The Bucket List…

Lately I have been working on my bucket list but for every item I cross off I find a few new ones to add. My bucket items usually have to do with travel or activity. My list is very scattered, pieces of papers where I have written things down, a cut out article, in my head or just bookmarks of travel sites and more. The other day I searched the term “bucket list” and up came several cool sites which of course just added more ideas for mine. I also found a really cool page featuring “Bucket List: 225 Things to do Before You Die” on www.lifed.com. It has photos of each bucket item. Reading these lists made me think of organizing mine and get them all on the same place. So I created two Bucket List tabs for this site and are going to work on getting my lists organized.

Over the 4th of July weekend I went to the Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. I’m currently on this National Park visit kick as one of my bucket items is to visit every single national park in America. I have visited many over the years but I have so many left to see. For some reason I had never been to see the Old Faithful geyser. I can cross that off my bucket list now. All the geysers were cool to explore but then I discovered Lamar Valley in the northeastern part of the park. I love watching wildlife and was hoping to see a bear or wolf. I absolutely fell in love with that area of the park and will go back in the early fall and join a weekend trip with the Yellowstone Institute. Sometimes when you go to a place or an area that is not on your bucket list you discover a new passion. I love exploring new areas and sometimes you find that it is not what your thought it would be but more often than not you realize you have been missing out for all that time you didn’t know it was such an amazing place.

I always meet new and interesting people when I’m out traveling. Lately I keep running into people that are out biking around the country or the world. I have always wanted to bike the Oregon coast. Biking seems to be such a neat way of exploring and everyone I talk to started out with a short trip but then decided to keep going and several have been doing it for years. That’s how life goes; sometimes when we expand our horizon crossing off one of those bucket list items it opens our eyes to a whole new world. A world we knew existed but never thought much about until we came across it because we decided to take a different route than originally planned or just strike up a conversation with a stranger.

Keep going, you’ll never know where you end up when you take a route you didn’t plan on taking. Also, never forget to look in the side view mirror when driving among beautiful places. What is behind you can often take your breath away…