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Turning 60 still feels a long way off… until we realize it’s really not. Somewhere between endless travel plans, road trip itineraries, and the occasional breakdown, time has been quietly ticking on. So instead of pretending it isn’t happening, we’ve decided to lean right into it. Enter our ’60 Before 60′ travel list: sixty experiences, dream travel destinations, and moments we want to squeeze in before that next big birthday.
This isn’t a bucket list in the morbid sense. It’s more of a travel inspiration compass for the years ahead, a way to keep chasing the things that make us feel alive, curious, and a little bit out of our comfort zone. Some of our travel goals are simple, some are wildly ambitious, and a few might already be ticked off (we’re counting those). But every one of them feels like an us thing to do.
We don’t have a strict timeline or grand plan. Just a promise to keep exploring with open maps, open minds, and probably a few too many snacks in the glove box. Here’s what made the list, and why we think the next half-decade might be our best one yet.
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Deadline: December 2030
Current Count: 16/60
- Travel the Silk Road (or at least bits of it)
- Fly in a balloon over Cappadocia (almost happened when we were there in 2022 but weather prevented us)
- Visit New York and be a total tourist
- Drive or ride the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Ushuaia
- Drink a gin and tonic at Raffles Hotel in Singapore
- Ride a motorbike through Vietnam
- See the Northern Lights
- Go island hopping through Greece
- Visit the four corners of Europe (almost there: Tarifa in Spain, Cabo da Roca in Portugal, and the Bosphorus in Turkey are ticked off, Nordkapp in Norway is next)
- Camp out in a rooftop tent in the Okavango Delta in Botswana
- Walk the boardwalks through Plitvice Lakes in Croatia (done!)
- Go whitewater rafting in the Rockies (we had an amazing day on the Kern River in California in 2006)
- Visit Petra in Jordan
- Hike in the Italian Dolomites (we managed ten days there in 2023)
- Drive to Morocco’s Sahara Desert (we hit Erg Chebbi and Erg Chigaga in 2023 and 2025)
- Watch the big wave surfers in Nazaré, Portugal (we got lucky for a record-breaking 86-footer in October 2020)
- Visit Antarctica
- Drive the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland (we’ve done around 1,000 miles of this 1,600-mile route!)
- Land on the world’s only beach runway in Barra, an island in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides (did this early in our travel life back in 2008)
- Hike to the edge of Mount Etna’s volcanic rim (got there in 2019, yay!)
- Drive a campervan across New Zealand
- Ride the Rocky Mountaineer across Canada
- Drive the whole of Highway 1 in California (almost made it back in 2008, but a bit was closed by fire)
- See the cherry blossom in Japan
- Ride the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok
- Walk the Great Wall of China
- Climb Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence, Italy (made it to Florence but couldn’t get tickets for the dome)
- Ride the Gornegrat cogwheel train to the Matterhorn in Switzerland
- Eat cassoulet within the walls of Carcassonne citadel (did this in 2016)
- Visit Iceland… just that!
- Visit the Taj Mahal (on an uncrowded day!)
- See the sunrise at Angkor Wat
- Seeing whales in the wild (we had an amazing trip from Monterey in 2008, when we saw sperm whales)
- Drive the Carretera Austral in Chile
- Visit a colony of King penguins (we traveled to Volunteer Point in the Falkland Islands in 2003)
- Hike to the top of Yosemite Falls (yep, did this in 2008)
- Fly over Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe
- Drive the Great Ocean Road in Australia
- Eat authentic pizza in Naples
- Drive the Pamir Highway from Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan
- Visit the Longji rice terraces in Guangxi, China
- Swim in the Dead Sea in Jordan
- Kayak the Norwegian Fjords (we kayaked and paddleboarded in Aurlandsfjord in 2018)
- Sail the Whitsunday Islands in Australia
- Visit a tea plantation in Sri Lanka (achieved this in 2015 on a trip with our daughter)
- Go dog sledding in the Arctic Circle
- Spend a winter in Bali as digital nomads
- Take the overnight Dogu Express train from Ankara to Kars in Turkey
- Visit every country in Europe (we’ve done 34 and these remain: Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, San Marino, Malta, and Liechtenstein)
- Ride across the Salar de Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia
- Road trip the Scottish North Coast 500 (done all the route at various times!)
- Visit the mud volcanoes in Azerbaijan (yep, got covered in 2022)
- Visit Greenland and hike, kayak, and camp among the icebergs
- Road trip through the wadis and deserts of Oman
- Stay in an overwater bungalow in French Polynesia, possibly unlikely, but we can dream!
- Drive or ride the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay
- Snorkel with manta rays in Nusa Penida, Indonesia
- Hike in the National Parks of Utah
- Explore the Skocjan Caves in Slovenia
- Take a trip to Yellowstone National Park
We’ve never been ones to sit still for long, and this feels like a promise to keep going — to keep exploring, learning, laughing, and occasionally getting lost.
So here’s to the next chapter: to the roads still to be driven, the cups of coffee yet to be sipped in tiny European cafés, and the endless possibility of the years ahead. Sixty adventures before sixty, and maybe a few bonus ones after that.
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