New Friends

We’ve made many new friends along our adventure.  From the college kids that work with us, the campers that asked about sights to see, and the Pacific Crest Trail hikers that pass through the campground, along their way. This trip has come to mean so much more, than just our traveling adventure. It is a realization that people all over this great country are managing to meet their personal challenges and obtain their dreams and goals, in spite of and sometimes even because of, the insanity that the pandemic has caused.

I have so many friends on Facebook, that have posted their progress towards their goals and I congratulate them, and I mean it. Whatever your dreams, I encourage to take steps toward fulfilling them.  I remember that moment this crazy idea started “cooking” in my head. We were sitting at my sister’s house, a place where lots of fun and conversions happen. My brother-in-law was talking about something he had read about the lottery and dreams. Basically, what would you do if you won the lottery? I mean after you bought the new vehicle and such. The article continued; these are the thing you should work towards making happen. Starting now with what you have and not to wait on the lottery or whatever the delay is. The chances of you winning the lottery are not that high; but your future is going to happen, whether it’s planned out or not.  Use that avenue of boundless freedom to explore your dreams. Mark and I have played “if we won we would” over the years before and since that conversation and we have always put travel in there somewhere. This R.V. was our way to make that happen with what we have.  This first season we have learned so much about ourselves and people; that I have begun to understand, that the merits of travel are more about learning, while being distracted from the fact you ARE learning. This is done by all the beauty around you, both in nature and the beautiful souls we meet.

Our Co-Workers

We’ve hung back and let young men working on their career dreams be our “bosses”. In truth, here we are all cohorts doing a job, but we ask them the plan, let them tell us what to do and called them “boss”. Both of the guys we were teamed with said they weren’t comfortable with being the boss but they were both very good at it and very capable young men. Did we do anything to help their dreams along? Maybe not, but we gave them a safe environment to practice leadership and provided a willing team to work with.  I hope it will be a fond memory for them.

PCT’ers

We have “helped” a few groups of Pacific Crest Trail Hikers along the way by giving them lifts from the campgrounds back to different parts of the trail. Mazama campgrounds will accept and hold packages for PCTer’s (Pacific Crest Trail hikers). Those packages are resupplies from themselves or from family for the trip up or down the trail. Mazama is not on the trail just very close to it. So they have to detour off the trail to pick up the packages and they often stay the night in the back country camping and recharge their GPS devices and phone and then continue on back to the trail. Though they need to detour to get supplies and recharge it cost them time. That’s kind of like life in general right there.  We enjoy the stories they share about the trail and about how much they have achieved; to get this far and how much farther they want to go. But anyway, giving them a lift back isn’t cheating because we are not on the trail and they have already taken extra step to get here. Did we help them achieve their goal? Nope, but I Hope we gave them the break they needed to be revived in their attempt to achieve a dream.

AND of course, we had to check in with the local biking chapter while we were in the area.

Thanks for checking on our adventure. We miss our ole friends and seeing y’all here feels like sharing too. Hope you find ways to enjoy the summer despite/or because of the Pandemic