The Ultimate Goal!

We're starting modestly with our business. We're going to utilize existing businesses for renting equipment, providing lodging and leading tours while we get ourselves settled. D will have to be a fully qualified leader to even take a group down a river for the day in France. In France, everyone must be appropriately qualified and certified. Your hairdresser is so fully qualified she can perform a little brain surgery while she's there. Of course D will travel with our groups and co-lead while he's in the process of getting certified (or getting his current US certifications recognized as equivalent...the route that was recommended to us by an official in Rodez).

Our ultimate goal, though, is to be a full-service, self-contained adventure business. In a couple of years, once the business takes off, we'll buy a farmhouse that has a big barn and plenty of land. We'll live in the house, convert the barn to guest accomodations and storeage for bikes and kayaks and things and put in a pool and a nice garden. We'll spend April-November in France and December-March in the US. We'll lead tours most of the time we're in France, expanding to Winter sports like cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, too. We'll spend the coldest months in the US having Christmas with the Grandmothers and doing the rounds of the travel shows to drum up business.

Our children are homeschooled and we will simply take school with us wherever we go. We'll have the healthy, local, additive- and GMO-free food we long for there in the French countryside (raw milk-YAY!). France's wonderful nationalised health system supports homeopathic and other alternative medical approaches (like home births!!!), which are important to us and unavailable to all but the independently wealthy here in the US. D will be making his living doing what he's passionate about. We'll be able to explore Europe with the kids...what a classroom! G will be closer to her European family and friends, but we'll see our US friends at least once a year, too...not to mention that we'll see you all in Aveyron, right!?

Now, doesn't that sound like a nice life to you?
We're so excited about making this happen.
The MacCs