The thing to emphasize is that we're on a journey, and it's not for the destination. It's where we are, what we're experiencing, rather than trying to click off this place and that place. It isn't getting there, it's the process of being there.

When you get back to the United States, you're absolutely thrilled to recognize what we have here that we absolutely take for granted, all the way from street lights and street cleaners to being able to pick up a telephone that actually works.

We always lived on John's salary, and whatever I earned was put aside for remodeling or for traveling. That's how we can afford to do this. We've been very conservative, lived very frugally. We were almost self-contained, raising our own fruits and vegetables and rabbits. About the only thing we bought was milk.

We figure when we get old we can get those out and go through them.

Our goal in life has been to see the world. As a kid you said you wanted to dig to China. Well, I wanted to see what China looked like, so that was one of the first places we went. We raised our children, got them through college, then we climbed the Great Wall, did the whole thing. And we gutted the house.

You know where they put castles. They don't put them down in the valleys. You have to be able to climb to the top of the hills.