our bucket list

What we like to do and what we’d like to do define us much better than any cut-and-dried bio ever could. We drafted this list while huddling in our sleeping bags on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, seeking refuge from a storm that raged outside, and have added to it periodically since. Even as we cross some items off the list, we hope to add many others. If you have a bucket list or have done some amazing things you think would fit on this one, please share! We’re always looking for new ways to expand our horizons.

1. Travel for a year continuously
2. Backpack (S backpacked through South America for 8 months with her sister; D did a similar 5-month trip)
3. Visit each of the seven continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica)
4. Live abroad
5. Hike the Appalachian Trail (we have hiked small sections of it together, including climbing Mt. Katadhin, which marks the northern endpoint, as one of our first dates)
6. Hike Israel’s National Trail
7. Run a marathon (this is for S only; D prefers team sports to running)
8. Advanced open-water SCUBA certification (also S; the one time D went scuba diving he couldn’t equalize the pressure and had a bad nose bleed/headache for several days afterwards)
9. Go skydiving
10. Bungee jump (D’s gone twice – once in Denmark and once in Costa Rica; S has no desire to ever go)
11. Go paragliding
12. Take a hot-air balloon ride
13. Climb a mountain (Once we crossed this one off the list, a whole slew of other things naturally followed)
14. Stand atop one of the 7 Summits (we harbor no illusions about doing all seven, but would really like to climb Aconcagua and D also wants to do Denali, in addition to Kili)
15. Climb above 20,000 feet (the 6,088m Huyna Potosi D climbed in Bolivia is 27ft short of this mark)
16. Take a mountaineering course and do an ice climb sans guide
17. Go B.A.S.E. jumping
18. See the snows of Kilimanjaro
19. Hike in the Himalayas (D finally scratched this itch in 2019 and again in 2021, but S has never been). Also: Hike the Annapurna Circuit (2022 add).
20. Trek in the Andes (the Huayhuash trek is Peru is consistently ranked as one of the most beautiful high-altitude treks in the world)
21. Learn to surf (D took one lesson in Brazil, but something got lost in translation because he couldn’t figure out when he was supposed to try to get up on the board). [2023 edit: S has now taken multiple lessons in Costa Rica, but D has not picked up a board in decades, unless our son’s boogie board counts.]
22. Go sand-boarding in the desert
23. Camp in a desert (S spent several nights in Egypt’s Black and White deserts; the closest D has come was spending a night in a mock bedouin camp in Israel)
24. Attain fluency in more languages than we already speak (UPDATE 2016: We are nearing the end of our immersive French studies at FSI. French will be S’s 4th language, and D’s 6th. UPDATE 2020: S learned Tagalog prior to her assignment to the Philippines, which would technically be the 5th language she has attempted, though she has now forgotten almost all of the Russian she had previously learned. She retains some French and Spanish though. D has similarly forgotten nearly all of his nascent Romanian and most of his Swahili, retaining Russian, Spanish, and some French)
25. Road-trip across the United States (Three separate trips through 2016, through California and the Southwest, and others thereafter)
26. Learn to sail or go on a long-distance sailing trip
27. Learn to drive stick
28. Learn to drive a motorcycle
29. Raft a world-class river (the Quijos River in Ecuador was the site of the 2005 World Rafting Championship)
30. Float in the Dead Sea
31. Swim with sea lions in the Galapagos
32. Swim with dolphins in open water. Also: see whale sharks (2020 add).
33. Go whale-watching
34. Raft the Nile
35. Learn to whitewater kayak
36. Go on a multi-day canoe trip (does canoeing multiple days on a trip to an archipelago count?)
37. Rock climb outdoors (for D; S has this crossed off her list)
38. Go canyoning/rappel down a waterfall
39. See Big 5 on African safari
40. Do a long-distance bike trip (This is S’s impetus; D very rarely gets on a bike.)
41. Explore ancient ruins (We’ve both been to Machu Picchu; S has also been to the Pyramids in Egypt, which remain on D’s list.)
42. Read all the books on the BBC 100 Greatest Book list
43. Read Don Quixote in Spanish (2020 Update: this is no longer on S’s list; D read it twice – once in a college course and again during his year of study abroad in Madrid) and the Russian classics in Russian (D’s only read a handful and is rightly ashamed that he can’t cross this off)
44. Play in a scrabble tournament (only D, and only maybe)
45. Hike Grand Canyon rim-to-rim and go rafting inside it (UPDATED 2016: We’ve gone hiking inside the Grand Canyon and subsequently changed the goalposts on this one)
46. Sail down the Amazon River (S sailed down the Mekong, and D down the Parana)
47. Hike in the world’s deepest canyon (D spent a week in the Cotahuasi canyon in Peru; S visited the nearby Colca canyon, which is about a 100 meters shallower)
48. Hike an active volcano. See lava flow
49. Go volcano boarding (down Cerro Negro in Nicaragua)
50. Visit the world’s largest crater (Ngorongoro in Tanzania; D’s also been to Sierra Negra in the Galapagos, which is the largest active crater)
51. See aurora borealis
52. Go dog-sledding
53. Go to the camel-jumping festival in Yemen
54. Ride in a camel derby
55. Camp in the African Wilderness
56. Visit a salt flat (We’ve both been to Uyuni in Bolivia, on separate trips)
57. See a playoff game 
    
58. Go to the Olympics
59. See a World Cup match live (We’ve seen some World Cup qualifiers, but that doesn’t really count)
60. Lists of the world’s best museums vary; we want to visit: Louvre (Paris), Hermitage (St. Petersburg),Prado (Madrid), The Met (NYC), Uffizi Gallery (Florence), National Gallery (DC), Tate Modern (London)
61. Attend a Carnaval celebration (S has been to the one in Rio; D went to the one in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, which at half a million people is the third-largest in the world)
62. Go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans
63. Go to a mutli-day music festival
64. Ride the Trans-Siberian railway
65. No desire to go running with the bulls, however the Tomatina (in Valencia) and the Batalla de Vino (La Rioja) are definitely on our list (D has been to Las Fallas and would love to go again)
66. Learn to can and can regularly (On S’s list; D tries to set foot in the kitchen as little as possible)
67. Take a hand-to-hand circus class (also S; D had never even heard of this before)
68. Sleep in a castle (for S; D checked this off in Spain, where there is a whole luxury hotel chain that includes castles, monasteries, and the palaces where the Spanish kings stayed when they traveled around their realm)
69. See an opera in Italy (for D; S checked this box with her grandma when she turned 16)
70. Drink a Guinness in Dublin and tour the Guinness brewery
71. Write a book
72. Walk on the Great Wall of China
73. Sail in the Mediterranean
74. See the Cannes Film Festival
75. Go to Oktoberfest in Munich
76. Go skiing in the Alps and/or the Dolomites
77. Walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain/France
78. Hike the Pacific Crest Trail and the John Muir Trail
79. Climb Mt. Whitney and Mt. Rainier
80. Go non-car camping in the wilderness
81. See the Love Parade in Berlin
82. Climb Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh
83. Visit the Son Doong cave in Vietnam (still on the list, but we visited plenty of other caves in Vietnam in 2019)
84. Explore an ice cave
85. Visit Maldives before they disappear and see phytoplankton (haven’t made it to the Maldives yet, but we did see bioluminescence in Costa Rica, and it was every bit as amazing as we had imagined).
86. Visit all 59 62 U.S. national parks (2023 Edit: The number of national parks increased by three since we first wrote this, but we have been making progress through this list. D is up to 25 and S is up 24, if we count White Sands, the most recent of the parks to be upgraded to National Park status, which we sort of visited during the government shutdown a few years ago.)
87. Visit all 50 U.S. states (Through 2022, there are 30 states we have both visited, another 3 where only S has been, and 3 that only D has visited)
88. Go canyoning down a slot canyon (2023 Edit: We’ve done plenty of canyoning, including in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, but have yet to do in a slot canyon)
89. See the sunrise at Angel’s Landing and/or Bryce Point (added this one after visiting Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, where we climbed Angel’s Landing — just not at sunrise).
90. Hike the Wave
91. Ascend Half Dome in Yosemite (added this after visiting Yosemite but missing out on the Half Dome lottery)
92. Take photography classes. Do a traveling photo tour
93. Travel through all of the countries comprising the former USSR (Work has helped in this respect, especially for D, who’s now been to Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Belarus, and Georgia, in addition to Russia, obviously). 
94. Learn to solve the NYT crossword puzzles (D has this checked off; S almost got good enough to solve Mondays, but decided puzzling is not for her)
95. Play Ultimate Frisbee on every continent (minus Antarctica) (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America)
96. Shoot pool in Poole (for D)
97. Drink a Bombay martini in Bombay (D’s gotten close during several work trips to India, during which he has visited New Delhi, Bangalore, Karnataka, Hyderabad, and Dharamsala…still haven’t set foot in Mumbai though).
98. Festival hop in Europe (D got a small taste at isolated festivals a few years ago)
99. Read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels. If completed, the Man Booker winners too.
100. Do a Big Year (clearly this is for D only, as despite his dogged attempts S is yet to become a birder).
101. Visiting every country might be a tad too ambitious, especially since there are a handful we’d rather not go, but at least 100 seems like a worthwhile target (D has been to 65, S to 61 as of the end of 2022).