January 8, 2011 - Ewa Beach, Hawaii

Today is the first day of my new blog. Finally. I've been wanting to write one for over a year. 

You can expect to hear about travel, birds, volksmarching, hiking, movies, books, Bob (hubby) and life in general. 

We live on the island of Oahu in Hawaii where this morning started out about 77 degrees. 

The Menehune Marchers, our local volksmarching group, hosted a walk along the loch in Ewa Beach. We opted for the 10K walk which went through a couple of neighborhoods, through two parks and along the shoreline of West Loch. Birds we saw included: common mynas, saffron finches, red-crested cardinals, zebra doves, cattle egrets, black-necked stilts, black-bellied plovers and least sandpipers...quite an interesting variety. 

I filled up my 125-event volksporting book today and will mail it off to Texas for processing. Soon my pin, award and patch will come back in the mail. 

For those of you not familiar with volksmarching, it started years ago in Germany and means, literally, the walk of the people. Volksmarching is characterized as non-competitive walking, usually 5K or 10K, that is done as a sponsored/hosted event or a year-round event. I love walking with this group because I get to: exercise, see new destinations when traveling that I would normally miss, birdwatch, check out gardens, see gorgeous scenery, visit small towns and enjoy the outdoors. Check out www.ava.org. You can look up walks in your area or in an area you travel to.

Part of my plan in starting the Travel Bug-Susan blog is to hone my writing skills for "retirement" when we plan to travel the U.S. and Canada in a fifth wheel and work along the way.

All for today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend wherever you may be.

Susan