of shore
excursions, including in the capital city of Phnom Penh where we were
taken to the Killing Fields of the Pol Pot regime of the late 1970s.
Further upstream in Cambodia, we left the river boat to drive to Siem
Reap, home of Angkor Wat and other temples of the eighth to twelfth
centuries, built at the height of the Angkor Period. We spent a full two
days here visiting these remarkable sites which had been essentially
lost to the jungle for 400 years before being re-discovered by French explorers in the late 1800s.

In addition to visiting our California family as part of our Oregon road trip, we also visited Sacramento in February and December.

We took four deriving trips throughout the year.

1) Local to Kentucky to visit Louisville and Frankfort

2) Eleven southern states (Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia) with my brother Geoffrey

3) Western States (Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana) with our friends Keith and Zena from England.

4) Northern California and Oregon (Redwoods, Crater Lake, Columbia River) after a weekend in Sacramento

We took four road trips within the US this year. One – to Louisville and Frankfort, KY – was extremely local, whereas others took us to the Southern States (Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia) with my brother Geoffrey, Western States (Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and several National Parks) with our English friends Keith and Zena, and the beautiful state of Oregon (via the Redwoods, Crater Lake and  Hood River) after a few days in Sacramento.

We made two trips to England (in addition to one over the New Year, covered in the 2010 Journals) and spent most of the time at our nephew’s flat in Ilkley.

During the summer visit, Molly stayed with her sister in Besford and attended her sibling reunion and, later, we both spent a week in Devon at our favorite pub on Dartmoor. While in Ilkley, I did quite a bit of walking and biking and visited nearby towns of Otley, Addingham, Bolton Abbey, Kettlewell, Pateley Bridge and Settle. We also visited the beautiful Fountains Abbey near Ripon.

We spent time with my cousin Roy at his home near Barrow and i spent one day cycling to “visit” many of my boyhood homes in Keighley, Shipley and Bingley.

During our October visit, I ventured further afield with my walking and spent time in Morecambe and Lancaster as well as Harrogate.

In 2010 we took a cruise from Quebec to New York City with our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, during which we saw Montreal, Quebec City, the Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, as well as the US Eastern Seaboard. We spent about two weeks in Italy visiting Venice, Florence and Rome and visited England three times – including Devon and Yorkshire.

We took a driving trip from North to South across the USA on Route 93, spent a few days in New Orleans and visited our family in Sacramento three times – once with a side trip to San Francisco.

We also took an amazing three weeks trip to China, visiting Shanghai, Wuhan, Xian, Beijing as well as sailing the Yangtze River to the Three Gorges Dam.

The journals for each can be found in the dropdown menu under “Early Trips” – 2010.