Part one -About to Rippen...

A busy week here in DixxeLand, mom who was away for a month arrived back home a week ago so we been working on her remembering the rules...she still thinks she is 19, NOT 91 so...more rules for her than when she was 19! She had a pretty weird day today everything she touched she broke, burned, or left in shambles! I hope her Karma can get a kick in the butt and she gets into a better groove.  I didn't write it here in this Blog but I wrote here about the scary fall she had a week before she left. She is all healed up now. 

So it seems like I've been waiting all half my life for when I would finally become 62! I know most people wish to be 21
-----> not me!! So in celebration of turning 62 IM turning everyone's life upside down!! (again) 

Yes I have 3 dogs and a 91 yr old  young to care for its quite a responsible, and it can become suffocating in light now of the increasing memory problems...so I've been warning my siblings of this BIG Event that is upcoming in my life...Hell nor High Water will stop me.

SO this week Im dog sitting for my sister (M), when she returns to pick up her dog I am packing my mom, and my 3 dogs, her oxygen machine, her walker, her nebulizer machine, her canes, her medicines, and MY CAMPING gear in the van and we are going on a trip!! I hope to spend my actual birthday in a National Rec. Area of some type so I can my "GOLDEN AGE PASS" or whatever its called these days...

So when you have lots of lemons make lots of lemonade. We will be making a slow westward trek to Colorado to the home of my other sister (E)...there we will hold up turn her life upside down for at least a month for me to ripen to the Golden Age, and then I will leave on my own solitary journey.  Mom has her own room and bath in E's house...I will have a room that is currently described as Jimmy's room...Jimmy is a DOG by the way so....Im taking some fleas spray JIC its HIS bed Im sleeping in. Haha

E has agreed to keeping my 2 big girlz for me while I go on my sabbatical and little Casey will be my sidekick he takes up very little room and travel does not stress him in the least.  Annie has a bad joint on her front leg that gets her to limping almost right away while hiking...if she doesn't over do she is fine but I don't want her to be in pain .. Flossie barks at everyone she sees so not a good camp dog due to noise levels..SO just me and ole' KC

I know this is going to be an awesome adventure for me, for my mom, and for my dogs, E is welcoming us with open arms and she has space for all of us and M owns a vacation home there too so if we start stepping on each other I will head over there with my pack of dogs and give E a break before I head out and leave my loved ones in her capable hands..

Family what we would do with out them?? I always say I carry my Baggage in a backpack!

I'll tell you more when I know more! I got the tune up, have some tires to buy and I wish I could get my cruise fixed but that may not happen..I will have to put my Right foot to the test.  Finally there is GOLD in my future!!

This essay continues in Part 2, fixin' things:

PEACE

Eleanor Roosevelt: You must do the thing you think you can not.

Adventure prone!

(me on a roadside in Montana videoing a glacier view across the road)

Time has a way of making everything clear as glass! I find myself in the middle of making some decisions that could change my life forever!

 How true it is when one door closes another opens! I just recited that very quote to a traveler who is making his way across this country on foot! I know he has had a remarkable journey over 3,000 miles walking from East to West...and now its coming to an end and he was having some thoughts of "where to go from here." I know he will find his niche.

You know that other saying...you cant see the forest for the trees? Well I was so surrounded by trees, metaphorically speaking, that I couldn't see the forest...so when I cut a few of those metaphorical trees--behold a path-- with such exciting possibilities that I'm afraid to write about it yet!...I don't want to sway the Yin/Yang that has brought me to this point. I had a dream many years ago...to ride my horse across the country...after reading the book by Peter Jenkins, called Walk Across America. IT was so inspiring, but I had just married and made a promise to have and hold for better for worse, so the timing was way off.

Then my beloved horse Sundance passed away of old age...while I was busy raising my son and turned all my attentions to my family...and my dream sort of faded in the background. I've had some wonderful adventures in my life, in a way I always said I was Adventure Prone....at the age of 17 - 21 rode Race Horses for a living!..yep in those days I was young and strong and weighted in at about 127 lbs!..OK it was a very long time ago...and I took up SKIING and traveled to enjoy skiing in the East, North East and in the mountains of Colorado. I was a contestant of the Anything Goes Road show and made a fool out of myself on TV! 

Then my sisters and I all in our 40's in 1995 & 96 backpacked over 80 miles of the Appalachian Trail. That's not the only backpacking trek we made we hiked the Savage Gulf in Tennessee, and we found out why they named it Savage Gulf...we made other camping, hiking, backpacking, canoe trips, kayaking the keys in Florida, until ....

In 1997 when we were to do our third hike on the AT, driving to the airport to pick up one of the sisters.... I was nearly killed in a high speed car crash along with my MOM. We survived but it took a lot of praying and hard work. 

 To celebrate LIVING.... as soon as we could we took off on an 8,000 mile road trip on the highways of this country traveling from SC to California and then up to Montana and every state in between and visited almost every big park in the west. Mesa Verde, The Grand Canyon, The Mohave Desert, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National park, Yosemite, Virginia City, Sun Valley Idaho, the Salmon River, Glacier National park, Yellowstone, Cody Wyo, Mt. Rushmore SD, and the Black Hills, the Buffalo Valley of Arkansas, Tupelo Mississippi, just a few of the spots we spent time in....What fun we had.

 That same year I went white water rafting in Colorado River! I just couldn't get enough excitement so that next year my sister and I took off for an Alaskan Adventure!..We flew into Anchorage, rented a car and drove 1,600 miles of Alaskan highways including the great pipeline highway to the Artic Circle, we camped outside Yukon Alaska, and took the bus ride 80 miles into the wilderness and camped at Denali National Park...seeing 38 grizzly bears in all...and the excitement doesn't end there.

 A few years later that I got itchy feet and moved to New York City...I got into emergency medicine and went back to school and became a Paramedic! Being a paramedic in one of the largest cities in the world can give you a big rush. I was there for the 911 disaster, witnessed it and worked in it...and then burnt out and retreated, wrote a book about my childhood adventures and came back to home to think about all of that, and wonder whats next?? 

 Well I will never cease to have adventrues in my life... Now an opportunity has presented itself for me to be part of a team going from East to West on the American Discovery Trail...NOTHING has been decided but just thinking of it makes my heart race...