I’m just back after a truly amazing road trip. Travels with my son took me from Utah through Nevada on snow covered highways at temperatures of 5 degrees, then on through Oregon’s eastern mountains, through Walla Walla (I could smell the onions in the air) and into Seattle.
Seattle has become a truly metropolitan hip city. We took a ferry to San Juan Island and searched for whales by boat. I had forgotten what truly majestic scenes of open sea, snow covered volcanoes, and low cloud cover provide. Beautiful.
From there we went by ferry to Victoria and spent a couple days in that enchanting city. We spent hours in their amazing museum and ate European dinners. Very nice.
And then I visited old friends in Portland and then drove back home over the course of three days, crossing perhaps 12 mountain passes, too many mountain ranges to count, and wide open range land.
I have to say that I think we forget to appreciate this country we live in and how magnificent it is. A couple of stops in small towns reminded me of the Americana of my youth – people with good values, hard working folks with nice smiles who are helpful and a delight to talk with. And I have made some new discoveries should life ever take me on those roads again.
Throughout the trip one thought about health kept coming back to me, perhaps because I ate far too much. And that thought is that it is the small things that we do consistently that keep us healthy or kill us in the end. Whether you filter out that tiny bit of uranium or fluoride in your water or drink it every day. That matters. Maybe my mind was just seeking a way to justify the fine dinners I was eating or the morning donut or two that I normally forsake. But I think there’s something to that point: consistency. Eat healthy almost all the time and it’s ok to break loose now and then. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
2013 will be a good year. I hope you take some time for yourself.
To a healthy and prosperous new year…
