All 50 States Photo Wall: Exhibit E

   Florida           Arkansas         Georgia

Oklahoma   New Hampshire   Nevada

                            Maine          Kentucky

Arizona            New Jersey

Exhibit D

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All 50 States Photo Wall: Exhibit D

 Vermont      North Carolina       Maryland

   Illinois              Idaho              Wyoming

                    New Hampshire      Michigan

Texas                   Hawaii

Exhibit C

Exhibit E

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All 50 States Photo Wall: Exhibit C

  West Virginia      North Dakota      Alaska

      Tennessee          New York         Oregon

                               South Carolina  Connecticut

           Colorado                               New Mexico

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit D

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Sandals and Water Shoes and Low Top Hiking Boots, Oh My!

REI

Roseville, CA

March 25, 2018

My dividend from purchases at REI during 2017 arrived in the mail recently and I was more than ready to use it towards new footwear for Kellisa. I've been assembling our wall art with pictures from our hikes in each of the 50 United States and I noticed that Kellisa has worn the same few shoes on our hikes for many, many years. This makes sense since she can't walk and her feet rarely touch the ground or get sweaty, so her shoes look barely used even though she's worn them for so long. 

We didn't have anything specific in mind when we arrived, but she gets her love of shoes honestly from her mother, so it wasn't a surprise that she loved all three of the shoes she tried on. Her outdoor adventure footwear should be covered for the next decade with the purchase of these high quality shoes.

We walked around the entire store and saved the books and maps area for last so we could linger until closing time. That's when we saw families on foot staring back at us from a prominent spot on an eye level shelf. Kellisa is featured in a few places in this book, including a 2 page spread (bottom right picture). I couldn't help but show Kellisa the pictures of her out on the trails in the book. The gentleman who helped us from the shoe department came over to see if we were still OK and I could tell he looked a little puzzled as he watched me take a few pictures of the book. I explained that Kellisa has spent a lot of time out on the trails and was in this book after meeting the authors several times. He was blown away and acted like Kellisa was a celebrity...and she enjoyed every second of the accolades.

Lisa and I have been members of REI for decades and they offered Kellisa her own membership at checkout because members could save 20% on any one item. This way, we could check out twice, once under my membership and once under Kellisa's so we could save the 20% on both transactions. It made sense to me to spend the extra few minutes to help sign up my...adult...daughter for her very own membership card (top right picture). I was proud of her and left with a deep feeling of contentment from our shoe shopping adventure. It's rare that I get to do "normal" activities with Kellisa and this experience somehow felt very normal and I look forward to helping her spend her own dividend next year!

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All 50 States Photo Wall: Exhibit B

    Iowa                  Ohio                California

Delaware          Alabama             Montana

                      Missouri                Utah

  Nebraska                                    Wisconsin

Exhibit A

Exhibit C

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All 50 States Photo Wall: Exhibit A

    Indiana            Kansas         Louisiana

Pennsylvania   Rhode Island   Mississippi

                              Virginia      Washington

     Minnesota                             South Dakota

The girls completed our project of visiting and hiking a trail in all 50 states back in November 2016. Their travels are well documented on this blog and I wanted to display their accomplishment in our home as art. Partly to share our story with visitors, but mostly so we can look back at all the fun we had completing our goal.

I've wanted to copy our kindred spirits at Explore All 50 ever since I read their post about having a photo wall with a picture from each of the United States.  

I've struggled for a couple of years (I started planning our photo wall before we finished) on the format, layout, design, shape, and size of the photos to use. I even struggle picking which is the best picture from each state. Some are obvious, some are impossible to choose, while a few states lack really good pictures.

After a few failed attempts to get this project off the ground (and on our walls), I finally found our layout. We will have five 20X30 canvas art collages with 10 pictures each.  This is our first collage and we love the way it turned out after many, many hours of picking the pictures and then reshaping and arranging the pictures. As excited as I am to have a clear direction, I also know this project will probably take several months to complete. We will order additional collages one at a time as we finish them and share them on the blog. Once we have all five hung on our "All 50 States Photo Wall", we will share a picture of our completed collection.

Exhibit B

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