What do we write for our ninth anniversary of blogging?

We asked you, our readers, for ideas. And when none were suggested in our Comments section, we emailed nine of you, mushrooming for ideas.

The suggestions were great. The top nine places we’ve visited. Nine souvenirs we’ve brought home. Nine highlights. Nine places we’re looking forward to visiting. Nine close calls (don’t want to relive those!). Where it all began with us (we met in Waskesiu, 1967). And an idea (thanks Diana) that is so good, “You’ve got to save it for your tenth anniversary blog,” our friend Nellie advised.

“That you involve local folks really adds flavour to your stories,” wrote Barry. Which got us thinking…

In a few minutes, I listed more than three dozen people who have influenced our travels, our blog and our lives over the last nine years. Then Magellan and I, without looking at my list, went from the gut and narrowed it down to nine (the first two weren’t even on the original list!).

1. GS1, Glynn Sully, Magellan’s Mom, for assisting her boy (scout) in his love for camping

In one of our most-read most-comments posts, the story about GS1, my mom, we wrote:

GS2 (Spice) said, “We ate roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding and mashed potatoes and a canned-shrimp tomato aspic. “Your mom is such a great cook.”

“Are you kidding?” I replied. “That’s a Sunday standard. The rest of the week when dad’s away she pressure-cooks everything.”

And yet, her basic approach to cooking led to a love of mine for eating well when out camping. After a few years with the Boy Scouts where the standard fare was canned beans, McGavin’s bread and strawberry jam, I’d had enough and asked mom for help in creating a camp menu. Together we constructed a plan for a week of camping, where every meal was different. When I arrived at camp in Waskesiu, the young guys in our patrol dug a three-foot hole into permafrost that let us keep frozen steak, ribs and ice cream. A big part of regimented Scouting is the points awarded by the leaders to the patrol with the cleanest post-dinner site—we never won because we were still eating! And loving every morsel. To the other three patrol leaders, Graham, Dean and Mike, nice campsite!

Thanks mom—camping and eating well became a big part of our getaways over the last 60 years.

2. Maxine, Spice’s mom, for instilling curiosity in the world beyond our postal code

The five-kilometre trip to “town” was as far as my dad cared to travel. Sure, he and mom came on trips to Tofino, Greece and Scotland with us in his later years, but you could see his longing to get home and check on the farm.

Mom, however, always had bigger dreams. (I often wonder where we would have gone as kids if she had learned to drive. Moose Jaw?)

I’m not sure when or how she got a pen pal, but for as long as I can remember she wrote to a woman named Megan. I remember her excitement when there was a letter, a birthday card or a Christmas gift from Megan. All the way from New Zealand!

When dad died in 2004, mom began taking bus trips, sometimes with friends, sometimes on her own. Despite her poor eyesight (glaucoma, macular degeneration, scar tissue from cataract surgery…) and ability to get lost in a twenty-seat restaurant. When my sister Joan proposed a return trip to Scotland, she probably started packing that very night.

“I always wished I could go to New Zealand,” she’d say during the last decade of her life. Given we flew there on a round-the-world ticket and travelled in a small motorhome, we didn’t invite her to join us. Mom understood. Vicarious travel had sustained her for years.

3. Aubed, for making our dreams of the Empty Quarter come true

THE EMPTY QUARTER IS FULL OF SURPRISES… Or how latitude 65 experienced this wonder of nature…with Aubed, one of the guides of arabiansandtoursservices…

Watch the video and enjoy their images and words…

Imagine our surprise seeing this on the Home Page of Arabian Sand Tours! Showcasing our very first blog, August 2, 2015.

Does it lead people to Latitude 65? We have little idea of our readership over the years, because we don’t subscribe to professional analytics services and have no “antisocial media” presence. We get our 30-day readership number (2,591 the latest count: TY!), our 50 top blogs, and the top 10 countries where readers are from (Canada is #1 at 47%). Small-window data when you consider nine years of history.

While it would be nice to know, surprisingly, we really don’t care—what intrigues us is the next blog.

Starting a story with no idea where it will go. Reading my travel diary. Going back to guidebooks and brochures we picked up. Researching. Talking it over together. Waiting for the storyline to emerge. Choosing, editing and captioning photos. Keeping a few Sundays ahead. Latitude 65 gives purpose and creativity to our jubilado years. 

Sand and silence and surprise—we reflect (often) on how lucky we are to have spent two days in the Empty Quarter with Aubed. He’s still with Arabian Sand Tours, working with his cousin and brother. They welcome around 40-50 groups per year and now have a fixed camp in the EQ. I’m glad we were there when Aubed chose where to sleep in the wild stillness and shadowed dunes of the open desert.

4. Russ Norstrand, for showing us the possibilities of photography

For many of the years between 2010 and 2016, our friends Pat and Dallas invited us to their time-share in Palm Springs. Wonderful weather, great food, cheap wine, some beautiful golf courses and lots of laughs. At the last minute before coming home in 2016, we decided it would be great to hike Utah, but where to start? We didn’t have time to plan the options as we do most times, so googled hiking tours. One sounded spectacular, but had just been cancelled because of lack of interest.

But then the tour guide, Russ Nordstrand contacted us—his fiancé, Crystal, named after the most dangerous rapids in the Grand Canyon, had just gotten an assignment to lead a raft tour. He was between commitments. Would we be interested in a “private” Utah tour? Yes! Yes! Yes!

Russ had grown his résumé from delivering pizza to the gate house at Bill Gates’ mansion (no tips!) to becoming a professional western-USA landscape photographer. As he led us through Escalante, Zion, Bryce and the Slot Canyons, we learned the advantages of shooting RAW instead of jpeg, and Aperture, Shutter or Manual Priority vs Automatic.

Shortly after our trip, Russ and Crystal formed Backcountry Journeys. In 2023 they received the Traveller’s Choice Award for #1 Trusted Leader in Small-Group Photo Trips. Their team has grown to 14 Trip Leaders plus support staff, and they’re leading trips to more than 100 destinations worldwide. Well done!

Our love of photography grew with Spice demanding her own camera body. She now takes more than half of our pictures—our combined total posted on Latitude 65 exceeds 9,100 images. And we’ve expanded our knowledge by taking Backcountry Journeys trips to Costa Rica and Alaska, where their leaders get you to the right place at the perfect time for the best chance to shoot a keeper.

5. David Nighteagle, for conveying the spirit of ancient civilizations

Entranced by David’s guided tour of Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, Magellan and I wrote to the National Park Service about the experience and later featured him in two of our blogs. (Which appear on the first page of a Google search. Not bad, given we have no links to “antisocial media”, no Facebook presence, no X, no Instagram, no marketing…) His reverential expertise for native art led us to seek out more of it in the southwestern US and elsewhere in our travels. Here are nine things we didn’t know about David Nighteagle.

1. A Pine Ridge Lakota from the northern plains living and working in the park of his people, David has played the flute for student groups nationwide.
2. David’s grandfather taught him how to make flutes from cherry wood—of which he’s made about 10,000.
3. David is one of the foremost performers and composers of Native American flute music in the US—he played at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
4. An injury to his hands caused David to stop making flutes in 2008, but he still performs internationally and locally at Crow Canyon and Mesa Verde (where he’s played for Former First Ladies, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush).
5. In addition to flute making and performing, David has worked as a photographer and also as an investigator for the State of Colorado.
6. Not only is he a storyteller extraordinaire, he’s apparently also a very funny comedian.
7. David and his wife Sherry (who is white and from the Midwest) live in Nighteagles Nest, an “earthship” home that David built near Mancos, Colorado, at the base of Mesa Verde National Park that you can rent through Airbnb. Totally off-grid, the house has a twelve-volt system powered by solar panels, a windmill and batteries. The lower floor is half-buried with thick walls of old tires covered in smooth concrete.
8. His Mesa Anthology, recorded in one three-hour session atop Mesa Verde in winter, “alternates silence, flute improv, and the mesa’s natural sounds: coyotes, a thunderstorm, wind”.
9. All in all, I’d say he lives up to his namesake, the wise and vigilant owl, the nighteagle.

6. Namgay Namgyal, for being the essence of Bhutan

Spice’s email to Namgay As I recall, you’ve since gotten married and I see from the Wind Horse site that you are still guiding there. We’d love it if you could give us an update on your life, what’s new in Bhutan in the tourism world there, etc., that we could use in our blog. 

Namgay’s response: Thank you for finding me and remembering Bhutan. It has been almost 9 years after you came here. I still have that memories very fresh and videos on small village hike in Punakha. 

Haha…. I’m married and have 2 sons (Khamtrul -5 & Khamsum -3). 

With my work….. I have been freelancing after pandemic I.E jumping to one who pays me better. 

Bhutan is a place whereby every individual finds inner peace as they step in…. Perhaps many travelers are craving for such calmness in this world. Shangrila…. Meaning’ the hidden paradise’ or the land of happiness, teaches you many things that can make every visitors satisfied and memorable.

Guest, as we mention to tourists are always treated warmly like you were before. 

So, thank you for visiting Bhutan and making it one of every individual’s bucket list….. hence I will be happier to lead any of your recommended groups here. Bhutans door shall remain open at any time if you knock….

With this I hope you are in good health and happy 9th anniversary to your blogging in advance. Thank you for finding me again and keep in touch.

Here’s the video Namgay was referring to: “The Children You Meet Going To Khamsum Yuley Chorten.” To which Namgay would say, “Any questions? Any doubts?”

7. Cecilia Quiles, for initiating our appreciation of street art

Every time we search out street art, I think of Cecilia, manager of Graffitimundo and Galería UNION in Buenos Aires.

We’d bought a book on street art in Buenos Aires, but soon realized that without a guide, (a) we had trouble finding the locations and (b) we were missing the context of much of what we were seeing. At the last minute the day before we left the city, we booked what ended up being a private tour with Cecilia. Our experience with her has led to seeking street art in every large city we visit.

Cecilia calls street art “the visual language of protest and resistance.” Unlike the abundance of “Hello Kitty” street art on the walls of our city, Buenos Aires (and many other cities we’ve visited) display art with a punch, like this image depicting Trump as the menacing Joker from Batman sshhing the Statue of Liberty, urging her complicity in ignoring the rule of law.

8. Our Lone Ranger in Big Bend National Park, for keeping us safe in “The Wall” territory

Shame on us.

We didn’t write down the name of the park ranger at the Persimmon Gap visitor centre in Big Bend National Park in Texas who spent an hour with us. In our blog about him, we called him “Ranger Persimmon.”

He did so much for us. Selected and booked campsites based on the hikes we wanted to do. Six campsites for $12! (Now you have to reserve them up to six months in advance.) Warned us not to camp at two sites across the river from the Mexican border because people who had done so had been robbed. Told us the hotel I wanted to stay at in Terlingua was long closed. Suggested two good hikes that were not on our list. Advised us to use the bear boxes at the campsites for our food and to throw stones at them if they surprised us there or on the trail. Told us not to drive the Dune Road if we valued our tires. Warned us that every few days the Border Patrol Agents fly over to confirm campers’ license plates from the air. Answered our many questions like it was the first time they’d been asked. All with a professional and congenial attitude—not the lone exception in America, as we discovered during our 79-day stay in the southwestern US.

9. Cristina Bravo, for introducing us to Talayotic history in Menorca

Bravo Cristina!

It was Magellan who discovered NURARQ, the company Cristina Bravo and her colleague Irene Riudavets started in 2016. Freelance archeologists, Cristina and Irene conduct research, guide tours and teach classes on Menorca’s Talayotic history.

Talayotic—who’s even heard of this civilization from 2300 BC?

Cristina, who is from Alicante and studied archeology in Spain, is not sure it was ever mentioned in her classes—and she’s young. While on her first job in Aberdeen, she signed up for an archeological study in Menorca and loved it so much she never left.

The morning we spent with Cristina at Torre d’en Galmés was a highlight of our trip. Not only did we learn so much about this five-hectare settlement, Cristina recommended which of the other 1,600 prehistoric sites on the island to visit, offered to share her research papers, and agreed to let Magellan record our time with her. Now all we have to do is excavate our material and distill that morning into a blogpost you are guaranteed to enjoy. Here’s her voice from the transcript of Magellan’s recording explaining why the Talayotics came to Menorca:

Maybe conflicts, maybe lack of resources. We still don’t know it because we still don’t know where they came from. The first ones, maybe from Southern France, because of similarities with the first constructions found on Menorca and those in a region of the Languedoc area in the Gulf of Lyon. But it’s something that we are still exploring, okay?

Still exploring…that’s us, too.

Navigation

Arabian Sand Tours

Backcountry Journeys

Big Bend National Park

David Nighteagle, his own blogsite.

Foy, George Michelsen. Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence. New York: Scribner, 2010. George features David Nighteagle in his book.

Graffitimundo may or may not still exist, but here is their Instagram site.

We have three posts on Maxine MacLeod, Spice’s mom: Possessions, Mom: October 28, 1928, to August 21, 2021, and Mom, Echo and Covid: Mother’s Day, 2020.

NURARQ, the company Cristina and Irene founded on Menorca.

Swishwer, Kara. Burn Book A Tech Love Story. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2024. Thanks Kara for the phrase “antisocial media” and for writing a riveting and witty book about antisocial media platforms like Facebook forged into Meta, Twitter reduced to X, Tumblr falling over…

Walk, Listen, Create has info about Cecilia Quiles and links to video interviews with her about street art in Buenos Aires.

Wind Horse Tours