The Grand Tour

Back in old days…the 1800’s (and earlier) and into the 20th century, The Grand Tour was a traditional right of passage for young people as a way to top off their academic education with a tour of Europe focusing on art, music, literature and culture. I’ve been reading about Grand Tours in some of my favorite books by Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens and other novelists for years.

Well, we didn’t get the chance to take a grand tour as young adults or to even backpack through Europe after college or during a gap year like young people today. So, with that, we’re planning our own style of Grand Tour — one later in life. I just turned 60 and John is 63. We figure we have just a few years of good health to make this happen for us.

We’ve had some great travels over the past few years, but we’ve always come back within a week or two, or at the most, just under a month. But, we’re in the planning phase for our own REAL Grand Tour. One that will take at least several months and possibly up to several years. See our planning phase below for more on this….but for now, just a little bit about who we are.

About Us

We’re Annette and John Todd. We love to travel, learn and explore.

We got married very young (I, Annette, was just 18 and John was 21). We had four kids over the next eight years, and most of you know what that means. The 80’s is just a blur of pregnancies, breast feeding, Cheerios and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. The 90’s found us very settled down with good careers, kids in high school, junior high, elementary school.

We moved from Northern Utah to Southern California in 1986; and, until we became empty nesters, our vacations were mostly going back to Utah to visit family. Luckily, Utah is a great place to visit and we spent a lot of time outdoors. We also went to visit extended family in Minnesota and Arizona.

John is a retired middle school history teacher and I, (Annette) am still working as a territory sales manager for Aetna, CVS Health. I turned 60 this year and constantly face the quandary of when to walk away from this job I really love so we can travel a lot more often.

We love to travel to places that can fill our yearning for understanding and growth. We enjoy lounging on a beach for a few hours as much as anyone; but, we’re both very curious and really love learning; we’d rather be forging new paths — of understanding and literal paths; being travelers vs. tourists — our own Grand Tour!

Planning Phase for The New Grand Tour – Decisions, Decisions…

When to retire?

Keep our house or sell it?

Itineraries, Places to go and Things to do!

Traveling the US in our Trailer

Traveling to Europe

Budgeting and Making our Money Stretch

Books to Read in Preparation