For most of 2015, we explored North America.  Our year began as the old one ended with some quiet and relaxing time at Perdido Key on the Florida panhandle.  Winter is our favorite time to visit the beach with no one around but a few snowbirds.  Walking on the empty shore without sweating is our idea of perfect beach time.  We also took the opportunity to visit nearby family.

Spring found us chasing the blues from New Orleans north along the Mississippi River.  Along the way, we enjoyed many styles and versions of blues music and became hardcore fans of this uniquely American genre.  By summer we were eager to escape Atlanta's heat and flew to Maine for ten days of enticing scenery and cool temperatures.

Our longest road trip of the year spanned the month of August into September as we drove north to Canada and across the vast prairie provinces to British Columbia.  On the return we revisited Yellowstone and other sites in the Great Plains.

After learning about a new Broadway production featuring two of America's greatest theater legends, we flew north and spent the first eight days of November in New York.  The iconic Cicely Tyson (age 90) and the venerable James Earl Jones (84) delivered brilliant performances, as expected.  We saw several other excellent plays as well as a couple of real duds.  

On December 1, we set off for a six-week sojourn to Ireland and Scotland, planning to spend three weeks in each country.  Unfortunately our trip was cut short by extreme weather and we returned home after a month.