Finally caught up!

Only 3 weeks after the trip, I finally finished writing about Iceland. Now, if I can just get my photos from the trip finished!

I'm in full planning mode for my next big trip, which will be South Africa on October 13th. I'm already so excited that I don't know how I'm going to stand to wait 6 weeks! I do have a few things between now and then to keep me busy. I'm going to Chincoteague next weekend for the Virginia Society of Ornithology field trip. I'm going to work a couple of football games with VTRS.

Sidebar here: I retired a year ago yesterday. It's been an interesting year, to be sure. I visited 3 new countries (Iceland, Norway, and Morocco), took my first road trip with my rooftop tent (to Big Bend, Texas), had Jake go through a near-death experience, and lost my mom to dementia. I don't really have a retirement routine, which is both good and bad. Do most retired people have a routine? Maybe the point to retirement is that you no longer need a routine. Regardless, the year seems to have flown by. On to year 2!

The South Africa trip is getting real. I paid for the rest of the trip, and I visited the health department travel clinic to see what their recommendations are. If you're interested, I've got malaria prophylaxis (Malarone) which I'll take right before, during, and right after my trip. I'm also taking an oral typhoid vaccine, which I thought was pretty cool. (I have given thousands of injections in the last 2 years, but I hate getting shots myself.) The vaccine is called Vivotif, and it's a live virus vaccine. I take 4 pills, 2 days apart, on an empty stomach with water that is neither hot or too cold (don't want to kill those viruses!). It's a 5 year vaccine, so that's good too. I need to get a Hep A shot too, but I'm being a wuss about it. That's not just for travel, as there have been several local restaurant outbreaks of hepatitis A recently. I'll get it done sometime in September, as well as the new Covid booster when it comes out. (In case you missed it, Covid infection and hospitalization rates are rising.)

I've got field guides for South Africa, but I'll carry only one with me. I've got the right plugs for the countries I'll be visiting, and, yes, that is a plural as they don't all use the same type of outlet. I've got brown/tan/khaki pants and shirts for the game drives, but I think the animals will see the jeeps no matter what we are wearing.

One fun thing was trying to decide what to do on a free day in Cape Town. I'm not interested in the two optional tours that Gate 1 offered: wine tour and diving with great white sharks. (I know, shark diving sounds fun, but it's a whole day trip to get there, you're technically snorkeling in a cage, not diving, and, of course, there's no guarantee that you'll see a great white. I've seen plenty of sharks while diving, so I'll skip this one.) Anyway, I met some birders in Texas who took this same trip last June, and they booked a private bird tour on their free day. I thought that sounded great, so that's what I booked today: a whole day with a guide from Birding Ecotours. Luckily, they had a guide available on the single day that I'm free.

Hmm, but now that I think about it, I'm flying in a day early, so I'll have most of another day free too, if I'm not too wiped out from the long flights to do anything. Hmm...

On the home front, we are back to 5 dogs again. I fell in love with another puppy saved by For Pete's Sake rescue (in Bristol). This little girl was found in a ditch, covered with fleas and hungry! Surprisingly, Jake was cool with it, and Maggie has been a delight, to us, if not to the older dogs. She's about 3 months old and just full of herself. Peanut has been an amazing big sister, and even Rosie, at the advanced age of 3, has condescended to play with Maggie. Zena just ignores her, and Abby went into a depression from which she is beginning to emerge. (She didn't eat all her food, for the first time in 11 years!) I don't know what she is, but will find out. She looks like she's got a lot of chihuahua in her, but the Embark DNA results usually surprise us.

Maggie