That’s right, the Wandering Walkers are officially on US soil. It is bittersweet that these past 10 months of travel have finally come to a close, with a whirlwind of emotions filling our minds.

As I was going through the ritual this morning of cramming for the final time all of our stuff into our bags , something we’ve done an average of every 3 mornings for the past 300 days, a sense of calm came over me – no more packing and unpacking! Schlepping all our bags to the train station to take the Picadilly Line to Heathrow airport was also one of those “thank goodness we don’t have to do this anymore” moments. Probably for Jason the most enthralling thing about this coming to a close is having access to reliable and fast internet.  Not to mention we won't be racking up any more on the tab of around $2,500 we spent on internet connections this year!

For as many burdens that will be lifted from our shoulders by being settled in the states, there are just as many things that we will miss about the open road. The sense of the unknown and adventure we’ve experienced has been beyond exhilarating this year. The spontaneity of each day, the lack of responsibilities to anyone but ourselves, the challenges to push ourselves to do things we would never have done back home, the vast array of food varieties we’ve sampled, the stepping in and out of different cultures on a regular basis – these are just some of the things I will miss to no end.

Although our around the world portion of our trip is at a close, we won’t exactly truly be settling down in SF until January ’08. We will be spending the rest of the year in Scottsdale, AZ so we can hang out with Jason’s family and my grandparents who all live there. We'll make our annual trip to Maui for a couple weeks with my family, then Jason will go directly to Vegas for a trade show for a week, and finally we'll be back and settled on January 21st!

Now you may be asking yourself, “But what about the Wandering Walkers website – what will happen to that?!?!?” Well people, no need to fret as we will continue to update our site with probably a lot less exciting stories of our lives back home. Mainly we’ll start a section documenting and critiquing the restaurants we’ll be eating at, plus some of the adventures we do manage to have back home.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge and thank so many of our friends and family who diligently followed our travels around the world. It really has been so touching to us that people have put time and energy into keeping up with us. I guess there really won’t be anything to talk about once we’re home, since you know it all!