A Look Back at Adventures in 2023

We were more quiet this past year than we have been previously, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t busy. We are truly looking forward to the new year and going on new adventures, but it is always worth looking back at the places that we visited last year. We were able to go on two truly spectacular trips last year, the first being to Dubai and then to Nepal in March and the second was our trip to Rwanda in September. In between were able to visit some other places closer to our new home on the east coast including Ocean City, Maryland, as well as spending time in Washington DC.

Silverback Deep in Thought
Temple in Kathmandu
Ceremonial Dance in Rwanda
Another View of the Everest Summit

Going to Kathmandu in Nepal was an absolutely amazing experience that we will certainly treasure forever. The highlight of the trip was taking a high-altitude helicopter to see the base camp at Mount Everest. We have spent many years hiking in the mountains of Colorado, but there is something truly magical about standing amongst the peaks of the Himalayan Mountains. In addition to seeing the incredible scenery, we also spent time visiting the temples and learning about the fascinating culture. The people were extremely friendly and made us feel welcome from the moment that we landed in the country.

Chimpanzee Giving Us the Cold Shoulder
Buddha Statue in Nepal
Baby Gorilla with His Mother
Sitting on the Boat in Lake Kivu in Rwanda

Later in the year, we returned to Africa once again, this time to trek to spend time with gorillas and then chimpanzees in Rwanda. After our trip to Kenya and Tanzania in 2021 where we went on an extended safari, we made a pledge to ourselves that we would return one day to see the mountain gorillas in the wild. It was certainly worth the effort of hiking through thick vegetation of the rain forest to spend time with these docile creatures who seemed as truly interested in spending time with us as we did with them. No words could ever truly capture the awe and beauty of the time that we spent amongst these incredible animals.

High-Altitude Helicopter
So Many Skyscrapers in Dubai
Temple in Nepal
Crowds on the Boardwalk in Ocean City

Either of these trips would have been an incredible memory that would last a lifetime, but to do both of them in the same year was even more spectacular. The many, many hours that spent traveling to and from these remote locations was worth every minute for the experiences that we had and the people that we met. We have yet to share all of our stories from those two trips, so we are committed to being better in 2024 to post more about those trips as well as the adventures that we are planning on for this coming year. If this year is anywhere close to 2023, we certainly expect to have many more adventures to share in the coming months.

Products That We Always Travel With

The following post contains links to products that we have used.  We get a small commission for any sales if you purchase through the links and there is no additional cost to you. All of the photos and opinions are our own.

During our travels, we have come across a few products that we find indispensable. Because we travel light and try to only take a carry-on bag, every item that we take on a trip has to provide value to us or we wouldn’t take it with us. There are obvious items like our camera, tablet, and other items, but these are some that perhaps you haven’t thought about.

  1. GETIHU Power Bank – Finding an outlet that can charge your USB devices when traveling can often be difficult to impossible. Especially when going to some out of the way places, like an ecolodge in the jungle, make having a portable power supply to charge devices an absolute must. It doesn’t have to be the jungle, though, it could be an airport, certain flights, or needing to charge more than one item and having a single power converter. We carry this lightweight item with us even when we’re not traveling, just in case we find that we have a sudden need.

    Portable Charger
  2. Lenovo USB C Hub – Because we often want to share some photographs during our travels, having a multiport USB hub is a necessity for us. It allows us to transfer photographs from cameras and phones to our tablets in order to share the data. We also use it at home to store photographs on an external hard drive with large storage capacity. It is also convenient to charge multiple devices using a single outlet, which also comes in handy. As you can tell, keeping our phones and other devices charged during our travels is something we find important.

    Multiport USB Hub
  3. Osprey UltraLight 3 Dry Sack – It would be nice if every day of a trip was sunny and clear, but obviously sometimes it rains. This lightweight dry sack allows us to protect our camera and other electronic items when out and about during a rainy day. It rolls up into a tight little ball, about the size of a bracelet, making it easy to toss into our backpack when not needed.

    Dry Sack Rolled Up
  4. eBags Classic Small/Medium Packing Cubes – Being able to organize cloths in our carry-on bags is extremely useful, especially when a trip is made up of several different stops. It also makes it convenient to separate clean clothes from dirty clothes as the trip goes along. They don’t take up any additional space and also don’t add any additional weight to the bags.

    Packing Cubes
  5. Travelon Laundry Soap Sheets – With the limited number of clothing items that can be packed into a carry-on bag, we often can’t take enough clothes to wear something different over a two week period. Instead, we take these laundry sheets that are extremely small, but quite effective to wash a pair of pants or a couple of shirts and hang them in the hotel bathroom to dry. We also usually take clothes that dry quickly, both for ease of washing as well of getting caught in the occasional rain storm.

    Laundry Sheets

All of these items are worth the space that they take in our luggage as we travel.