The Return

     When I was little I remember making fires in the evening with my dad and he used to tell me that when you could hear the wood start to crack you knew that it was lit and your fire was about to be roaring in short order. You knew that it was no longer just the paper burning and in no time you would be watching the beautiful orange and blue flames as they warmed you to the core. As I sat in the backyard and built a fire of my own after shooting a few final practice arrows I started to hear my dry wood crackle and I knew my fire was about to be ablaze. I sat there sipping on a cold one and realized that the Pennsylvania opener was only days away. I thought of generations past and the tradition that comes with the opening of deer season in the North. Just like my fire, my burning desire to hunt is ablaze and I cannot wait for the first sit of the season this Saturday. 

     As many of you know I just recently moved back to Pennsylvania from Baton Rouge where I resided for the last ten years. I loved the lifestyle down in Cajun country. The people, the culture and most of all the food was indescribable. But there is just something about being back in the mountains with autumn upon us that breathes new life into my soul. When you see the leaves changing color as fall approaches you cannot help but think ahead to what this season may bring. What encounters will I have this year? Will all of the long hours on the tractor and time spent prepping fields and stands give me the opportunity to kill a gnarly giant this fall? Well, in just a few short days these questions, along with many others, will be answered. 

     The best part about being back up North is the opportunity I have once more to spend time with my father getting our family farm ready for hunting season and learning the ins and outs of crop management and preparation from him. We have spent countless hours since the end of turkey season with our minds focused on October 1st and having everything ready for that first morning. I have been running cameras the last few months so that we can choose our shooters and which bucks we want to let grow for another year. This also gives us a great chance to inventory the health of our deer herd. You need to be prepared to pass a nice buck if he is too young. The only way to grow true mature bucks is to let the young ones walk and grow.

  

     The last piece to this opening day puzzle is to make sure that your weapons, both physical and mental, are as sharp and oiled as they can possibly be so when the moment comes to make that shot you are prepared to make it count. There is a bow hunter named Cameron Hanes who I follow on social media that is gaining popularity at a record pace in the hunting community for his success as an elk hunter and more notably his insane workout regimen. This guy runs, lifts weights and shoots his bow seven days a week in preparation for elk season. He just finished a two hundred mile mountain marathon to get his body both mentally and physically ready for the strains of hunting season. His sole purpose in life is to dominate on the mountain and become the ultimate hunter. I have been using his success to fuel my own preparations.

     

     I have made it a personal goal of mine to become the best archer I can be this year and that has included shooting my bow religiously and training my body on a daily basis. I want to become the top predator and it takes immense dedication and focus to do so. I have been spending countless hours, shooting arrow after arrow while listening to the combines harvest corn and imagining a Booner standing broadside. There is something so simple yet so surreal about hearing your shot thwack the target and looking up to see that it was delivered right where you intended. The flight of an arrow is an ancient visual that as a bow hunter is the essence of what we do. 

     We shall see what the upcoming season brings, only time will tell what adventures lie in store. 

 As a friend recently told me, "If that doesn't get your fire burning, your wood is wet."

-Good Hunting

Cajun Hideaway

       In a hidden corner of the world there is a small camp where land meets water and the wild swamps of Louisiana form a small haven tucked away from the world. It is a place where cayenne pepper and cold beer come together to form a sweet partnership. A Cajun heaven unlike few that I have been to before. To get to the camp you must travel down what seems like an endless dirt road stricken with potholes and covered in mud tire tracks. After about the seventh song on George Jones greatest hits you will come up on what looks like just another hunting camp. You have the usual posted signs riddled with bullet holes and as you drive down the road you can almost taste the history of this place. It is a deer camp that Cajun families have been coming to since before the 1950's.

      As we made a right into the camp ground I could not help but be taken back by the nostalgia of the place. No electricity, a small amount of running water and the air filled with familiar smell of creole' seasoning. We unloaded our gear and headed into the house which was fronted by a covered kitchen equipped with antique cast iron skillets and what looked like a stove that had been there long before most of the nearby alligators were born. To say the least this kitchen had probably been producing world class Cajun cooking for the last forty years. As we peeled back the swinging screen door you could hear the wood stove cracking and I was all of the sudden taken back to twenty years ago when the smell of cigar smoke and home cooking filled my grandmother's house. I had to choke back a few tears laying in bed  thinking of how much the smell of the cabin reminded me of my late grandparents. After an unbelievable supper filled with Cajun shrimp stew and the best green beans known to man, I drifted off to sleep thinking about the adventure that the next morning would bring.

      Although this camp was built for deer hunting we were after a much different creature, one with a green head and bright orange feet. You see, when the Mississippi River begins to stretch its banks and the Atchafalaya Basin begins to come up, this property becomes an absolute honey hole for mallards and pintails. It is one of the few places on earth that you can find green heads and pintails cupping up through flooded timber at the same time. In my short five or six years of duck hunting I have seen nothing like it. As we cut the engine to the four wheeler the dark flooded timber was teaming with mallards. The silence of early morning was broken with feeding chuckles and loud raspy cadences. If you could not get excited to hunt ducks at this point you might as well stay home and watch the latest installment of Bill Dance Outdoors. This was the antithesis of why I get up and hunt in the morning. As we began to set our decoy spread you could hear nothing but quacking and the beating of wings as birds began to buzz us long before the sun rose. All duck hunters know that the time between getting setup and waiting for first shooting light are some of the longest minutes of the season. After what seemed like hours sitting there beneath the large cypress trees my buddy Beau picked our first mallard of the trip off the water. A short time after, while fixing the decoy spread I was able to make a good passing shot on another drake and have him fall almost in my waders.

      It was such a promising start to the morning and to the weekend that I could not help but feel like we would be back at camp in about thirty minutes with eight mallards in tow. But as is the case late in the second split I could not getting passing birds to commit to our spread. By the time these birds make their way down from the Midwest the boys in Missouri and Arkansas have given them a pretty good education on what is and what is not a flock of real ducks sitting on the water. I know a lot of great hunters in Arkansas and if these birds can make it past them that they are sure going to be tough to hunt. Now, I will be the first to tell you that I will not be bringing home any calling championships in the near future, but I was able to get some birds to work. After a couple of hours watching thousands of birds tornado into a timber hole about five hundred yards from where we were, we determined that we needed to do a little scouting for the next morning's hunt. What I witnessed next will stick in my mind for as long as I live. As we began to approach this oasis ducks began to get up five to six hundred at a time. The sound of their wings leaving the water was almost deafening. It was like a scene out of a movie. It made me feel even a bit worse about only killing two ducks that morning, but after seeing this I was determined to get on them the next morning in that new location.


     After another delicious supper of grilled pork chops and rice dressing I was ready for another fresh  morning of chasing mallards. This would be the last hunt of the season and one that I would not soon forget, for the wrong reasons. As we rode the four wheeler out to our new spot for the morning we suddenly got behind another group of hunters that seemed to be heading in a similar direction. It was a bit odd because as I stated this was a deer camp and no other hunters had been hunting the ducks recently like we had been. I had a very empty feeling when I saw those hunters, but my partner assured me that they would be going to a different property and would not be near us. As I had suspected though these boys had no intention of hunting on their property and must have seen and heard all of the birds that we had been working the past few weekends.


     What took place next was one of the most aggravating things that I have experienced during my brief career as a hunter. It is one of my biggest pet-peeves as an outdoorsman and the sole reason that I shy away from hunting in these big clubs and around a bunch of public property. As we sat in our blind silently and watched the other hunters setup decoys within shooting distance of us I knew that we were in for a let down. Not only were these guys trespassing, but they setup right on top of us. When the first birds of the morning circled and worked their spread Beau and I were showered with number four shot and from that moment I knew that our season was going to end with a let down. We were forced to either stay there and endure showering pellets or move and try to kill some birds in another hole. After they sprayed us the second time a yelling match ensued and I was ready to leave. This is not the way I wanted to end my season, but I could surely live to hunt another day. It was quite a let down to have such a promising hunt on such a beautiful morning end in such disappointment. I will probably never forget that hunt for those reasons and it makes me sad to think hunters could have such a lack of respect for another man's land. This is one of the reasons hunters get such a bad rep. People believe that we just go around trespassing and killing everything that moves. If we are going to keep our traditions we must abide by the rules and hunt using ethics and good judgment. Are these the lessons that we want to teach the young hunters coming up today?


      I hated to end my season with such an event, but overall it was an incredible duck season for me. I got to shoot birds that I had not yet harvested and experience some Cajun traditions that most people will never have the pleasure to. The one thing that this trip made me realize is that no matter how you start or end your season, once it is over you cannot wait for the next one to begin.

-Good hunting
     

 

Finish Strong

     There are not too many things that my Mom and Drew Brees have in common, but there is one phrase that both of them have uttered the majority of my young adult life, "FINISH STRONG." We all know that in life it is not how you start the game but how you finish it. In this instance I am talking about my own personal hunting season.

    

      I have hunted more hours and more days this year than I have in a long time. I put in countless, mosquito filled hours during the early bow season and really have not let up on the whitetails yet this season. I have had enough duckless hunts so far to last me for the next ten years but I have not let up on them either. The recent cold snap in the northern reaches has brought droves of birds to the southern states. This past weekend provided me with one of the better public land duck hunts I can remember. There were birds in the sky and they were actually listening to what we had to say. Soft chuckles and feed calls were making the greys and even a lone drake pintail commit to the decoys like Japanese planes in Pearl Harbor. I had been waiting all year to see ducks suspended in time over the decoys while my front sight covered up their breast bone. Teal were flocking and though we were not lucky enough to suck in any of the passing green heads it was great to see them down here for a winter vacation. The long hours we put in scouting and finding new holes were paying off. My patience was beginning to pay dividends and it looked as if the season could end with a bang.

 

     We were beginning to turn the duck hunts around and I was hoping the deer hunting would be next in line. The rut was beginning to peak and bucks were being spotted all over running does. Even with the rut peaking I still cannot get hooked on the deer down here like I can on the northern whitetails. Like I have said several times in past posts I am a whitetail hunter at heart and will probably always be. Louisiana though is not exactly the best place to pursue such a passion. I know there are many great places to hunt deer in the state but as a whole it just does not have the luster that the fall mountains provide for an avid bowhunter. Most of the season is spent swatting mosquitoes and when the rut finally does come around and the temperatures drop, the woods are filled with men covered in hideous orange vests toting high caliber cannons through the woods. As many of my northern readers know, the rut is a time for us bowhunters to enjoy the cool weather and sit in silence waiting for grunting bucks to run a hot doe past our set.

 

   Another aspect of southern deer hunting that does not quite sit right with me is the fact that most states in the southeast allow 'baiting.' Now I know this can be a very controversial subject throughout the country but to me personally it really takes away from the sport and the fair chase aspect that most purists love. Don't get me wrong, I have sat over a corn pile on a buddy's property and to me it just didn't feel right. I know that this does not guarantee success but when you bag an animal over bait I believe it does sour the success a bit. My apologies for venting about this issue it is just something that I strongly believe in.

 

   With all of these tough hunts this year I have been able to realize one thing. The failures that we face as outdoorsman make the good times that much better. I started the season with several tough duck hunts and now we have been killing our fair share of birds. I am scheduled to to hunt mallards in central Louisiana this coming weekend and I am expecting nothing but success. I have put in too much time to fail this year and I plan on finishing the season with success.

     Every year we as hunters believe that "this is the season." We think that this year will be the defining year in our hunting careers. Well let me say this, many state's hunting seasons have come and gone and from what I have seen through several different social media outlets some amazing trophies were taken this year. Down on the bayou we have just a few weeks left and I plan on filling tags and making these coming weekends some of the best I have had. As many have said over time it is not how you start but how you close. What ever you may be chasing this weekend enjoy the ride and do not take it for granted. I am going to tell all of you what my mom has told me since childhood, whatever you are doing "Finish Strong."

 

 

-Good Hunting


 

Sharpening The Blade

     If many of you are like me, you are currently caught in a transition period between wrapping up your fishing season and beginning to focus on what hunting adventures the early fall may bring. Like many people in the outdoors there is not one type of hunting or fishing that I focus on or consider my favorite. Although I do spend the largest quantity of my time targeting the elusive whitetail, there is not a species of animal that I don't want to pursue with either a bow or a fishing rod.  However, for every season of the year  there is a certain species or tactic that I like to make my focal point. It is at this point of the year, early fall, that I find myself trapped between the excitement of the bass and redfish bite and the thoughts of pursuing 'ole mossback' through the forest with the stick and string. Besides the amazing October fishing in Louisiana and deer season ramping up there is one thing that I cannot seem to get out of my mind, duck hunting. When I first moved to Louisiana seven years ago I though people were crazy for giving up perfectly good whitetail season to try and shoot a few birds. Why would anyone want to spend a morning shooting a three pound bird when I can chase down one hundred and fifty pound fur bearers that could yield me fifty pounds of choice red meat? It did not take me long to realize what all of the hype was about. There is a camaraderie in the duck blind that cannot be recreated in any other type of hunting. Unlike most big game hunting duck hunters are able to cut up and talk without the worry of spooking animals. I have even experienced a few cold mornings that have been accompanied by a propane stove topped with eggs and sausage. Duck hunters, not only down south but throughout the country, are a bit of a different breed. As they say in the Wizard of Oz, a die hard duck hunter, is "a horse of a different color." Like the avid flyfisherman they rise before dawn and spend the day standing in the frigid water, lying in wait for possibly a few minutes of excitement. I am not seasoned enough to call myself a duck hunter but I do consider myself 'in traing'. Every minute I spend practicing my calling or strategizing for the next hunt is an opportunity to get ready for that moment when the next generation asks me for guidance.  

     No matter what your quarry, if it is an overnight trip there is going to be some type of camp atmosphere after the hunt. Camps can range from multimillion dollar lodges to a few straight wall tents around a camp fire. Though I prefer the latter any hunting camp will do just fine. There is nothing I enjoy more than the time shortly after a great hunt or a great day on the water sharing the stories of the day with those around you and the excitement of thinking about doing it all again. One thing I truly enjoy is strategizing after a failed hunt or a tough trip. I like to conceive other tactics that could improve my chances of being successful the next time around. How can I do better next time? Were we throwing the right baits? Do I need to hunt a different stand with a different wind? There is nothing more rewarding than finding the answers to these questions, turning around and having success. Like I have said numerous times before, that is the difference between  the best hunters and anglers in the world and those people that consider themselves the best in the world. These professionals were not just born with great instincts and outdoor skills. They developed them over years of trial and error and learning from those that had come before them.
     In summary, whatever critters you may be chasing through the woods or the streams this year, remember that being in the outdoors and following in the footsteps of your forefathers is what it's really all about. It does not matter if you are hunting the deep gorges out west for trophy muleys or chasing swamp donkeys in the lowlands of South Carolina. If you are in the woods or on the water you can always find a way to improve your skills and learn from those around you. Do not be one of the "know it all" outdoorsman that so many of us despise. Be humble, enjoy yourself and the company that you keep. Also, do not limit yourself to one species or one tactic. Enjoy the thrill of figuring out other game and the different ways to pursue them. Broaden your horizons and broaden your skillset. Make this season the most successful and most memorable few months of your life. Like I have said many times before, stay patient and stay driven.

-Good Hunting.

Congratulations to my good buddy Chad Bell who hunted countless hours during the southern Illinois rut before bagging this beautiful 4x4. This guy is a diehard hunter and a student of conservation. The hunting community cannot have enough people like him, this deer is testament to his hard work and persistance.

                               

                                

Against All Odds

     As the sun begins to peak over the cut grass of the Louisiana marsh there are not many words to describe its beauty. The skies transcend from a pale grey to light pink and red into a deep blue and you just know that God is at work painting up yet another masterpiece. As we studied the sky and the wind and began to pull up to our first location, I caught another blast of color out of the corner of my eye. If you have not seen a rainbow at sunrise let me tell you, it is probably one of the most magical sights that a humans eyes could ever realize. With a start like this the mind can only imagine what great adventures are soon to follow.

     We rigged our seven and half foot heavy actions with fresh caught blue crabs as we began our search for back breaking bull redfish. If you have not felt the tug of mature red on the end of your line you should be boarding the next thing smoking to south Louisiana for the fall bite. The fish begin to move up into the shallows and up into the rivers, but as we were about to find out, just because they are there does not always mean that they are hungry. Yet as any experienced angler knows, where there is a will there is a way. Great anglers seem to catch fish no matter what the conditions are.

     The thing that sets these professionals apart from your average weekend warrior is the fact that they stay positive and they stay confident. Most people that were given our situation would have chalked the trip up to a nice day on the water and told people that the fish were not biting. But as I have learned from Luke Fears, a local bass professional that I have been fishing with recently, they are biting on something somewhere, you just have to find out what it is. When Luke suggested that he knew a few ponds 'a good run' from where we were that might hold reds and green trout, it didn't take much convincing to get me on board. I was ready to make whatever run we needed to in order to get on some fish. As we weaved through an endless maze of lilies and switchgrass the water began to dump out of the canals and become ever more clear. By the look of it we were on our way to turning the day around. 

     After just a cast or two I was hooked up to a beautiful marsh largemouth that was such a deep green that it could have easily been mistaken for black drum at first glance. Shortly there after my girlfriend Jill was setting the hook and next thing you know the captain had his pole doubled over. The bass were hitting spinnerbaits at high noon and the  day was about to get exciting. As we worked our way back the narrow channel toward to ponds we were picking up fish left and right. This was when I had one of the most rewarding moments of my brief fishing career. I caught my first redfish on a spinnerbait. As I pitched my quarter ounce Red Fish Magic spinnerbait tight to the bank and began my retrieve I felt one of the hardest thumps I have experienced on the end of my line. The bite and the fight of a largemouth hails in comparison to the pounding that this bait took when this red devil hit the end of my line. I knew immediately what I was hooked up to and it put a smile on my face from ear to ear. They are such a majestic creature and the coloring of these fish cannot be put into words. The open water reds tend to be a pale pinkish color with black spots. But the marsh reds we were catching were a deep auburn color with a blue tipped tale. They were so pretty it was hard to throw them in the cooler, but an empty stomach and a longing for filets prevailed. We trolled around the ponds for several more hours picking up keeper largemouth, searching for that next big redfish bite but it did not come. The reds were scarce but we did come up in with a nice meat haul for the freezer and an itch to get back out there and do it again soon.

     If I have learned anything from my last several redfish excursions it is that you have to stay confident and you cannot give up on the fish. They are there and they will bite you just need to figure them out. So many people give up shortly after the morning bite turns off and they leave thinking the fish just weren't hungry. Next time you go and they do not want to cooperate, keep at it. Throw everything in the tackle box at them. Stay positive and stay out there. If all else fails, bring a couple cold ones and share a few stories about the days when they were biting.

-Good Hunting

 

Smoked Redfish

The best part about going on these hunting and fishing trips is the fact that I get to bring back so much fresh protein for my girlfriend Jill and all of our friends to share. There is nothing I enjoy more than sharing my catch or kill with the people I love most. Some people do not care for the meat they hunt or fish for, they just enjoy the sport. For me it is all about the meal that comes after adventure. This time I was lucky enough to score some beautiful Redfish filets. There are so many great recipes for this delicacy but my personal favorite is Smoked Redfish on the Half Shell. This recipe is extremely simple to make and easy to modify to your specific taste.

Preparation:

 I use a very small list of ingredients because I hate to cover up the wonderful natural taste that these fish have to offer. The key to this dish is to get a charcoal grill smokin’ hot. Once I have my coals red hot, about 500 degrees, I like to place a handful of soaked pecan wood chips directly on the coals. As soon I put my wood chips on the grill I like to place my Redfish (scale side down) on the rack directly over the heat source. These filets should take no more than 10 minutes to cook all of the way through. You do not want to overcook these fish. Right before I take my fish off the grill I like to put a small dollop of butter on the fattest part of each filet. I then close the lid and let the butter melt (30 seconds max). Once the butter is melted I take my fish off the grill, garnish with chopped green onions and serve over a nice bed of jasmine rice and a green vegetable on the side.

This recipe can be used with many fish but these Redfish are great because of their thick scales. They will become charred during the cooking process but the fish will not be burned. They act as a barrier for the fish meat and allow you to flake the meat away with ease. Enjoy.

Ingredients:

2-6 fresh Redfish filets (scales on) depending on how many guests

¼ tsp paprika

¼ tsp fresh parsley

¼ tsp garlic powder

¼ tsp onion powder

½ cup chopped green onions

A dash of black pepper, cayenne, Cajun seasoning or Old bay for those in MD

¼ stick of butter

1 tbsp EVOO

 

Prep time: 1:00 (this includes time for the coals to heat up and a few cold ones to be consumed)

Cook time: 10 minutes

Venice Vendetta

There comes a point on some hunting and fishing trips when adventure and stupidity meet to from a fork in the road. This past Saturday I was at that fork, and we almost took the wrong one. Down one road was a day filled with fun and adventure catching whatever the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico had to offer. Down the other road was a near death experience riding a twenty one foot bay boat in four to five foot whitecaps. I think you can see where this story is going.

My good friend Mackenzie and I like to spend our free weekends patrolling the fresh waters of the Atchafalaya Basin and some surrounding water in search of dark green swamp bass. We had planned to do just that for my birthday last weekend when he got an offer to go catch snapper in a little place called Venice, Louisiana. For those who are not familiar with this place it has been called “the fishing capital of the world” by some of the best in the business.

Venice offers such a unique fishery with its abundance of species and the different environments in which you can catch these species. You can make one turn out of the marina and be engulfed in nutrient rich marshland that holds monster redfish and speckled trout. If you have the boat and the gas money, the Gulf of Mexico is just a short ride out of South Pass. Species in the gulf include Tuna, Kobia, Amberjack, Snapper and the elusive Black Marlin, amongst others. As tempting as offshore fishing is, it is not always guaranteed and not always for the faint of heart. The open waters of the Gulf are not a very forgiving place, especially in a small vessel. Before crossing into the vast open water there is a small bay that can offer an appetizer of what type of water lies ahead. When the bay is providing two to three feet chop you can only imagine what mother nature may have in store for you outside of the pass. But like any group of adventurous ‘young adults’ we forged on without a care in the world.

Now let it be noted that I am a very inexperienced saltwater angler, but an angler none the less. Although the waters did seem a bit on the rough side, I followed the unwritten rule “trust the captain” and to be honest the thought of hooking into a 75lb Kobia was a bit overwhelming and spurred me on. We pressed on toward a familiar oil rig with all of the boat’s occupants growing ever more anxious every time the hull smashed into the trough between two whitecaps. After what seemed like a month and my spine feeling compressed like a slinky, we arrived at the rig. As we cut the engine off and realized there were no other boats anywhere near our location, several waves began to peak over the bow. This is where, in my mind, things went from adventurous to dicey. When an experienced offshore angler like Mackenzie asks for a life jacket, you may want to look up towards the clouds and ask the big Guy for a favor. Thankfully for us, the captain was able to swallow his pride and realize this was not our day to catch Snapper. As we got the boat turned around and headed with grain of the waves instead on directly at them, everyone on board seemed to take a deep breath of the hot salty air and be thankful we were headed to chase Redfish instead of becoming a primetime slot on next year’s Shark Week.

With a “what the hell were we thinking” look plastered on my face, my thoughts turned from treading water to pitching shrimp into shallow marshlands. As we approached the first spot it was time to crack a cold one and get down to doing what we came for, filling a cooler full of South Louisiana Redfish. As soon as we had our lines in the water captain J-Rod was reeling in the first keeper of the day. In my mind we were on our way to turning the trip around. We had questioned Mother Nature and though she scolded us we lived to fight another day. And fight we did. We spent the better part of two hours picking up a few more keepers and trolling around wondering if it was our day or not. Then came that moment when you and an old fishing buddy look at one another and a light bulb clicks simultaneously in both of your minds.

As Mackenzie and I looked around it was clear to both of us that the marshes of Venice are no different than the waters we troll outside of Baton Rouge. Sure we were targeting another species, but if our tricks work in the swamp, why can’t they work in the marsh? Could flipping and pitching fifteen feet off the bow net us the Bull Reds that have made this area famous? We weren’t sure, but we did know one thing, we were going to give these fish everything that we had.

After some prodding, we convinced the captain to lead us down a small cut just off of the main river into a familiar scenario, trolling grass lines. We were back at home. The action was slow at first, but once we landed the first Red, it got pretty hot. Tailing Redfish were absolutely everywhere.   We could not get lines in the water fast enough. If a fish wasn’t taking the hook, he was at least forcing you to rebait. We had found the honey hole, a skinny stretch of brackish water that held keeper after keeper. One by one these fish found an icy grave. If it were not for one of Venice’s famous thunderstorms we would have finished more than the three limits we had. However we had tempted fate once today and that was enough for all of us. With lightning bolts at our backs, we made our way to the marina to show off the day’s haul.

 It was quite an adventure that day in Venice, and like many other trips the ending was not exactly what we had pictured. If you ask me though, these are the trips that make the best stories. These are the trips that will live in our memories for years to come.   When I come home from any trip my girlfriend usually greets me with universal question “So, how was it?”.   As I hugged her a bit longer than normal, thankful to be home on dry land, the answer was a bit more complicated. So I ask you, next time you find yourself at a fork in the road, which way will you go?

 

Good Hunting