“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
-Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
Where to begin…
Where to begin a travel blog? That is the question…where to begin? The idea of a travel blog had been in the back of my mind for some time. But what would it be about? What trip would be the catalyst to finally start this? Finally, In April of 2022, the trip presented itself!
For some time now I have followed a travel website called Thrifty Traveler. They are a site dedicated to all things travel, usually sending out a couple of emails daily (if you’re a premium member) with flight deals both around the United States and Internationally. For one reason or another most of these emails find their way to my trash bin or I pass them along to a friend of family member who has been looking to travel to a specific location. But, one morning in April 2022, I came across the email at the top of this story and I knew, this was to good to pass up.
Right away I knew there were two people I had to talk to about this. First, my wonderful wife (to make sure leaving for 12 days (or so we thought) was going to be alright), and my friend Shane. Shane and I have traveled to a number of international places in the past (Scotland, Ireland, Italy), but going to the other side of the planet was going to be a much larger undertaking.
Booking and Waiting…
As these texts show, It didn’t take us long to make up our minds and book this trip. Couple of reasons for that. One, this had been a place that we had wanted to go for quite some time. And two, Delta Skymiles sales do not last forever and are constantly changing so when we decided that we wanted to do this trip, we had to act, determining dates that we could go and if the sale would work for those dates. Delta’s website was able to help a little in this regard. On there site they do have a price calendar so that you can narrow down your dates and zero in on what works for you. In our case, we were able to do just that and so in just a matter of a couple of hours, a dream was inching closer to reality.
After all of that excitement though comes the worst part of any vacation planning…the waiting!!! We had nine months between booking and actually leaving. Most places didn’t have their schedules out that far. We also didn’t know what kind of Covid restrictions we would be traveling into (at the time of our booking Australia and New Zealand still had pretty stringent mask requirements and policies in place).
One thing that was resolved pretty quickly on was that we wouldn’t be bringing our golf clubs along for this trip. Shane and I are avid golfers and have golfed at some of the greatest courses in the world, however, the premier course in the area, Royal Melbourne, even 8 months out was booked solid. But other than an occasional search here and there, for most of the summer Australia and New Zealand were just on the back burner. There, but not pressing by any means.
The Journey Gets Closer…
As summer turned to fall, and fall turned into winter, the journey began to creep towards the forefront. In October, another gentleman who we golf with and who has traveled with Shane in the past, Dary, decided he too would like to see the Land Down Under. We had also decided that since we were going to be so close (relatively) that we should include New Zealand in our adventure.
In December, we all got together and hammered out an itinerary (see how close this is to the final product).
- January 22nd: Depart Minneapolis for Sydney (layover in LAX)
- January 23rd: Traveling across the Pacific and the Date Line
- January 24th: Land in Sydney and then Depart and Land in Auckland, NZ (Meet Dary)
- January 25th: Explore Auckland
- January 26th: Dolphin and Whale watching cruise
- January 27th: Hobbiton Movie Set and Waikato Cave Tour
- January 28th: Depart Auckland and Fly to Melbourne
- January 29th: Great Ocean Road Tour
- January 30th: Melbourne in the morning then renting a car and driving to Canberra
- January 31st: Canberra to Sydney
- February 1st: Explore Sydney
- February 2nd: Explore Sydney
- February 3rd: Depart Sydney and make the journey back to Minneapolis with a lifetime of memories that we’d never forget!
As the new year began, hotels and flights to and from New Zealand were booked. The rental car was reserved (I know I for one was looking forward to driving on the wrong side of the road). And most importantly, the excitement was building!!! The journey, was about to begin…
