Tornadoes...and Travel!

Darling Husband and I finished up a morning's worth of Worship Team at church (two services, plus extra for Communion)...and promptly crashed. Five hours later, we woke up to find that Aurora, not 30 min. drive away, had been pelted with ball-sized hail, and a line of tornadoes had gone visiting, as well. Go here for more.

Gee. No wonder the storm clouds were looking dark in that direction.

* * * * * *
After drooling and debating over a Panama Canal cruise, Husband and yours truly have decided to put that money into a longer stay in Panama...Husband thinks this may be the perfect place to buy a vacation/retirement home. We talked about retiring (or at least staying part of the year) in Mexico, so this isn't the huge jump it could have been -- after all, we're told that Internet service is better in Panama, and many amenities are American-founded, anyways.

Is it a pipe dream? Could we really live in Panama for part of the year?

There's only one way to find out...go there for at least 2, 3, 4 weeks, and scout around. It won't tell us everything, of course, but at least we'll find out if this dream is doable. Husband found a GREAT price on round-trip plane tickets...but of course, they're for the week in October I've got a gig -- judging and appraising at the Mancusos' Pacific International show in San Jose, CA.

We'll keep trying.

Along the way, I found an excellent post on traveling full-time for less than $14,000 a year. (There. Did I get your attention??)

Its author has her own blog, The Professional Hobo. Some great ideas on working your way through the country you're visiting. But most importantly, she talks about fully experiencing the country you're in. Zipping through it and grabbing a few cheesy souvenirs is not what real life's cracked up to be.

I need to do some thinking about this. We get soooo restless this time of year -- is this God's way of pushing us out the door, and on the trail somewhere?

I wonder.