A journey to fill my soul

Time with family is typically a good time no matter how you look at it. Relationships are built by going through all the good times, and sometimes bad. Disagreements happen, but working through them is key to creating stronger relationships. As I’ve been told my entire life, blood is thicker than water, which means to me that those relationships are built as the result of family lineage, or bloodline. In many ways all families, no matter their situation, will always be one.

I was joined this past weekend by my lovely wife and daughter. Seems there’s always a good time to be had when we all get together. Missing is my son and family, although always part of the family, he is busy developing his own bloodline, or next generation. Love them all and wish we all could be together to see just a small part of my journey, but good luck fitting any more people into this little cabin with wheels of mine.

Activities Director

We have a little joke within our family, my daughter is our built-in travel agent/activities director. Planning is her thing and the one week that she’s here has one full schedule planned. I love this little break, one full week without me having to always be on top of things.

Traveling as I do requires constant attention to details. Where am I going? Road conditions on this segment? What is on this segment that I must see or do? Meals? Vehicle maintenance? And then there’s long term, I need to keep looking forward weeks in advance to understand the big picture of this journey.

For this one week, for the most part, that is put aside. I should have expected her to show up with a printed list of itineraries and time frames to follow. All good, part of the fun and of course, even on the first two days she hasn’t let us down.

Denali National Park

I feel like I’ve been in the mountains since early on in my trip. I guess it could be said, when you’ve seen one mountain you’ve seen them all. There isn’t much that distinguishes one mountain from the next, but here you have Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America with a summit elevation somewhere over 20,000 feet. Our travel agent, daughter, booked us on a bus ride through the National Park in hopes of seeing things that are a bit difficult without the ride. The park system, in their wisdom, has blocked roads from general traffic to prevent long lines as people just stop so they can see something, while others don’t. After going on this trip all I can say is, good thinking. Let me share a few of the images from our day on the bus.

Natures Beauty

I feel lucky to take the many images from this bus ride. I have seen so much wildlife on this journey but getting those shots is tough while driving. There will be many more opportunities ahead, but yesterday’s ride was amazing. If you ever have the blessed opportunity to visit Denali National Park, please take the time for this little side adventure. Today will be a day of short hikes and small adventures, if the weather cooperates. Rain is good for the forests and the prevention of fires, but kinda a bummer when you’re a tourist. All good, we have rain gear, at least I’m set up, it won’t slow me down on this day.

What’s next?

My tour agent won’t let me down in the coming days. We’re headed south tomorrow and will end up on the ocean by the end of the week.

So, for now thanks for following along, this week promises to be full of great memory-making opportunities and I’ll share as we go. Until next time….Peace.