2018 – A Year in Review

On January 3, 2019January 3, 2019 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Blogging11 Comments

As we start a brand new year, we thought we would look back at the previous year and take a moment to reflect on where we have been. First of all, this was the first year in a couple of years where we were living in the United States for the full year. What is obvious to anyone who has lived in Europe as well as in the States is that international travel is not as easy and much more expensive from the US compared to being in Europe where a different country is often as close as a few hour train ride away. That being said, we did have a couple of big trips outside of the country that will be some of our favorite memories for years. It did force us to spend a little bit more time traveling domestically, which is certainly just as worthwhile as going to different states within the country can be as unique as going to a completely different country. If our trips didn’t keep us busy enough on their own, it was a hectic year from a work perspective and we moved into a new home in September. We had a total of ten trips throughout the year and enjoyed meeting new people, eating a variety of food, and having some very unique experiences. Here is a brief recap of our year:

Sunset Flying Home from Our Final Trip of 2018

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – We had driven through Pittsburgh in the past, but never actually spent time there. We were able to spend a few days in this city that is definitely in the process of growing quite dramatically. It is the type of city that we would consider to be a mid-sized city with very friendly people and a unique food scene.
One of the Many Bridges in Pittsburgh
Austin, Texas – We actually had a couple of opportunities to visit Austin during the year and it is a city with a reputation for music as well as barbeque. It is certainly a place where you will find yourself slowing down to relax and find the people who live there to be very laid back and easy going.
Capital Building in Austin
Northern Virginia – Work sent us to the area and we didn’t get to spend too much time exploring, but it is still a place that has special memories for us as we lived in the area many years ago.
Walking the Side Streets of Old Town Alexandria
Egypt – Probably the highlight of the year as we spent time in Cairo as well as taking a river cruise on the Nile from Luxor down to Aswan. The memories of this trip will certainly last a lifetime as it was not only a favorite of the year, but one of the best trips that we’ve ever taken. We would highly recommend that people put their fears aside and take time to visit this historic country with a fascinating culture.
Pyramid in Giza
Alamosa, Colorado – We decided to revisit the Great Sand Dunes in southwest Colorado and it was truly a wonderful experiences. Travel doesn’t always have to be to the far corners of the planet to be interesting and provide an interesting view of the world we live in.
Great Sand Dunes in Colorado
Sante Fe, New Mexico – With a reputation for art, food, and a healthy lifestyle, visiting Sante Fe was a perfect getaway destination for us. It is also a city with a very rich history including some of the oldest buildings in the United States.
Statue in Front of the Cathedral in Sante Fe
Carlsbad, California – As the weather started turning colder here in Colorado, we decided to head to the beach. Just north of San Diego, this resort town is a perfect place to go and do some surfing, fishing, or just relax on the beach. We enjoyed watching sunsets over the ocean while enjoying wonderful seafood.
One of the Sunsets in Carlsbad
Panama – The second of our “big” trips this year was to go to Central America and get into the jungle once again. We are certain that this country will be on a lot of people’s destination list this year, but we are glad that we took the time to visit at the birth of their embrace of ecotourism. It was certainly a wonderful experience.
We Made a Furry Friend in Panama
New Orleans, Louisiana – For our final trip of the year, we visited the “Crescent City” on the Gulf of Mexico. With its historic French Quarter that has survived hundreds of years, fires, and even catastrophic flooding, it is certainly an American classic. It was certainly a wonderful place for us to spend our holidays.
Jackson Square in New Orleans

With so many wonderful memories, 2018 was certainly a very good year. We haven’t begun to plan our trips for 2019, but hopefully it will be as full of adventures as the previous year. We wish all of you a Happy New Year and hope it that provides you with all of the happiness that you are hoping for.

Blogging When Traveling

On December 14, 2018 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Blogging15 Comments

One of the first things that you are told when you start a blog is that you need to create a standard blogging schedule. This is true for a couple of reasons. First it allows people to know when to expect to see content from you, but it also provides you with a schedule to follow to help keep you consistent. It is hard enough following the schedule during normal weeks when work and life provide constant interruptions, but when traveling it is even harder, if not impossible at times. The question we often face during our trip is whether we worry about getting posts out or if we should just go quiet for a few days and deal with it when we get back.

Busy Houston Airport During Our Trip to Panama

There is, of course, a simple answer to this particular dilemma, but it isn’t as easy for us as it might sound. The best solution would be to create posts in advance of our travel plans and then schedule them to publish while we are gone. To do so would double the amount of posts that we need to create in a week. We barely have time to get the posts out that we are already creating, let alone write a bunch of extra ones so that they can be used later. Prior to almost every trip, we make this commitment to get some articles created and ready to go. And every single time we have failed to do so.

The second option, which we do most often, is to be sure that we have what we need to transfer photos and write a quick article with us during our trip. This allows us to take a few minutes at the end of the day to do a quick “here is where we are” post with very little information and a few photographs just to let everyone know what we’re doing and why we aren’t providing more content. The concern is that we don’t whether people appreciate this quick updates or would rather wait to hear about the place where we’re traveling in more detail. Do you find these kind of posts interesting or do you think it would be better if we just waited for our return?

Is It Okay to Recycle Blog Post Material?

On November 2, 2018 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Blogging10 Comments

We have had our site for a little over three years at this point and during that time we have obviously traveled as much as possible and shared stories from everyplace that we’ve visited. There are times when we’ve looked back at our early days of blogging and thought to ourselves that we could or should have told that particular story differently. Or we’ve looked at a post from our early days and thought to ourselves that we weren’t engaged with as many people back then and should we re-share that experience with a new audience. Sure, we could simply re-blog the old post, but that doesn’t seem the same as taking a new slant on an older post.

We have, at times, realized that there were specific things that we missed about a place that we previously wrote about and then shared that information, but not gone back and looked at our original post from a place and considered doing a fresh take on it. We have, over the years, posted over 700 posts on our site, so the likelihood of people stumbling over old posts is relatively low, but at the same time, we don’t want to have a bunch of redundant material on our site. We do see some older posts being found through search engines, but there are some that just never get viewed after their original posting.

Flying Over the Grand Canyon on Our Recent Flight Home from California

Obviously we strive to always create new and interesting content for our site and want it always to feel informative and fresh. With that said, we don’t travel to new places every week, so we do have to find ways to create new information about places that we have already visited. We usually do that by going into greater detail about a specific site within a city that perhaps we only touched on briefly in our original post or creating a summary of information where we have broken up the information in multiple posts.

On One of the First Trips After Starting Our Site

We have mixed feelings on the thought of recycling old material in a new way. And if we do ultimately decide to create a new post on something we’ve previously talked about, should we delete the old post? Whatever we decide, ultimately we want to make sure that we do it in a way that is stimulating and interesting and doesn’t feel like a repeat.