My great grandfather travelled west in a covered wagon from St. Louis to Southern California following the Great Depression. I too am making my way west to return home and end this three month adventure. But it is so strange that within the span of his lifetime, my GGF travelled in covered wagons, then trains, and then cars. He even lived to see a man walk on the moon. Covered wagons to the moon! I’m still in awe of how fast progress moves nowadays.

Before I start hauling a$$ back from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I stopped to breathe in this amazing sunset!

Then I camped in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, hiked a mountain and took my breaky with some winged guests.

I travelled to Hope, Arkansas in search of my ancestors who supposedly built much of the town. Upon visiting the town train station, I discovered that the old Alice theatre was built by my family. But like the man said, you can never go home - it is now a bank parking lot.

Along the way, I made some new friends (Mary, Boaz and his female companion) who showed me southern hospitality is not a myth.

Mary helped me locate Josephine, the last of my family to live in Hope. We chewed the fat on Joe’s deck until the sun set.

And now I’m in Texas making my way home. Everything is bigger in Texas!

Hope y’all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend. I spent mine ‘working’ in Virginia Beach (no honking!) and the windy Outer Banks of North Carolina where they just got their first pick-up recycling program. It reminded me that recycling is an evolutionary process for every community. Coming from San Francisco, California, I took it for granted that everyone was doing curbside recycling. In Granby, Colorado, a sparsely-populated mountain area west of Denver, this did not exist. They were more concerned with having a drop-off facility that didn’t take 30 minutes to get to by car. But in Seattle, Washington you actually get fined if you toss too much garbage or too much recycling!

In the Outer Banks, I stayed in Rodanthe a couple nights and was allowed the opportunity to follow around Ryan and some of the other Real Kiteboarding instructors as they worshipped in their house of wind. They live pretty simple lives here. They work to live but when work is your play, the lines get blurred. That’s when you start dreaming of 20 knots south west. Sick.