Roam with Stacy & Mike

Hello Friends,

Well, we’re back from our mega-awesome trip and still trying to digest it all.  Some of you may be wondering what the heck we were thinking when we decided on such a crazy adventure.  That’s why we decided to start our first blog with why we went so far out of Europe, when there’s still so much to see around here.

I’ll blame it on the folks at the local Trips and Tours office in Mons, Belgium.  They’re located at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE for us military bubbas) just outside of Brussels.  They offer lots of great guided trips all over Europe, but this advertisement was the first we’d seen that went to South Africa.  The ad came out right around late November or early December for an April trip, so we wanted to get our seat reserved before all the slots were filled.  Unfortunately, the timing just wasn’t right for us, so we had to cancel our reservation.

So there we were, in mid-January, trying to “scratch the itch” of going on Safari to see some wild animals.  That’s when Stacy brought up the idea of doing a big trip for our 6-year anniversary in August.  I was “all-in” but wasn’t looking forward to trying to schedule so much in such a short time.  Thanks to my lovely wife and her amazing ideas, we decided to reach out to one of her Air Force Veteran Friends, Garrety.  They worked together a few years ago in Italy, and Stacy’s kept in touch.  Garrety is a luxury travel advisor who works with travel agencies and makes dreams a reality…at least that’s what she did for us.

Once we decided to consult Garrety, we pretty much gave her a budget and list of “what we wanted to see/do.”  She took over from there without hesitation and laid out three different itineraries for us to choose from, complete with hotel names, dates, and pricing.  It was the easiest trip decision we’d ever made.  <To be honest, Stacy does about 99% of our travel planning, I just show up at the end and enjoy the fruits of her labor, so it was nice to see how de-stressing it was for her (is de-stressing a word?).>

Working with and promoting Veteran Owned Businesses (VOBs…just made that up, so it isn’t official) like Garrety’s has been a passion of ours for a while.  Which is why we’ve decided to make that one of our pursuits after I hang up my AF Blues for good (i.e. retire).  Consider this our first step in promoting our fellow vets and their passions…so there will be more to come down the road.

That’s all for now, I can’t wait to tell you all about each and every beautiful place we explored over the last few weeks.  For now…

Roam Your World,

Stacy and Mike

P.S. Special Thanks to Garrety Kelly and G-Luxe Travel.  Garrety patiently worked with us to make this the perfect trip.  We’ve made ever-lasting memories and will be forever grateful to her.  Here is her company’s contact info if you need some help planning something extra special.

Garrety Kelly
Garrety@g-luxetravel.com
757-771-2173
www.g-luxetravel.com
An independent affiliate of McCabe World Travel, A Virtuoso Agency

Hi Friends,

I guess we should start by telling y’all a little about what motivated us to blog about our journeys.  It all begins with my beautiful wife’s love of travel and enthusiasm for experiencing new things.  I can attest to the fact that it’s infectious.  As current (me) and former (Stacy) active duty military members, we’ve had the privilege of moving around a lot.  When we say privilege it’s a bit tongue in cheek because there are positives and negatives.  Sometimes it’s tough because moving makes you leave behind great friends who’ve become family (you know who you guys are).  It also puts us in places far from our immediate families…like Guam.  Try looking that one up on Google Maps…just keep zooming out, you’ll eventually find Japan and Korea.

Just to give you a bit of perspective, Stacy’s been living outside of the continental US (CONUS for us military folks) for almost 10 years.  I’ve been living away from my home state of Texas since graduating from Air Force Basic Military Training in 1993.  That constant state of flux is probably what drives us to Roam, which leads us to where we are today.

We’ve also drawn some inspiration from other Bloggers and Vloggers doing the travel thing, but we’re hoping to do something more with it in the future (you’ll have to stay tuned to know more).

For now, we’ll keep it simple and try to hone our photo and video skills.  We’ll also do better at this blogging thing.

Roam Your World!