September Updates & Where We’re Going Next!

It’s fall! Our cutest park has closed. We’re going traveling soon. We’re helping out our families soon. So much is happening!

Where to start?

With one of the most exciting things! We were on the cover of Northern Woodlands Magazine! Yahoo and oh my gosh! I’ve written a few articles for these guys including In April, Loons Return, Cattails: Nature’s Supermarket and How Do Toads Avoid Croaking in Winter. So we were so pumped to have this dragon fly from Townshend State Park featured on the cover! This is a great magazine for land owners and those interested in the New England forest ecology. They are non-profit doing all sorts of work and education across New England. Do give them a thought and take a look at their shop (Christmas is coming!) or consider making a gift subscription to your library. Either way, thanks for checking them out! You can order copies for no extra shipping cost directly from them here or most Tractor Supply Stores carry them too, among other outlets.

We also took home a 1st, 2nd and 3rd from the Bondville Fair. This is Vermont’s longest continuing running fair.

Then the question everyone has been asking: Where are we going next?! Well, we have not bought tickets yet…but we are planning a Central and South America trip! Oh boy!

Really it’s because for nearly 16 years (yes Chris and I have been together almost 16 years – my gosh – and to think we’re both Aires) but I went on a winter inter-semester study abroad to Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. It was awesome. We studied all these ancient Mayan ruins and I got an A for my required history credits. But all these years…someone…not naming any names, <ah-hem: Chris!>, will bring up how I have been to three more countries than him.

We don’t really get into country counting, we’re more about just going for the sake of going, but we’re somewhere near 40 countries visited currently. Except whatever the count is, add three more for Tiff, so it’s time to even the score.

Rough plan: Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica (again, maybe? check out this blog post to see me crossing a river, without my shoes on, at a remote research station and sharks swim threw this channel), Panama, Columbia and Ecuador.

We aim to start off with some beach life and right now I’m like, please – give me a tourist beach! Then we’ll figure out all the rest in the middle and anticipate ending with the Galapagos in Ecuador.

So…that is the basics. Umm…to answer the question that seems to be on lots of people’s mind: what about the safety? Ok, yes, I worry before every trip we go on. Do you recall when we still went to Africa during the main freak out over ebola? (And yes, that was real and scary, but Africa is a HUGE continent and our trip was no where near that. And our Africa trip was one of the best trips of our lives.) So we will not be going to Nicaragua unfortunately. We were there sometime around 2010 and had a wonderful time. We wish everyone there reprieve from their governments current upheaval. If you are feeling a bit out of the loop you can browse this article.

Then, yeah, we have met so many travelers going there and had or are having fantastic time. We’re gonna ease our way into things as we do and take it from there.

What do you want us to see!? What should we do!?

Get ready to start planning with us! 🙂

Think UNESCO World Heritage Sites! Diving! History! Nature! Ahhhhh! So much! Tikal!

We’re planning to use Agoda for some of our bookings, we have rewards saved up there! We have an AirBnB award to use. We’re finding great deals on Skyscanner…although I think we’re gonna (for the first time ever – which seems so ironic!) use our points to book at least our first ticket. If you are disciplined to always (like I mean always!) pay off your credit card statements in full you can earn some good money back. We are using this Chase card and the deals can be pretty good.

In the mean time, things are wrapping up in Vermont and little bit by little bit, just like this caterpillar we are making moves towards our next goal and cycle of the evolution.

Here’s to a great fall for all of us!

See you out there ~ Tiff & Chris ~