Welcome to Partners in Wonder. My name is Dave, but you can call me Rabbit. The amazing woman beside me, my partner in wonder, is Xia, but you can call her Piglet (more about those nicknames in another post). We were drawn to each other through a mutual love of the outdoors, an unrelenting curiosity about the world, and a desire to fill our golden years with new adventures, magical destinations, and fascinating experiences. Travel is not just about the places you will see, it is so much more. It is about the people you will meet, the cultural differences that will reshape your view of the world, the regional cuisine that will tantalize your taste buds, and the moments and memories you create that will stay with you forever.

I have spent my entire life working, but I have always tried to find time to fit some travel into my busy schedule. Some friends and co-workers over the years have asked me why. They say they don’t like to travel because it is too expensive, or travel is such a hassle to plan all the flights and hotels and other details, or they have heard that people in other countries don’t like us. So, why do it?

Jack Kerouac, the famous American author of On the Road, gives the best answer to that question that I have ever heard, “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”

The older I get, the more I have come to appreciate the wisdom of Mr. Kerouac. Of course, he is not alone in his opinions on travel. In 1869, in his book Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”Ursula K Leguin, in her science fiction masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness, said this, “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

So, let us start on this journey together. We fervently hope that sharing our experiences will get you excited to create your own great adventures. When you do, we hope you will share them with us so we can add them to our own ever-expanding bucket list. We want all of you, everyone out there who understands the value of exploration, and the growth that comes from experiences that take you out of your comfort zone, to become our Partners in Wonder. Approximately 1,600 years ago, Saint Augustine wrote “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” We hope that all of our partners in wonder will spend the rest of their lives adding countless pages to the book of the world.