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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The Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon National Park

March 2006

“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

Words cannot describe the Grand Canyon and photos, while beautiful, also do not do the views justice. The great expanse of the canyon surely leaves first time viewers speechless and we were no different when we first caught sight of this national treasure late one afternoon in March 2006. One last cliché, everyone should go to Grand Canyon National Park at least one in their lifetime.

Kellisa visited Everglades National Park in 2004 for the first time making the Grand Canyon the second national park checked off of her life list. As of March 2018, Kellisa has visited 29 national parks.

If I can't fully write about the beauty and pictures don't accurately capture the grandeur, then the following pictures probably don't say 1,000 words each, but hopefully they say a few hundred:

Flat Tire in the Frozen Desert

Sunset Crater Volcano 

&

Wupatki National Monuments

March 2006

After Sedona, but before our visit to the Grand Canyon, we made the side trip to see Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki National Monuments. Both are just out side Flagstaff and on the way to the Grand Canyon. Despite the winter cold and snow, we still managed to do a hike in both national monuments. This was before we kept track, so we don't remember the trail names or the distances hiked.

All I really remember is Kellisa's jog stroller getting a flat tire at Wupatki. I had to push her back to the car while lifting the back of the stroller with the wheels off the ground. I was also panicking because I didn't have a plan for a flat tire. I didn't want to go back to Flagstaff to try and figure it out, but I also wanted the stroller available for trails in Grand Canyon National Park, our next stop.

Shaking for Gold

Marshall Gold Discovery

State Historic Park

February 18 and March 10, 2018

Our initial visit (2/18/18) to the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park where James W. Marshall first discovered gold on the South Fork of the American River back in 1848 was a little disappointing. We wanted to start our visit with a nice little picnic before exploring the park. For a variety of reasons, we left later than planned and by the time we arrived at the park there was less than an hour remaining before the park closed.

We decided to skip the picnic so we could walk through the museum (and gift store) before they closed. Unfortunately, we missed our chance to pan for gold due to our late arrival. As the sun was fading, we did enjoy a few short trails through the little village and along the river. Everyone was a little hungry and not at our best during this visit, so we ended up having our picnic lunch at home for dinner. Thankfully, the park is less than an hour from our home.  

Almost a month passed since that visit and out of the blue, Laurel asked, "Can I have a do over? I'd like to go to that park to go shaking for gold so we can become rich"?