Oh, happy evening!  After spending most of the past week intensively planning our Southwest trip day by day, we finished the task tonight.

We contacted the people we want to see, and they will all be around while we are in their areas.  We have 33 days of activities planned, including driving portions of Route 66, visiting and hiking in national parks, spending some city time in Las Vegas, attending the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, and visiting with friends and family.  We even found a few kitschy things to do.

Just because the planning was going so well, we moved directly from the October/ November Southwest trip to the January Hawai’i trip and finished that up as well.  We’ll be taking an 8-day cruise of four islands (Oaha, Maui, Hawai’i, and Kauai), so we selected excursions at every port.  Then we planned five days on our own to do things not included with the cruise.  We still had energy left, so we made our flight reservations for Hawai’i.

All that’s left to do is leave home and follow our itineraries–or not, as the mood strikes us.  Retirement is the best!