The kickoff of the 2008 Wonder, Explore, Believe National Tour began on the KTLA Morning News in Los Angeles with reporter/producer Gayle Anderson. Gayle’s crew joined us at the Lance Camper manufacturing headquarters in Lancaster, California to document the launch. Of the many topics we discussed, the schedule of 49 states in 12 months was a reoccurring theme. I highlighted some of the many wild places we wanted to hit. Denali National Park in Alaska, the Everglades, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Moab, the Boundary Waters, the Badlands, Yosemite, Death Valley just to name a few.

At the 6-month mark with 28,000 miles logged on the Mobile Base Camp, it’s rearview mirror time. As I look back, I’ve learned a ton from some amazing people and fantastic places and situations.  One of the most etched in my mind is a place called Makoshika State Park.

It was late in the day with the sun setting. The Garmin GPS unit highlighted a “green space” on the map just ahead and a pretty decent size thunderstorm heading in the same direction.

In one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost ends the Road Less Traveled with “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

Makoshika State Park was a magnificent road less traveled and a huge surprise. Tucked away in eastern Montana (the fourth largest state in our country), just outside the town of Glendive, it holds the title of the largest State Park in Montana. With names like Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks to compete with, these “Bad Lands” (nicknamed by the Lakota people) seemed to fall just under the radar. Blown away by the terrain, natural beauty and the wild history of this area, the icing on the proverbial cake was the fossilized dinosaur bones. It wasn’t difficult at all to picture a tyrannosaurus rex or a triceratops roaming these lands. Hiking the better part of two days, every climb, twist and turn of this magnificent terrain was eye-catching and jaw dropping.

Though I could type pages about the natural beauty and history of this amazing place, the link to the website at the end of this entry will do a much better job. I wanted to share a realization about the “road less traveled” and the true meaning of the word adventure which the unplanned exploration of Makoshika reminded me.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the word “adventure” has its root meaning in the Latin “adventurus” which meant something ‘about to happen.’ Where expeditions are planned in advance, adventure is something that happens to us along the way, unrehearsed and unforeseen. Adventure and exploration are impromptu by their very nature. Impromptu, itself from the Latin ‘In-promptu’ or ‘in readiness’ suggests that adventure and exploration happen in the moment we find ourselves in. That being in the state of ‘in readiness’ while we explore the wild at hand, this is the true meaning of adventure.

As the Tour moves on from this point, it will be with this reminder front and center in my mind. That adventure is the name given to the surprises we accumulate along our exploration of any wild places. I’ve often heard the nickname or state motto of Montana as “Big Sky Country.” With a bit of research in Google, I found that it actually is called the “Treasure State.” Makes perfect sense to me.

For more detailed information on Makoshika State Park please click here.