My mom just turned 80 a couple of weeks ago, and to celebrate we are en route to do a river cruise that traverses down the Snake and Columbia Rivers following the trail of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

This trip has been one of my mom’s “bucket list” trips for a while, but like many things in life, it kept getting “bumped” because of health and mobility issues during the last few years. Since her health and mobility are both fairly good right now, we decided to pull the trigger on this idea back in February, and now here we are traveling to be able to travel a path first taken more than 220 years ago. 

Our trip today is going to take us (if all goes smoothly) sixteen hours from door to door. A slightly longer day considering it is being done via air travel, but it will take far less time than it took the Lewis and Clark expedition to get out here, so for that, I am extremely grateful. 😉

Our destination tonight will eventually be Lewiston, Idaho/Clarkston, Washington where we will stay the next two nights before getting on an American Cruise Lines River cruise that will take us down the Snake and Columbia Rivers following the same path Lewis and Clark took as they led the Corps of Discovery down to the Pacific Ocean. 

Since this is the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation, (and also because I am an American History geek at heart—having gotten both my Bachelors and Masters in History), I want to share a tiny bit about the path we are going to follow. 

Captain Meriweather Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark were tasked by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 to find a northern route to the Pacific for a variety of political, economic and social reasons. The two men, being long-time friends as a result of being cousins and growing up together as part of a huge family that resided throughout the western part of Virginia (and also why Thomas Jefferson knew they would be capable of such a daunting task), gladly accepted the commission to go westward and subsequently gathered a group of forty men and eventually one indigenous woman to make the trek. 

They set out in May, 1804 and traveled across the country by canoe, horseback and foot. They spent the winter of 1804-05 wintering on the Great Plains before then crossing the Continental Divide before reaching the Pacific in November, 1805. In other words, instead of a mere sixteen hours like it is taking my mom and I today, it took the expedition almost eighteen full months!

Definitely not a trip for the faint of heart. 

But what I really wonder is what made those forty plus people say yes to the idea of trekking across a completely unknown country? 

There were no maps or GPS. No grocery stores or restaurants to stop at to get food.  If someone got sick or injured, there was no hospital or 24 hour urgent clinic that they could visit for medicine. If a canoe got a hole in it, they had to patch it. There was no calvary to come and save them if they found themselves in danger. 

Instead, that small group was going to need to be all the surveyors, mapmakers, grocers, cooks, doctors, maintenance crew, and army support they might need throughout the entirety of their journey and for however long it took. 

What must it have been like, knowing all that, to have the courage to say yes to such a challenge? As I mentioned already, it definitely wasn’t going to be for the faint of heart! 

But perhaps it was because they were full of hope and joy and wonder and love for the land itself and they wanted to be a part of helping share that with others? 

Or maybe it came down to something even more simple? 

To just go and see somewhere they hadn’t been yet? 

As I pondered these questions, it was then that I realized that we’re actually not so different from those who have gone before us.

Why?

Because I am currently traveling across an entire continent to go somewhere I haven’t been yet. 

And isn’t that one of the main points of travel? 

But then I realized something else. 

Life is like that, too. 

Life isn’t for the faint of heart. 

And life is all about going places you have never seen before. 

For as we progress through the different seasons of life with the joys, struggles, laughter, pains, challenges, and sorrows, we will be called upon to navigate uncharted ground and be asked if we are willing to embark upon adventures we might never have imagined—even if we never leave the comfort of our own home.

But the most important realization I think was that life is most especially for those who have hearts full of hope and joy and wonder and love.

For hearts such as those will find adventure around every bend and see wonder upon wonder in a never ending cascade of moments of joy and love in every moment of every day in the small moments of peace, goodness and beauty they encounter in both the places and people around them.

And sometimes we have to leave home to remember that.

Tomorrow we take an excursion up into Hell’s Canyon. The name itself might make you pause, so can’t wait to share more about it tomorrow. 

Thanks for journeying with me, and 

AMDG!