Crescat Travels…

… I get some of my best ideas bellied up to a bar with a pint in hand. It was Jesus Himself who told me to go on Camino over a nice frothy Guinness.

So there I was, enjoying a nice full pour of Brother Thelonious Ale [which tastes like chocolate milk with a ABV of 9.3% so be careful], discussing with a friend how to bring my latest scheme plans into fruition. For some time I had been toying with an idea of starting a North American pilgrimage tour company. The idea started during a few email exchanges with the gentleman who will be my guide on Camino. He suggested taking walking pilgrimages here in preparation for the big one. Thing is… there are no walking pilgrimage tours in the US like the Camino. Americans just drive where they need to go.

In fact, there aren’t any companies that offer American pilgrimages at all that I could find. Everyone wants to go to Europe and Jerusalem but there are some beautiful churches and holy sites to see here. With the economy being shot to hell it makes sense that more and more people are taking ‘stay-cations‘ and traveling locally.

But that was all it was- an idea. Just a little something I kept in the back of mind and fantasized about on the more stressful days of my job. I was incredibly surprised to later hear a confirmation of this idea when my friend suggested the very same thing, only on a grander scale. It was sign, because God gives signs in bars and you can’t tell me otherwise.

We immediately started talking about the locations and states our travel company would take pilgrims on, how we could market this, who we knew throughout the country and Canada to rally, and what unique features we could offer to rival pilgrimages to other countries… like praying the rosary in Temple Square.

C’mon. Who wouldn’t want to go on a tour that included that on the agenda?