Ennen Family Trip Zimbabwe – Victoria Falls 21Dec17 – NNs On the Wind

December 21, 2017January 8, 2019 Kathleen Ennen

VICTORIA FALLS

The Ennen family trip with Candy and Shea Ennen, son Henry, daughter Charlotte, Peace Corps Volunteer, and Kathleen and Thom Ennen in December 2017.

Today we start the journey back to Johannesburg, SA where we’ll spend the night. Tomorrow Candy, Shea, and Henry return to Boston. Charlotte will be heading back to her Peace Corps post location after spending some time with friends. Kathleen and Thom will fly to Namibia for a week, to spend some time in one place, and enjoy Christmas in Africa!!

On the way to the airport in Zimbabwe our driver offered to stop for a quick visit to Victoria Falls. The Zimbabwe side of the falls tends to have much more river flow than the Zambia side. As we could see the Zambia side towards the end of our walk, we could see very little, if any, river flow from that side. We could see the river below, and the big promontory of rock directly across from us that was Zambia.

It was a good day to visit the falls. The flow generated lots of noise and mist. We were told when the river flow is greater, the mist can be so pervasive that the falls are no longer visible.

We have traveled over the years and retired in 2017, when we started on a nine month long adventure departing in December 2017. In the past we’ve traveled to Sri Lanka, Africa (several times), Turkey, and made a number of trips to Europe, and St Lucia. Our 2015 trip to Turkey, took nearly 3 weeks to explore Istanbul, Cappadocia and the areas in proximity to Izmir.

This is a chronicle of our travels, past and present. We love to travel by trains, planes, ships, and cars – and love sailing whenever and wherever we can.

We retired from the US General Services Administration, the Federal Government’s landlord! Thom worked at planning and large scale program management of numerous projects and Kathleen, a registered professional civil engineer, was a project manager for many infrastructure and building renovation projects, including both design and construction aspects, in New England, Florida and the metro DC area. We lived in Washington DC for 12 years and upon retirement sold the house, putting a few things in a 5’x5’ storage unit and started traveling.

On return to the US in September 2018, after traveling to 21 countries, we bought a Class C RV – 2019 Thor Freedom Elite 24FE. We enjoyed our week long camping trip in New Zealand in a small converted van with few amenities, so this seemed liked a good way to tour the US. We hope to visit family along the way and as many US National Parks as possible.

UPDATE – the Covid pandemic made travel more difficult for us. We were abroad for several months when the pandemic started and returned to the US in July 2020. After several months in the RV to visit Utah and Albuquerque NM, we moved east, bought a house on the Northern Neck of Virginia, and sold the RV. For 2021 and 2022 we tended to our new house and cottage, gardens and various boats including a 18’ 1977 Marshall Sanderling catboat and a 25’ Steiger Craft Chesapeake fishing boat, and kayaks and a canoe. Hopefully travel will start again one day!!

May 2022