Category trekking

Top Ten Retirement Adventures: No. 3

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

In spring 2022, we summited two of the Northeast’s most famous mountains, one by foot and one on wheels. Sue sits atop Acadia National Park’s Cadillac Mountain, the USA’s tallest peak along the East Coast. We are proud that we hiked to Cadillac’s apex.

Wheels lifted us to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the tallest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet. There was a cold breeze when we posed with the sign, but nothing near the record 231 miles per hour recorded there in 1934.

The mountains offered challenges, but to qualify as my number three retirement adventure, there has to be more to the trip. Right?

Yep. Two reasons. First, aboard Lead Foot, our Ford F-150 named after its color, we pulled Minnie 2 on a 13,000-mile journey to more states than I can list here, but a few of the most memorable: Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Our hiking shoes found miles and miles of trails and our bikes carried us on rail trails in several states.

Now for reason number two. Minnie 2, a 25-foot Winnebago travel trailer on its second cross-country voyage, did not return home with us. Why not? It’s not that she quit, nor did she get in an accident. We left her in Virginia—on purpose. We rushed home in Lead Foot in five days because our realtor had put our Ashland, Oregon home up for sale.

Why?

Sue and I had fallen for Williamsburg, Virginia during a week there and, on the spot, we decided to move there. And it almost worked. After months of enduring sky-rocketing interest rates that scared away potential buyers, we finally had our Ashland townhome sold, but on the last day of due diligence, the buyer backed out. Maybe our move was not meant to be.

But Lead Foot missed Minnie 2, so in January 2023, he took us to Virginia to bring her home. We took the slow way back, cruising through the southern states in two months, piling up even more memorable day hikes and drives.

Oxford says adventure is “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous experience or activity.” It says nothing about happy endings. We didn’t get to move to Virginia, but adventure stories number two and number one are coming soon!

Any guesses?

Top Ten Retirement Adventures: No. 4

Reg Spittle 2 Comments

If you have walked a distance trek, then you have felt the bittersweet experience of your final steps. I was overwhelmed when I turned the corner from the Tiber River and glimpsed St. Peter’s Basilica, the end of the Way of St. Francis. We had done it! My achy legs and feet cheered the end of our toughest walk yet. Later, my eyes welled up as I folded my trusty trekking poles while Sue and I sat on a step in the square. What now?

Following the steps of revered Saint Francis, Sue and I walked 23 days, 258 miles, 80,000 feet in elevation during spring in 2018. Many days were sunny, three or four were scorching, two left us drenched. It is one of three major Christian pilgrimages, but we saw few fellow trekkers, even none a couple of days as we walked from Tuscany east to the Umbrian mountains, then south and southwest to Rome. No other Americans, until we met an American tourist who snapped our photo at Vatican City.

When we turned the corner from the trail along the Tiber River, St. Peter’s welcomed us from a distance. Inside, guards checked our pilgrim passport and ushered us into an inner chapel where a Catholic official checked our stamps and issued our Testimonium. I may not be an authentic pilgrim, but it was still a magic moment. We kept searching St. Peter’s Square for other trekkers/pilgrims, but there were none.

Italy. Italians. Italian villages. Italian food. Italian scenery. All added charm to the Way of St. Francis, my number four retirement adventure. The trek pitched some good arguments to be number one, but three other adventures were even more noteworthy.

If you want to further explore the Way of St. Francis and three other European trails, check out my second book, Trippin’ Through My 60s: When Adventure Calls, the Trails of Europe Answer. The other three treks: Scotland’s West Highland Way, England’s South West Coast Path, and the Tour du Mont Blanc.