At this stage, I can still subscribe to the point of not being distressed about aging. As much as I would like to have back the less hefty body, our health in general is quite good and there aren’t many things we’ve had to give up yet in the way of activities. We aren’t at Medicare age and we’re able to let our Social Security continue to build for at least another year, but tomorrow I do plan to take advantage of one of those lesser known benefits. (Yes, I usually take senior discounts in places where applicable.) The National Parks Senior Pass is $10-30 depending on which method you use to get it and it is a lifetime pass. That’s correct. It’s good in every single National Park and there are a lot more of them than many people realize. Not all of them have entry fees (our Biscayne Park doesn’t), but many do and even though it isn’t usually very expensive, still, it is a charge. Now, at the moment, we won’t be visiting a lot of National Parks because our focus continues to be dive trips when we aren’t on family-related or business travel. The simple truth is most of the parks are not in dive-friendly places, so they have to take a later priority. Hubby has been to the Grand Canyon and we have of course done Shenandoah and Blue Ridge.

The intent will be to incorporate multiple parks into road trips as many people do. The parks were my daddy’s destinations for plenty trips and he didn’t miss many of them when they were still able to travel. I think they were 84 or 85 when they made the last excursion. Despite his short-term memory loss issues, long term is still pretty good and there are the photos. And speaking of photos, with Hubby being such an excellent photographer now, I can only imagine what our collection will be like once we start on this particular path.