It’s time for my annual Year in a Traveler’s Life even though I’m not quite done traveling for the year. You can read about 2024 year here and follow the links to previous years.
I repeated my pattern of the last few years by starting off slowly. The first quarter of the year is usually kept close to home to meet Abraham Lincoln-related obligations, including the Lincoln Memorial birthday wreath laying and various Lincoln Group of DC events. March is always tight because of the Abraham Lincoln Institute Symposium held at Ford’s Theatre, which I always attend and often have introduction duties (and in 2023 was a speaker). I also was locked in front of my computer most of the spring writing Lincoln in New England: In Search of His Forgotten Tours, which is scheduled for release March 3, 2026.
April got things rolling with a road trip. The previous two years I had road tripped around New England doing research for the book. This year took me through upstate New York on my way to Vermont to attend the very first Lincoln Forum Spring Conference at Hildene, the Robert Lincoln family home in Manchester. I drove from DC up to Westfield, NY to see the statues of Lincoln and Grace Bedell, the 11-year-old girl who had written Lincoln to encourage him to grow “whiskers.” From there it was on to Buffalo for two Lincoln statues, with a quick trip over the border to Canadian Niagara Falls for the Tesla power plant (which caused some consternation with the border agent who couldn’t understand why I had driven from Virigina to spend only three hours in Canada). Next was over to Rochester for Lincoln-Frederick Douglass, around two finger lakes an on to Seneca Falls for the women’s voting rights exhibits, to Auburn for the William Seward house, to Syracuse for two Lincoln statues, and finally on to Hildene.
The rest of the spring I was writing, with a day trip to tour Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC with the Lincoln Group’s ace tour guide, Craig Howell. I also joined Craig for a tour of Congressional Cemetery in October, where I got my own 15 minutes of fame touting the history of Alexander Dallas Bache. On May 30, I submitted my manuscript to the publisher!
July began a whirlwind of overseas travel. An invitation to a wedding at Oxford University provided a great excuse for the UK road trip we had been talking about for a long time. A flight to Edinburgh gave a few days in Scotland before renting a car (manual shift, left side of the road) to wiggle down through England and Wales over several days before the wedding. Mostly the trip was guided by locations of Lincoln statues, necessitating stops at an old novitiate, Manchester (I’ve been in Manchester cities in multiple states and countries now), Newport (Wales), and Bath. One of the greatest thrills was a stop along the English/Welsh border to visit the home of a famous sculptor whose double-faced Lincoln bust is one of the most unique in the world. I then had to convince the people at the American Museum and Gardens in Bath that they also had a copy, which I eventually talked the one person who knew about it into showing me in the private spaces not open to the public.
The following month really got things going. In mid-August we flew to Lima, Peru to start a Road Scholar tour. From Lima it was on to Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu, where we climbed up to the terraces to get the ubiquitous photograph before hiking through the city itself. Luckily the altitude (up to 12,000 feet in Cusco) didn’t cause too much of a problem. Then it was on to Quito, Ecuador before flying out to the Galapagos Islands for a week on a boat hopping around between eight islands. Every perfect day involved a hiking trip to see birds, iguanas, sea lions, and more, plus also a snorkeling and/or kayaking trip to see them all underwater. Snorkeling with huge green sea turtles and kayaking with playful sea lions has been on my bucket list since my early marine biologist days.
The fall was busy but domestic. I attended a Lincoln statue dedication at the African American Civil War Museum in DC in September, then in November make my annual trek up to Gettysburg for the Lincoln Forum Conference, followed a week later by a longer road trip up to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving with family.
But the travel isn’t over for year. I have one short jaunt out of the country relaxing in the Bahamas over Christmas.
Which gets me to 2026.
Spring 2025 was writing Lincoln in New England, so Spring 2026 is promoting it. I have several speaking gigs already arranged and more in process, both in New England and in the DC area, that will keep me busy for several months after the March 3 release. I may go out to Springfield, Illinois for the Abraham Lincoln Association birthday symposium in February, but almost certainly will be in Illinois in June. I will definitely be in Vermont the first weekend of May as I will be on the program of the 2nd Lincoln Forum Spring Conference at Hildene. More info on that here soon.
Beyond that, I am booked on a long overseas trip that will take me first to Mongolia in September, led by a friend of mine who arranges cool trips every year. Four days after that ends I’ll start a Road Scholar tour of Southeast Asia covering Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I’m obviously not coming back to the states in between, so will be adding in a short trip, probably to Taiwan.
November will take me back to Gettysburg for the Forum. I’m sure I’ll squeeze in other shorter, domestic trips during the year, with spots like Philadelphia, New York City, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia high on my “go to” list next year. We’ll see if I hit the 5 new countries goal. I might not, since I’ve already been to Thailand and Vietnam. Still a lot of places I want to go.
I’ll have my annual Year in the Writer’s Life post up shortly before New Year’s.
[Photo of Giant Galapagos Tortoise, David J. Kent, 2025]
Coming in March 2026: Lincoln in New England: In Search of His Forgotten Tours
Join me on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.
You also follow my author page on Facebook and on Instagram.
David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
I finally made it to Machu Picchu!
There stands a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Hingham, Massachusetts, New England. It’s immediately across the street from the Samuel Lincoln house. In Hingham, England, United Kingdom there is also a statue of Lincoln. But why? And who was Samuel Lincoln?
The statue in Hingham, England is actually a bust, not a full statue. It was created based on the life mask of Leonard Volk made in 1860 just after Lincoln’s nomination. It depicts a much younger, beardless (and shirtless) Lincoln. It sits in an alcove on the side of St. Andrew’s Church. The bust was installed in 1919 to commemorate the Lincoln ancestry that had for many generations worshiped at the St. Andrew parish.
Another connection is to Robert Burns, the Scottish poet whom Lincoln had a particular fascination. Lincoln had supposedly discovered Burns from Jack Kelso, an enigmatic friend from Lincoln’s New Salem days. Kelso had emigrated to the United States from Scotland, where he had previously been a Glasgow schoolteacher. He apparently owned many volumes of Burns that Lincoln read over and over (ditto for Shakespeare). Lincoln was hooked and recited Burns from memory on many occasions through his life. Robert Burns is eminently present in Edinburgh, including a large monument at the foot of Calton Hill (not far from the aforementioned Lincoln statue). Burns is also one of the three Scottish writers featured in the Writers’ Museum tucked into Lady Stair’s Close a few steps off the Royal Mile that leads to the Edinburgh Castle. He is joined there by Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott.
The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia once had a statue depicting Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad sitting on a park bench. As of this writing it is no longer there, and hasn’t been since 2023. So, where is it?
While at the Valentine I also got to see another “Civil War President.” A statue of Jefferson Davis had stood for many decades along Monument Avenue in Richmond. During the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the Davis statue was vandalized with paint, then pulled down. That statue now sits – or more accurately, lays – in the Valentine’s main gallery. Pink and yellow paint splatters the bronze, Davis’s head is bashed in from the fall off his pedestal, and his right arm is nearly severed. The display symbolizes the city’s change in attitude over its prior adulation of Confederate figures. All of its many dozens of Confederate statues have now been removed, with the exception of a few remaining on the grounds of the Viriginia State Capitol (you walk past them as you proceed from the equestrian statue of George Washington to the Governor’s Mansion). They are now joined by two large group statues, one featuring the many women who fought for voting rights and the other of Barbara Johns and others who fought the battle that would become Brown v. Board of Education. Johns is scheduled to replace Robert E. Lee in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Interestingly, it was Edward Virginius Valentine who had sculpted both the Lee statue (now removed from the hall and currently at Richmond’s Museum of History and Culture) and the one of Davis now at the Valentine Museum. Hopefully, Johns will make it into Statuary Hall soon, perhaps after the new governor takes off after this fall’s election.
Traveling seems to be done for the year. At least mostly (there might be one short overnight trip squeezed in before New Years). Enough to look back on the year in a traveler’s life. You can see the 
I recently returned from a 16-day trip to southern Africa. I’m still recovering from the 15-hour flight from Cape Town back to America (and the three-and-a-half-hour flight from Zimbabwe before that) but wanted to get an overview of the trip up as a preamble to more detailed future posts. The trip took us to South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and unexpectedly, Zambia.
