Packing for Adventure

Now that I’ve wrapped up documenting our Grand Canyon adventure, I want to address a seeming discrepancy before moving on to other topics.

You’ll notice a lot of talk about “immersing ourselves” in the places we visit. You might wonder why we didn’t hike Rim to Rim to Rim? Not only did we not do that this time, but in my prior post you’ll see it’s not even a future plan.

This is not because I don’t think we could do it. I think we could… but would we enjoy it?

I applaud all those who do the Rim to Rim to Rim, and I am wildly impressed by those who do it in a single day! And we did seriously consider training to do it. But after researching, we decided that were we to do it, we’d only be doing it to say we did.

We decided we don’t want to travel merely to check off a box. We want to travel to experience the beauty and diversity of the earth and to more fully appreciate God’s creations, nature and cultures. We want to feel small. We want to feel grateful for our blessings.

This is why you’ll find that many of our travel goals are “unofficial.” As much as we’d love to visit every single country and national park, we don’t want the joy of each place to be overshadowed by the pressure to cross it off a list.

Also, we know our limits. Chris has a titanium shoulder due to a high school football injury, so rock climbing is off the table for him. I have weak knees and a family history of knee replacements. We’re not climbing Mount Everest, nor do we want to.

That being said, I hope readers can see us as average. We are passionate, but not especially athletic. We are daring, but not reckless. We work hard and play hard. When we get home from vacation, we usually need another vacation to recover from our vacation!

Chris is definitely stronger than me, and I have to work hard physically to keep up. Bottom line: if I can do something, anyone can. I hope these posts can inspire others to dream big and accomplish what seems impossible.

Coming up: A recap of our cross-country Pizza Crawl – an entirely different trip, but just as memorable!