Bucket List: Last Post (Synopsis)

Here we are in April, five months since we crossed our wake. We decided to keep Panacea at the Orange Beach Marina in Alabama. We had accepted an offer in October to sale the boat to a couple in California with the condition we complete our journey, close by the end of January, and end up in Orange Beach. This was great for us because the renters in our house were leaving the middle of January and that would be perfect with the boat sold and moving back into our house. We rented a car for a month to get around the area and drive back to California for the Christmas holidays to see family and friends. We drove so we could bring Chloe back with us and not have to put her in the baggage compartment on a plane or in a kennel for a month. We had a wonderful time back at our home town but not enough time to see everyone. It was great watching our Grandchildren open their gifts under the tree on Christmas morning. For New Year's we drove down to Southern California to celebrated my Dads 90th birthday. He said he wanted to jump out of an airplane for his 90th as George H did on his, but thankfully decided not to at the last minute. We also left Chloe with my sister and her farm of animals including fours dogs that are Chloe's buddies, while Jan and I drove back to the boat to pack up everything. We decided to take the route that was further North so we could stop in Albuquerque to see my Cousin and Aunt and in Memphis to see one of our first boating friends we met on the loop, Mike and Lois from "Inch'in Along". We arrived back in Orange Beach around the 10th of January. We stayed on the boat for a month while we continued packing up things and move back home. The new buyers had the engine surveyed, which went well and the next step was for everyone to be here for the boat survey in about a 10 days. Couple days after the engine survey, as we were packing, the phone rings and it's our broker telling us the buyer had a heart attack, which required a stint, and no longer would be purchasing the boat. We thought things were going to perfect without something happening. Murphy's Law! We decided to head on home anyway and leave the boat in Orange Beach and hope it would sell soon. It was really hard to walk away from her after the adventure she took us on and keeping us safe. On the way back home we stopped in the Phoenix area and visited old friends from our pre children days, Chris and Linda. We didn't have enough time to get caught up after some forty years. Hope to see them again soon.

We've been back home now since February but before we moved back in we had the house painted inside and new carpet, travertine and hardwood floors installed. It's been great back home seeing all our friends and family on a regular basis but miss not having Panacea close by. To give you all an idea of our 18 months on Panacea here are a few statistics we tracked along the way. We traveled a distance of 7,319.1 miles from the time we left Tower Park Marina in Lodi. We transited a total of 152 locks, went under or had opened 600 bridges, visited 20 states and two Canadian Provinces.

We lived the dream of a lifetime and met so many friends as we completed our top bucket list journey.