Well, I'm sorry that the result was a rejection of touring or long distance riding. That is certainly not what anyone here was saying. And we CERTAINLY weren't saying that any of this was because she is female. Not fair to put that on us. I think most of us were saying it was a bad idea because it is too hard for just about anyone, let alone someone who is a beginning cyclist. Nothing to do with gender or any (unknown-to-us) qualities of your wife in particular.

To Santaria's wife: I knit. I'm 45 years old at 5'2" tall. I've been road riding for 10 years, MTBing for 6 years before that. I tour self supported and solo - rode across the US a few years ago. I ride 120 mile days (but not day after day). I ride supported tours like the Bike Tour of Colorado and harder ones. I ride 8000+ miles a year. My self-supported tours are usually about 60 miles a day, and if someone else is carrying the gear about 80-100. And I wouldn't want to do your husband's proposed tour, because it sounds too hard (and ugly) to be fun.

Good luck to both of you, you don't have to leave bikeforums by the way.

Don't take any of the advice above to mean "you can't do it" - take it as it was intended - the original plan had a lot of strikes against it, and there are more fun ways to start touring than that.