The Year of Adventure 2.0: Corona Style

It’s been so long since I’ve blogged I forgot my login information. Whoops. PROFESSIONAL OVER HERE.

Well I’m not going to lie, COVID has really put a damper on my year, how about yours? Most of the time I am actively grateful for how fortunate we are and try very hard to appreciate our privilege and relative comfort during what is turning out to be a real crapper of year. 

But now and then I find myself sinking further into the couch feeling sorry for myself and the experiences I’ve missed out on. It doesn’t generally last too long because the sound of me sitting inspires my kids to suddenly NEED ME DESPERATELY. But finding motivation lately does seem to be more challenging. 

As social distancing and quarantining becomes more normal than leaving the house, it’s tempting to get lazy and call a trip to the deck and exotic vacation. I mean… we do have a pool. Does it count if I have to inflate it myself?

But the thing is – we don’t have to stay at home all the time. The outdoors are still open and relatively safe. We just have to get motivated to pack the lunches, wear our masks, and be a little more creative in our destinations. So in an effort to motivate ourselves our family is rebooting the Year of Adventure.

The first Year of Adventure started launched Jan 2017 with our goal to visit 100 parks in a year. We fudged the numbers a little and began counting different trails in the same park if it felt like we were experiencing something new. We also counted outdoor activities even if it wasn’t in a designated park – like our turtle/dolphin spotting cruise. Originally the plan was hatched after I was cooped up in the house for 8 weeks following a knee surgery. I was ready for a change of scenery. 

Hmm… cooped up for weeks in the house… sounds familiar. 

And that YOA was the best thing we’ve done as a family. It changed the course of our lives and family dynamics. It saw birth to the annual Big Adventure – aka three week US Road Trip – and brought us so much joy and fulfillment. Also lots of road side toilet training… road trips with a two-year-old are interesting…

SO. The Year of Adventure 2020 is starting today. July 1 seems as good a day as any right? Hopefully by putting this all over the internet we will feel deep shame if we slack off and laze around 🙂 Here are the quick guidelines and goals we are working with:

• Must be able to safely socially distance and/or wear our masks – meaning our favorite crowded parks might not get visited!
• Each adventure has to be outside and unique. So we can visit the same park twice BUT it has to be in a different way – different trail, kayaking vs. hiking etc. 
• The adventure counts if 50% of the fam is there. Schedule wise it’s challenging for all four of us to do everything together, but we’ll give it a go. 
• We are going to make an effort to seek out lesser visited natural areas recreation opportunities. 

My hope is that by again launching into something a little crazy but a lot of fun, we’ll be reminded to get outside and make the most of this time with our kids. Because maybe, just *maybe* the silver lining on the end of the world will be a reminder that this extra family time could give us much more than we’ve lost.

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