.... and where to start?

So it began with the idea of starting off at home - how much of the British Isles have we actually visited properly?  That would surely be the easiest way to find our feet?  Buy a camper?  Just take the Ford mondearble (our way of making a Ford Mondeo estate sound more exotic, pronounced mon-day-arbler for the uninitiated).  Go and see our friends in deepest, darkest Wales, Cornwall, Scotland....

But the problem with that..... the British weather.  It just didn't seem tempting to spend what was realistically going to be winter in the UK as our first break-away!  We'd done a month travelling in the mondearble (spellchecker wants me to correct that to 'imponderable', funnily enough) around Europe in Summer 2014 very successfully:

 (Note: on this previous occasion the plan was even LAMINATED!)

We followed the mighty Pearl Jam (American rock band) around and also ended up doing a tour of Formula 1 racing circuits as we went - both past-times likely to be making an appearance in future blogs I suspect.  11 Countries in two and a half weeks. How about extending that?  We could take Ralph with us?  Get him a passport.... he'd love to come and explore with us, get unlimited attention daily.  Fair enough whilst out in the countryside, but what about when we wanted to go into the cities? We'd have to find someone to trust to look after him so he didn't get cooked whilst locked in the van, because you can't take a spaniel into the Vatican?! It was just going to be too tricky, sadly.

Whilst we'd discussed this Europe idea, secretly I felt like we'd already 'done' the majority of Europe, or at least a big chunk. It seemed too easy, predictable.  I voiced my opinion to Simon one evening, I can't remember the exact circumstances but my sales pitch was basically, if we are making this ground-breaking grand departure from everything why don't we do something on a much bigger scale? We love a road trip, it's true, so why not do the epitome of road trips...... the United States of America?! I had itchy feet, I remember saying 'I want to get on a PLANE' exuberantly. As always with Simon, his enthusiasm for doing something on a larger, more expensive and grander scale was never in question and the conversation spiralled to the point we were imagining driving south all the way through Mexico to South America and on and on.  The finer details would need to be put on ice, we were getting carried away with it clearly.

But there it was, the conception of the beginning of the birth of the vague idea of the non-plan............ as clearly as I can recall it.