March’s Muse

The Doorway Into What’s Next

Pyrenees Clouds

Inspiration Begins to Morph into Slow Planning

I have not started booking anything yet. I know that we have to get a few things in our lives done first. We have to allow the necessary things in our lives to come together. Paul will find a job, our home in Cortez will sell, and we will figure out our move back to northwestern Colorado. It is a lot, but I have handled a lot before and come out on top. Not because I am anything special, but because I am very tenacious. This time, we will find a much better situation and figure out how to make our dreams of Europe come true.

In the meantime, while describing several obstacles, we are also going to plan this trip. I am not yet booking anything, but I am creating a space for this plan to land. I am also feeling like I need a way to start to capture this, and plan to use my planning pages and share them with you here, as this is vacation planning IRL.

Andorra Mountain Village

Permission to Begin Again

The plan is allowed to be a draft.
The trip is allowed to evolve.
The beginning is happening now.

This is what the beginning looks like. Not a leap. A turn toward.

“Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.”
Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking.

— Antonio Machado

The end of our dream to buy a small home in Cortez, build steady jobs, work toward retirement, and eventually purchase a cottage in Portugal still stings. In the twenty months since we left Eagle County for the Four Corners, we could never seem to both be employed at the same time. Just when one of us gained ground, the other slipped. After nearly 700 applications and nineteen months of searching, I finally secured a job. A week later, Paul was laid off. For a brief moment before that, it felt like everything was aligning. The renovated house was finished. The Portugal cottage was waiting in bureaucratic limbo while we tried to open a bank account. 

It seemed like we might finally stabilize. Instead, it felt like the scene in Jurassic Park when the car crashes through the fence and lands high in a tree with one child trapped inside. Sam Neill climbs down to rescue the other child just as the car begins to tear loose and slide down the trunk toward them. He scrambles down the tree, thinking they are clear, only to land back in the same car as it drops. That was early 2026 for us. Every time we thought we had escaped the fall, something gave way. We survived it. The plan did not.

It took a few weeks to process what had happened. We replayed every decision until one realization surfaced. People do not fail. Plans fail. So what next? One thing was certain. Travel still mattered to us. And then a quieter question surfaced. Why Portugal? Why not Italy, France, or Spain?

The First Sign of a New Plan is Not a Reservation

Somewhere in those conversations, Paul mentioned the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta. The triple crown of European cycling has always been on his bucket list, something we imagined doing after we were settled. But what if it did not have to wait? What if we let the races lead the way instead of a property purchase?

At the same time, we admitted something else. The Four Corners was not working for us professionally. Jobs were scarce. So we began looking toward Montrose, Delta, and Grand Junction instead. Paul started interviewing. We put the house on the market. This time, we decided we would move only after he secured work. My job is remote, which gives us flexibility. The rest will follow. A plan is forming again. Different. But ours. This made me realize something else, and it is directly related to allowing yourself to really dream first to gain the inspiration you need to start thinking about your next trip. The first sign of a new plan is not a reservation. It is attention.

Europe through Train Window

Two Dreams, One Arc

Something new began to coalesce. Paul’s lifelong dream of seeing at least one race in the triple crown of European cycling came sharply into view. My own lifelong dream of living in Europe is still alive. I remain completely smitten with the idea of building a life in Italy, France, Spain, or Portugal. Somehow, these two longings feel connected.

After much discussion, La Vuelta became our pivot point. What if we started in Barcelona, took the train into the south of France, and found a way to explore that region while catching a few stages of the race? La Vuelta became both an anchor and a beginning. It felt like a quiet nod to the Spanish saying, No hay mal que por bien no venga. There is no bad from which good does not come. A beautiful way of acknowledging that while our original plan unraveled, the life we imagine may still be possible.

Pyrenees Mountain Pass

France to Spain Planning In Real Life

I keep opening the map.

Not to book. Not to calculate. Just to trace.

Barcelona sits there, bright and coastal. From there, a train north to Perpignan. The line cuts through Catalonia and rises toward the Pyrenees, stone and pasture and sky pressing in close. I imagine watching the landscape shift through the train window. Olive trees giving way to mountain air. The Mediterranean flashes in and out of view.

The Pyrenees are not just scenery. They are the seam between two countries. Between Spain and France. Between one attempt at a life and another that is beginning to form.

Maybe we detour through Andorra, perched improbably in the mountains. Maybe we drop back down toward a small coastal town where the shutters are faded and the laundry moves in the salt air. Maybe we sit in a café in Perpignan and wait for the peloton to come through, the blur of color and motion passing in seconds after hours of anticipation.

I am not publishing an itinerary. I am letting the line become lived before it becomes fixed.

This is what inspiration looks like in real life. It is a train route sketched in pencil. It is a mountain range that feels like a metaphor before it feels like elevation gain. It is the slow realization that a race schedule can double as a compass.

Before deposits. Before confirmation numbers.

Just a map.
Just a line.
Just the beginning of something that feels like ours.

What Is This Planning Really For?

The past two years have been deeply challenging. They did not unfold the way we imagined. But here we are. Still standing. Still willing to move forward.

People do not fail. Plans fail. Which means plans can be revised. Redirected. Reimagined.

Maybe we do not have to solve everything at once. Maybe this trip to Barcelona and Southern France is not about retirement at all. Maybe it is reconnaissance. A way of testing a feeling. A way of asking better questions about where we belong. A way for Paul to honor his promise to himself to see the triple crown of European cycling. A way for me to explore the idea of Europe without attaching it to a mortgage application.

I am realizing something else. I do not need certainty to move forward. I need direction that feels true.

Barcelona Street at Dusk