After 13 months, 4 countries, 12 cities and 16 different apartments, we have returned home to the United States to spend time with our family and friends over the upcoming holidays.

We felt bittersweet leaving South America and Mexico but are excited to see our family and friends. For the next 8 weeks, we will be traveling in the U.S. before we begin year two of Never2late4adventure.

We arrived in Miami last week and drove to Nokomis, FL to spend time with Kathy’s mother. In a few days, we will head north to Minneapolis which will be our base as we take day trips and weekend trips to Chicago to see our sons and Iowa to see Marc’s family. We will end our travels in the U.S. with a trip to Arizona to visit Kathy’s sister.

While we are back in our home country it may not feel like the home it used to be. After all, we have no house to go back to and will stay in another furnished apartment (our 17th). We have no jobs to return to or cars to drive around the city. We have none of those, but we do have family and friends who are far better than physical possessions and they are why we expect to feel at home.

While we were packing for our trip back to the U.S., Kathy asked me if I was sad to end our first year of travel and would I miss traveling and being on the road. At that time, I was only looking forward to our next destination, the U.S. But as the plane landed on the tarmac in Miami, the mixed feelings hit me. I was sad to leave Mexico and South America but happy to be back in the U.S.

I think both of us are a little afraid that after returning to the U.S., we may get too comfortable and decide to end our travels. After several discussions, we decided that it is important to us that we continue our adventure and experience more of what the world has to offer. Maybe that means that we have to look at our trip home as just another country we are visiting and after 60 days, we head to another destination.

For one of our final meals in Mexico, we had dinner with several other ex-pats we met in Guadalajara. One gentleman asked me why we are returning to the U.S. He assumed that we were returning for our annual medical check-ups and dental visits. I responded that, on the contrary, we took care of all of that in Guadalajara. We both went to a dentist for a check-up and cleaning. Kathy went to a doctor for prescription refills. We even went to an optimist and Kathy bought two new pairs of glasses.

In our travels, we visited dentists and doctors in 3 of the 4 countries we visited. It is hard to count how many different barbershops and salons we visited. The point is, while we may have struggled with our language, we still were able to communicate our needs and wants with each doctor, dentist, and barber we visited. The same holds true with everybody we met in South America and Mexico. People were nice, friendly and always willing to help us and for that, we are truly grateful. We had no choice but to trust them, and we were never let down.

Back in the U.S. and in Florida, everything seems comfortable and familiar, but some things seem just a little different. We are appreciating the U.S. a little more than we used to. The little things that we took for granted, we now notice. We appreciate nice sidewalks and streets, drivers who yield to pedestrians, super helpful employees in stores and restaurants who speak our language, clean air and water, plenty of big napkins at restaurants, and the fact that you can flush toilet paper down the toilet.

Some of the laws and regulations we have in the states now seem more important than in the past. Both of us appreciate the United States in a whole new way. So, leaving the U.S. to travel or live in a different country does not mean we don’t like the U.S., it means we want to expand our knowledge and experience more of the world. For us old saying isn’t “love it or leave it”, it’s “love it but leave it”.

After our visit to the U.S., our plan is to head back to Mexico for a couple of months and then head south to Argentina and Chile. We want to continue to improve our Spanish.  Like all of our plans, they are subject to change.

So, while we’re in the states through the end of the year, we won’t be posting on our blog. We will evaluate our website and blog to see what changes and improvements we can make. If you would like to contact us to let us know your thoughts about our blog and how we can improve it, we would really appreciate your input.

We thank all of you for your support and words of encouragement over the last 13 months. We hope you enjoyed reading the blog posts as much as we enjoyed writing them. They provided us a chance to reflect on our travel and adventure, and how lucky and grateful we are to travel and share our experiences.