Thanks for following our journey, living nearly full-time aboard Carnival Cruise ships for the next year. As a nearly-70-and-80 year old couple, you may be wondering what prompted us to embark on such an unconventional adventure.

To start with a little bit of background: John has always had an explorer’s heart — he was a Professional Land Surveyor, after all, and loves the great outdoors. He’s also a big history buff, so getting to visit historical towns and learning all about their history from locals is a huge treat. As for me, I love traveling and experiencing different cultures. I remember when my parents retired, they took Mission trips with their Church to places like Europe, Egypt, and South America, and I marveled at the photos, videos, and stories they brought back. I also subscribe strongly to the idea that “tomorrow is promised to no man,” and believe in the importance of living life to the fullest.

With all of that in mind, John and I began our cruising adventures more than 20 years ago, taking short vacations from work on itineraries that lasted a week or so. From the beginning, we loved everything about cruises. For starters (perhaps the best part of all), you get to experience a variety of destinations without having to deal with multiple airports, or having to unpack and get settled in multiple hotel rooms. Beyond that, all of your food is included, with diverse restaurants to choose from, there’s an ample supply of entertainment options on board, and memorable excursions available at every port stop. Plus, you simply can’t beat the fresh ocean air, or the majestic sunrises and sunsets over the water each day.

*Our Carnival cruise ship on a previous trip, docked at sunset.*

Since retiring, we’ve taken probably 25 cruises together, including multi-week transpacific and transatlantic itineraries. We’ve cruised the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Mexican Riviera, through the Panama Canal, and more. Now, as we’re enjoying the sunset years of our lives, we’ve decided to try cruising full time. And boy, did we go all in! We moved out of our home and sold our car, and we’ll soon be embarking upon back-to-back cruises through the end of 2025. We’ll be taking a few short breaks around the holidays to spend time with family — but the rest of the year, you’ll either find us onboard a Carnival Cruise Ship or exploring a port stop somewhere around the world.

As it so happens, we both love to write. I was an English major and former college journalist, and John spends lots of time both reading and writing books as a hobby. With some encouragement from our daughter, we decided it would be a worthwhile endeavor to chronicle our adventures with a couple blog posts each month. We figured it would be a great way for our friends and family to keep up with where we are and what we’re doing every few weeks — and by the end of next year, we’ll have an amazing digital memory book to look back on, and reminisce over everything we saw and experienced along the way.

Thank you for coming along on our journey with us. We can’t wait to share it with you!

Love,

John & Lilly

Setting Sail Soon: How We Got Here

Cruise #1: Baltimore, Greenland & Canada