Travels With A Pal - Trip Notes

Okay, let's call this one for lack of something better, a trip journal.
A pal and I set out on a journey, the fun kind, with no really etched in stone itinerary, but I took some mental notes, and I'd like to relate some of it to you.

Both of us greying, and with a lot of miles under our respective belts to this point, it was only logical, that we would make it a point to see the areas where we each grew up, and share stories of "back when.......", and make notes, of how things had changed, and what looked the same as we remembered it to be. There were fish stories told of eating walleye, and spearing carp in the mountain streams of New Mexico, and telephoning up catfish on the Llano River. Stories of hiking in carrying an aluminum skiff to a mountain lake in the Rockies, and stories of ice fishing in Minnesota for Northern pike, and what a pain cleaning and getting all the bones out of northern's are.

We went down into Canyons in the Rocky Mountains, and to the streets where he grew up as a boy, in the high desert of New Mexico, where he was quick to point out the houses of his childhood friends, and the local churches and landmarks.Before the trip ended, we went to the dunes and the barrier reefs on the Texas coast, that I wandered as a youth, where there is history that includes everything from Civil war encampments, to WWII U.S. Army Air Base, to a Vietnam era S.A.C, Air Force base, to a natural pass from the Gulf of Mexico, that was sailed by merchants and plundered by the likes of the pirate Jean Lafitte.

As much as you are thinking that we embarked on the trip of a lifetime, one we all dream of taking, I have one more little secret to share with you..... This type of trip is one that I am accustomed to taking on a pretty regular basis.
Here we go again........there's an app for that.........
It's called Google Earth, and there is another one by Microsoft, called I believe, Virtual Earth. Yes, I do travel, for real, at every opportunity, but the trip I just described to with you, was done on a rainy morning on the bay, over coffee, and it is one that anybody can take. You are limited only by your imagination.

If you have aging parents, who maybe aren't computer savvy, can you think of a nicer gift, than to take them on a trip to their childhood neighborhood or trout stream, or sledding hill? It is there for the taking. Just a little food for thought. Happy Trails............