Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Earl and I spent last evening organizing photographs of the various trips and events we’ve enjoyed so far this year. We put Costa Rica in one album and Alaska in another. As I slipped the pictures into little their plastic sleeves, I was reminded of how we do things.

We are not the type to do a lot of preliminary research before going someplace. Instead, we pick our destinations because they held some long time attraction to one or both of us, and we finally have the time and resources to find out what the allure really is. After we return from a trip, however, we’re apt to immerse ourselves in learning about those things we saw and, occasionally, those things we wish we had seen, had we done homework at the front end. We pour over our photos.

It’s a kind of backward way of traveling, and it usually means we end up going to the same place twice. For instance, we’ve been to Costa Rica two times, to Cooperstown in upstate New York twice, and to the Carribbean. We’re already talking about a return visit to Alaska.

There are also many other exotic places, both far and near, that beckon. We’re going through the Panama Canal in January; we want to see Tahiti and the Mediterranean, Greece and Ireland. Given our penchant for return visits, that’s several years’ worth of travel plans.

I doubt we’ll change our method of traveling – it’s too much of a new trick, old dog sort of thing – just as I doubt we’ll run out of places that call to us.

But the photos . . . ah, the photos. Putting aside any discussion of how one should approach the next trip, I relive the last one and smile.