What travel has mostly taught me is that people are people everywhere and always.  And that we don’t live in the only beautiful region of our country.  Everywhere we have traveled has shown us that God has bestowed upon us a spectacular planet, with an infinite variety of landscapes and features.

For the past two years, we have only traveled around the United States, both by car and by flying in a big airplane.  But we have been to places as different as South Dakota and Tennessee, each with their particular charms.

We had been to South Dakota before we went there in 2020, so were familiar with Mount Rushmore and the terrain around it.  However, we had never been to the Mammoth Site, a prehistoric sinkhole into which hundreds of animals had fallen, and their bones preserved for us to dig out, thousands of years after they died.

As to the people thing, I met this charming gentleman on a walk in downtown Nashville, and he was happy to let me take his picture.

Our travels have been for meetups with our Ricochet online friends numerous times since we joined in December of 2012.  I figured out once that we have met over 100 other members in person, and each and every one has been simply wonderful.  They are now our extended family, and everywhere we go, we post on the site, to see if any other members want to meet with us.  Invariably they do.

Here are some of our new “family” at one of our dinners out, on the Nashville trip.

I especially loved this view of the Nashville area from the airplane on our way in.  It makes me want to visit in the autumn when all those deciduous trees are resplendent in their colors.

We don’t need to travel, to convince ourselves of how beautiful a part of the world we live in.  Beauty is all around us, always.

Deception Pass State Park

Skagit Valley daffodils.

Mount Index in the Cascades.

Silver Lake, in our neighborhood.

We do live in the Greatest Nation on God’s Green Earth.

Here’s the link to Amy’s Original Post.