On the Road Again
In addition to being an introduction to the Writer’s Quotes Wednesday Writing challenge, this post is submitted in response to Lens Artist Challenge #140 “A Change of Scenery” hosted by guest host, Beth from Wandering Dawgs. “Beth suggests trying a different route on your walk, run, or bike ride of our local park. She also extends other opportunities for us, e.g. browsing our archives “to feature images from places we have visited in the past when you needed a change of scenery.”
Lisa Coleman invites us to share in the Bird Weekly Photo Challenge#41 Bird Reflections. Finally my photos also apply to Cee Neuner’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge Birds of Any Kind.
CFFC runs weekly challenge starting every Tuesday. 
Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays Writing Challenge Logo
This was one of my dad’s favorite songs. He sang it every time we got in the car to go on a vacation. Interestingly, it was Mom who really took us on the road. When she and Dad divorced, the three of us, Mom, Randy and I, packed our belongings into a 1967 VW Bug and got on the road again traveling from Indiana to Oregon in five bumpy cramped days.
Oregon
Randy and I loved our new adventurous life. He still lives in Portland, OR not far from where we first settled, and I still love to visit. In 2018 when I went up to see him, we decided to spend a few days out of the hot, dusty, smoky, Portland air and go to Newport, Oregon. We stayed in a great suite right on the bay. Every morning we looked out and saw this bird standing in the water.
Same place. From our room he looked real. What do you think?
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
Gustav Flaubert
LOL! That’s a good excuse for travel, I’ll take it. I disagree that it makes you modest. So what if your tiny? Small and mighty, learned, more interesting, understanding, maybe.
To me, travel is a rare privilege in life. How many people are fortunate enough to have the time and money it takes to travel? I will never see every country in the world. Yet I am so blessed. I take the opportunities to travel as they come to me. Via these reflected birds, I’ll only tell you about a very few places I’ve gone.
Australia
Two blogging friends invited me to come to Australia. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. These elegant, photogenic birds swam in the creeks at Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria, AU. Their reflections told them what they needed to know, “I am so beautiful.”
By the way, I just read Lisbet Collaert’s book, Plunge. Fabulous book, stirring, heart rending, you must read it especially if you are thinking of sailing full time. You can read her promo on my blog here. She didn’t have a lot of money to travel, but made that her lifestyle choice. It’s always a costly choice even on a budget, but this next quote tells why travel is so important.
“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” –
Seneca
Central California Coast
Who doesn’t want a strong, vigorous mind? I do, I do!
I have been fortunate enough to change scenery both by traveling and by moving. When we lived in California, it was only a two hour drive to escape the summer heat or the winter valley fog. We enjoyed a change of scenery in San Luis Obispo, Avila Beach or Pismo on the Central Coast of California.
One of my favorite things to take with me when I travel is a camera, and my phone has been a dearest travel companion. On this occasion in 2013, I isolated myself for two weeks for NaNoWriMo to write a book. Each day I walked to Avila Beach from our trailer. One day I caught this flock of birds sitting on the log with my phone.
My husband thought it was my best picture ever even though the quality was not great. I always looked expectantly at that log every time I crossed over the golf course bridge hoping to see them again, but I never did.
This hungry bird awaited me at the beach.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain
Prescott, Arizona
When Vince and I married in 1995, he mentioned in passing that he loved the high desert and wanted to live there. I had a great job teaching in Woodlake, CA, and was as uninterested in living in a desert as these birds are in moving to the Arctic Circle.
Twenty-five years later, after he mentioned it maybe 30,000 times, I agreed that the time was right. If we were ever going to move to the desert, we should get a move on. As soon as I said yes, Vince sprang into action, and within three months, we had exchanged our California Dreaming for a home in the mountain city of Prescott, AZ.
We enjoy hundreds of miles of trails and a change of scenery as often as we wish.
Now it’s your turn. Are you among the hundreds of thousands ready to get back on the road again? Pull out your camera. Write in your journal, write a post and link to this week’s #WQWWC (Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays Writing Challenge).
Or maybe you’d rather make it a photo challenge. That works for me. Maybe you don’t even want to write a post. That works, too.
Find a quote or respond to one of mine.
Quotes are great fun. You can see how I quadruple-dipped here with one post. Make your post count for the most visibility and have fun with it.
If you respond to this #WQWWC prompt – Travel, leave me a link in the comment section. I don’t always get pingbacks. I love it when you do that, too, but I have missed people and I hate to do that.
You can copy, paste and edit this little logo in your own post and add my link each week to the url and have an automatic pingback. Or just add it if you think its a good logo. Canva is my graphic artistic consultant.
Thanks again for stopping by my blog and playing with quotes.
My Reading List for This Week
A comment about reading. When you commit to submitting to a photo or writing challenge, it’s most rewarding if you meet the people in the community. Reading adds a lot of time to the process. I never thought I could read this many blogs in a month, much less a day. But I found that if I take the time to cut and paste the links into a document – even my blog, but I also use a Google Doc, I can read at least half of these in a day. I’ve never tried to read this many blogs in a day, so this is my challenge.
You are welcome to cut and paste my list into any document and see how well you can do with it. If you put this list of links in your next photo challenge for any of these wonderful bloggers, you give them some extra coverage too. So it’s win-win.
#WQWWC List
#LAPC List
- 100 Country Trekkie
- Aletta
- Amy
- Cee
- Chava
- Debbie
- Diane
- Gina
- Happy Love
- John RH
- Johnbo
- Julie
- Karina
- Leya
- Lily
- Lisa
- L.J.
- Miriam
- Natalie
- Oh the Places
- Out of My Write Mind
- Patti
- Sarah
- Siobhan
- Solaner
- Sophia
- Stupidity Hole
- Sue
- Susan
- Suzy
- Teresa
- Tina
- Yan
- Zimmer
Bird Weekly Challenge
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge
- Aletta
- Amy
- Brian
- Chava
- David M
- Deadhead
- Debbie
- Don
- Eklastic
- Elizabatz
- Fascinating Q life
- Hammad
- Heather
- Irene
- Jackie
- Jenn
- Jez
- Judy
- Kat
- Klara
- Lin
- Lisa
- Lisa on the beach
- LJC
- Maria
- Marilyn
- Mimi
- Nicole
- Nora
- Out of My Write Mind
- Philosophy
- Robert
- Russell
- Sally
- S.M. Kelly
- S.M. Kelly City of Springs
- S.M. Kelly Here & There FEATURED BY CEE
- Sarah
- Sofia
- Susanne
- TBL
- Teresa
- Two Sisters
- V. J.
- Xenia
- Yinglan
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
Your babbling is music to my ears. Please leave a comment!