The first time I hiked to the top of Mount Juneau, I got to see this...
I also learned that just because something is called a hike doesn’t mean it won’t quickly morph into a stomach-churning scramble on hands and knees up the side of a cliff. As 40 mile-per-hour winds whipped past my boyfriend, Scotty, and I, tossing my new hiker’s headband into the oblivion of downtown Juneau below, I wondered exactly what I had signed up for.
This wasn’t my first mountain summit or the most difficult. But it was a memorable one because it was new and different from any other. The view of the city below, down to the tiny brown speck of my office building, gave me pause. I’d lived in the shadow of this mountain for several years and never really seen my town. As cheesy as it sounds, I finally saw what the eagles did.
Travel is all about looking at things in a different way. Sometimes it doesn’t take as much as we think to gain a new perspective. It can be exhilarating and freeing. It’s an opportunity to learn from and appreciate the way others live. It's the freedom to spend time with the ones we love.
This blog is the beginning of a long-held desire to share my love of travel with others, in a way that makes the sometimes-mysterious art of exploring our planet accessible and fun.
So why do I travel? In the long run, I probably won’t remember most of my days spent in the office at my job. All those arbitrary numbers I’ve memorized? Poof, they’ll be gone after a few months. But that time Scotty and I took a two-month road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway to Mexico? Or the time I went to visit a college friend in Osaka, Japan and visited ancient Buddhist temples and saw wild deer in Nara? Or my first trip abroad with my dear friend Erin where we bunked with friends of her college professor and got to stay in a 200-year-old farmhouse in the English countryside? Those memories are my life’s greatest souvenirs.
I’ve had some “gentle” suggestions from kind friends to start this blog (special thanks to Tarrah and Scotty!). I hope you like it. I hope it inspires you to explore the world in ways you never thought possible.
First (blog) trip up- Hawaii! Just in time to kick off the first day of February!
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| The view from here: Mount Juneau in Juneau, Alaska- July 26, 2008 |
This wasn’t my first mountain summit or the most difficult. But it was a memorable one because it was new and different from any other. The view of the city below, down to the tiny brown speck of my office building, gave me pause. I’d lived in the shadow of this mountain for several years and never really seen my town. As cheesy as it sounds, I finally saw what the eagles did.
Travel is all about looking at things in a different way. Sometimes it doesn’t take as much as we think to gain a new perspective. It can be exhilarating and freeing. It’s an opportunity to learn from and appreciate the way others live. It's the freedom to spend time with the ones we love.
This blog is the beginning of a long-held desire to share my love of travel with others, in a way that makes the sometimes-mysterious art of exploring our planet accessible and fun.
So why do I travel? In the long run, I probably won’t remember most of my days spent in the office at my job. All those arbitrary numbers I’ve memorized? Poof, they’ll be gone after a few months. But that time Scotty and I took a two-month road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway to Mexico? Or the time I went to visit a college friend in Osaka, Japan and visited ancient Buddhist temples and saw wild deer in Nara? Or my first trip abroad with my dear friend Erin where we bunked with friends of her college professor and got to stay in a 200-year-old farmhouse in the English countryside? Those memories are my life’s greatest souvenirs.
I’ve had some “gentle” suggestions from kind friends to start this blog (special thanks to Tarrah and Scotty!). I hope you like it. I hope it inspires you to explore the world in ways you never thought possible.
First (blog) trip up- Hawaii! Just in time to kick off the first day of February!
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