Looking back on the 2015 Great Loop cruise, I admit I wasn’t looking forward to entering the Great Lakes. Surprise, right? Ms. Anxiety arranged her chocolate, swallowed her fears, and away we went on a day that was much better than the one before. We’d gone through several locks to get to the end of … Read more

We didn’t see any mules when we left Waterford and traveled through the Erie Canal system in Upstate New York in 2015. But we saw several places where the original canal is preserved and where mules did pull boats. Yet the feeling we were cruising through history prevailed all the way to the Oswego Canal … Read more

When we left New York in our 2015 Great Loop adventure, we entered the rivers of America, and I sighed in relief thinking all would be calm from here on out. Wrong, but let’s go on. The Hudson River is is over 300 miles long and at its widest point is over three miles wide. … Read more

As I look back on the 2015 cruise and my overreaction to cruising in the ocean,  I remember feeling guilty over wanting to leave and fly home, rather than continue out in the Atlantic. To my surprise, that eleven-hour cruise on a glassy Atlantic Ocean was glorious. We sailed along, just offshore, enjoying the scenery … Read more

A profound fact about the eight-month cruise in 2015 was this: Mark and I rarely had words, you know, the kind of words you wish you hadn’t said. As I’ve gotten older, patience seems to be more difficult to maintain. To my children’s mock horror, I’ve been known to use the F word on occasion, … Read more