"100 Places" Wall

 "100 Places" Wall

If you've been to our house, you've seen this in our entryway. It's another of the many 'make yourself travel' projects that cover our walls. I've already posted about the other two:

Europe Travel Wall Map

USA Magnet Map

The idea behind these is that it's really easy to find excuses not to do things, like travel. If you walk by a wall every day and see "Stonehenge", for example, you'll start saying to yourself - "We should go to Stonehenge!" - and then eventually you'll go. (Works for me anyway.)

This one started years ago in our previous home. I had just finished reading one of those "100 Places To See Before You Die" books, and Branelle and I happened to be heading to IKEA. I came across these 5x7 frames and the thought hit me to do something like this so naturally I bought 100 of them (101 actually - but who's counting). 

Now, if you happen to be Rainman-esque in your visual accounting skills, you will notice that there are actually 112 frames up there currently. The list is Dynamic. I add places and remove places from time to time, and I seem to add more than I remove.

 The initial iteration occurred in the office of our old house, and this is the only picture I have of it. It's grown since then (as has Gracie.....and myself if I'm being honest).

The premise is pretty simple. We made our list, printed out a map of each place on the list, and when we visit that place together we replace the map with our picture. Together is the key part to all of our travel walls. Nel and I had both been to the Grand Canyon before, for example, but until we made it there together a couple years ago it stayed a map.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit how time consuming this project was (and is). I had to remove hanging tabs from each frame and cut a groove into each with a Dremel tool. I also create the location labels with ink stamps - and each letter is an individual stamp! That part takes forever. And the locations are hung alphabetically, so every time I want to add or remove a location I basically have to take them all down and rehang them. It does give me a chance to dust them though.

The idea was originally for it to be a "selfie-wall"...for some reason. Most of the pictures are selfies, but it's a soft rule at this point. We've certainly added some that were taken by other people.

Even if the pictures are taken by someone else, I try to pick the ones that share a sort of selfie quality - ie, we're in it, but not the focus.

Another decision I've had to make more recently involved including other people, primarily our kids, in pictures. I decided to do it (Father-of-the-Year). It shows how I've embraced being a family man - ironically the biggest obstacle to traveling in our lives. Samantha has multiple appearances on the wall now as we've started lugging her around the globe. Brooks has yet to make it. He's still a little young to take with us but he'll be along on our adventures soon I imagine....against my better judgement. 

Interestingly, if you are at our house, you might notice another couple of faces on our wall. Our friends Dave and Becky were over some time last year and we were all out in the pool. At some point Dave headed in for a few minutes and while inside unsupervised he added a photo of them to our Chichen Itza frame. A day or so later I was sitting on the bench across from the wall and noticed it - and just cracked up! 

There are a lot of things about this that I love. For one, they didn't say anything until we noticed. For another, there's no way Dave could reach the "C's" on that wall, so I know he had to have grabbed a chair or something to stand on (as they are in the picture above - replicating their pose). Perhaps my favorite thing about it though is that while they had actually been in Mexico just prior to this, they didn't actually go to Chichen Itza. The picture they took was from the airport!

As a lover of elaborate pranks - and general tomfoolery - I vowed to leave their picture in the frame until Nel and I had one to replace it with. That wouldn't have taken long (Challenge Accepted!) buuuuttttt COVID! Mexico closed all of the ancient sites and we still haven't been. They just opened Chichen Itza back up to limited visitors on September 22nd, and I'm already planning to hit it up!

   
So that's it. I'm always open for suggestions for places that perhaps I haven't thought of yet. It gives me an excuse to dust.