Retired couple visits every continent

Only pack a carry-on bag. No matter how long the trip.

Book guided tours.

Don’t eat the fruit.

Pack Band-Aids.

Only buy trinkets for souvenirs.

And definitely take a Rhine River boat cruise.

Jan and Joyce Wright are residents of Touchmark at All Saints in Sioux Falls, but they’re hardly there. They’re out often out of the country instead, wearing out the soles of their shoes and having a beer on yet another international vacation.

You want to know how best to travel? Join them for a glass of wine and story time at The Vine Bistro in their retirement community commons.

“People are so drawn to their kindness and energy and inspired by their adventurous spirit,” says Touchmark executive director Amanda Snoozy. “Jan and Joyce are warmly embraced.”

After their next trip to Antarctica in December, the Wrights will have officially traveled to all seven continents. Their passports tell the story from more than 80 countries; all 50 states in the U.S.; about 40 river tours, like to the Seine and the Danube; and three different working farm tours to Cuba, Chile and Egypt.

There’s a story for every stop.

“There were armed guards on our tour bus in Cairo, police with sirens going behind us and military with AK-47s out their windows,” said Joyce about a hydroponic farm tour in 2019.

Sure, they’re pretty popular at The Vine, but all that drama for two traveling Americans in Egypt?

“It was all our travel agent,” she says.

For more than 20 years, the Wrights have been working with Tiffiny Trump-Humbert of family-owned Trump Tours, a custom traveling agency that specializes in ag tours worldwide.

No, she’s not that Trump, but law enforcement in Cairo wasn’t taking any chances.

“They didn’t want an incident with our president,” Joyce says.

Sioux Falls is home, the globe is their playground

Joyce is 75, Jan is 78. They’re from White Lake and both worked for regional insurance companies while raising their daughter in Indianapolis. After they retired, they moved to a beach in Florida then to Albuquerque, New Mexico, after they got spooked by hurricanes on the East Coast. They “settled down” in Sioux Falls in 2022.

The Wrights don’t even have any connection to town but appreciate the healthcare, the culture and all the amenities at Touchmark, Joyce says. With town outings, live music, Mah Jongg and cards, it’s no wonder they need a vacation from their busy life in Sioux Falls.

“We travel freely, knowing our home is secure,” Joyce says. “And when we return, our friends and neighbors are eager to hear about our adventures.”

Like the one schoolmate who got to go to the Taylor Swift concert while everyone else had to stay home, Snoozy says friends and neighbors of the Wrights live vicariously through their memories.

“There is always a new energy at happy hour when the Wrights return from their latest adventure,” she says. “You can usually hear the laughter spilling down the hallway as stories are swapped and photos are shared.”

Jan and Joyce have been married for 56 years, but they still vacation together wonderfully, she says. They make friends on cruises and such but almost always book a table for two, and it’s their tradition to sneak into a local bar wherever they are so Jan can have a beer.

He loves the Guiness in Ireland the most but skipped out on kissing the infamous stone at Blarney Castle.

“If I want to kiss a rock, I can go to our place in White Lake,” Jan says.

For their 50th wedding anniversary, forget an open house. They planned a cruise in Alaska, but friends at The Vine got word. Soon there were 16 people coming along, in which Trump-Humbert had to step up and plan all their accommodations as well.

But traveling the world wasn’t always a long-lost dream to work toward. Joyce just happened upon a 12-day private tour to take in China more than 15 years ago, with her sister as her travel companion.

She got to meet the manager of the General Motors plant in Wuhan, fly into Beijing and then Nanjing and sneak into a private purse sale in Shanghai.

“After that, I was on a roll,” she said. “I kept looking for the next place to go.”

In 2020, they were stuck at sea among 600 others on an Oceanic Cruise heading toward Machu Pichu. After stocking up on provisions and setting sail from Chile to Lima, the country had closed down overnight because of what was then a novel Covid virus.

They reverted to Chile, spent eight extra days at sea until Panama let them through the canal and into Miami.

The airport was empty when they arrived.

Clean diets, few injuries, no jet lag

With merely a carry-on bag at their side – “we do laundry on the ships” – they come back with only photos they took or small gifts as décor for their home. On their shelves is a Moka pot from Argentina and Delft blue pottery from the Netherlands. There are napkin rings from Africa on the dining room table, art from a local painter in Paris on the wall and a replica of the Lily of the Valley, Lithuania’s national flower.

In their photo albums are pictures of the salvaged Vasa ship in Stockholm, an ox-drawn wooden plow on a tobacco farm in Cuba, Whirling Dervish dancers on a riverboat tour down the Nile, a manic Secretarybird in the Eastern Cape – “he was hilarious to watch,” Joyce said – and a cloudy day along the Amazon River’s Rio Negro blackwater tributary.

They stick to a strict meat and potatoes diet, “or anything that’s cooked,” and have a pretty strong stomach for as much as they’re on the water. Joyce says they’ll be the only ones in the dining hall when everyone else is seasick in their rooms. Jan says the largest wave they faced was 26 feet high just north of Iceland.

“The Pacific is calmer than the Atlantic,” he says.

They don’t deal too much with jet lag either, Jan says, although they once were “down for a week” returning from Europe.

“If you’re flying into the sun, jet lag is usually worse,” he says.

They’ve succumbed to very few injuries. Joyce has a left knee and right hip replacement but only complains about backaches or maybe blisters on her feet.

She once did quite literally fall off the plane after landing in Istanbul while on their way to Italy.

Instead of pulling into the concourse, around 350 passengers had to take airstairs onto the runway, but “they were crooked,” Joyce said. She was the second to disembark, and down she went, landing on her hip on the lip of the plane and hurting her ankle and knee.

After an urgent visa to sleep for a few hours at a Turkish hotel, she hobbled her way to the Vatican in Rome and up the limestone hill to the Acropolis in Greece.

“I think it was a sprained ankle, but I got over it,” she said.

The Wrights set out to sightsee, not to sit at the beach or wade in the ocean. You won’t find them at an all-inclusive resort, and you won’t run into them along the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

“Parisians are not very nice,” Joyce says.

But do endure more than 20 hours of flight time toward Australia to meet the locals, Jan says.

“If you can get on a ship with Australians and New Zealanders, you’re going to have a good time,” he says.

Stateside, you’ll find them in the Black Hills. They’ve got a motorhome for U.S. travel and spend most winters in the south, but they otherwise don’t make it much further than West River.

“I always tell anyone who wants to travel, every American should go the Black Hills of South Dakota,” Joyce says.

After Antarctica over Christmas, they’re off to East Asia in March for a monthlong trip to South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan, all new countries for them to visit.

Still, there is more to come. They take big trips at least twice a year and book no less than two weeks per vacation.

“We’re retired,” Joyce says. “We’re just embracing our independence.”