Traveling to the end of the……yard and back

I was born to a family of travelers and adventurers. My mother was a passionate traveler. She didn’t really care where we went, just as long as we went somewhere.

My parents (2nd and 3rd from right), hiked at Mt. Ranier in 1936.

My father was a little more particular about the “where.” He loved wilderness and adventure and when I was seven, he announced to the assembled family that he’d like to wash his feet in the Yukon River. We spent the summer of 1959 driving to Fairbanks, Alaska and back to participate in the Fourth of July parade when Alaska became the 49th state.

The Milepost Guide was essential to traveling on the Alcan Highway, listing where to get gas and supplies. Seeing another car was rare, and cause for celebration.

When Jack and I met, part of the attraction was a shared passion for travel. Jack, too, loves wilderness and adventure and has trekked in Nepal, climbed frozen waterfalls in Colorado and camped out on glaciers in Alaska. We planned for years and years of travel together all over the world. Of course, that was before 2020 and Covid.

Along with everyone else, our wings have been clipped and we’re home bound for the foreseeable future. So, I decided to explore my backyard and look at it as if it were a foreign country. I looked beyond the beauty to find the unusual, the bizarre and the interesting, just as I do when traveling. After all, if William Blake can find “A world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, ” surely I can find a whole new country in my backyard. The following is a photo album of my trip to my back yard. Bon voyage!