9 Days Until I Hit The Road

              Ok it’s getting close. I have told you where I want to go and the itinerary that I have set up for myself. As I said in an earlier post it is extensive and aggressive. I have also gone over the how’s of photography that I will try to use to capture the images that I have in my mind. What I haven’t told you about so far is why I want to do this.

              I want to capture my memories of the places that I will be visiting. Early on in my life I had a very big want. That want was to travel to Africa on a photo safari. I thought about that “want” every once in a while and I guess that it could have been considered part of my bucket list before the term bucket list became popular. Well in 2007 I had the opportunity to go. The memories were fantastic, and I have preserved them digitally. One of the images turned out to be an exact, and I mean EXACT, image that I had in my head for years of an elephant walking toward me. Well this trip is a follow-up to that. Another bucket list item.

              I have visited some of the 59 National Parks in the past but there are so many others that I haven’t gotten to. This trip will get me to quite a few of those parks. I again have some images in my mind that I want to try to capture and that was the reason for so much internet research and internet classes that I have watched.

              My basic reason is selfishness because this is what I want to do but I also want to share some of my better images with all of you along with any of the stories that go with them. I want to experience the majesty, the ruggedness and the underlying softness of the national parks. Each national park in its own individual way is a testament to the American will and fortitude and I want to experience that. We, as a nation, lead the world in establishing national parks. We established the very first one and now most of the world has realized the necessity of preserving these wonders. We can go into these national parks and imagine what it was like there hundreds of years ago, and hope that people hundreds of years from now will be able to do the same.