The Adventure Begins... Welcome! My childhood memories are vague; sketchy at best. But the memories that do stick with me, are of the trips we took, my mom and me. When you are only 4 years old, a 3.5 hour trip from Peoria, IL to northeast Missouri seems a grand adventure. Mom would wake me up at 5 in the morning, as she liked to get an early start. I would crawl into the back seat of the car, pajamas still on, with a blanket and pillow. Two miles from home, I would be fast asleep. About an hour into the trip, we would stop at a gas station where breakfast would consist of donuts and the little individual size cartons of chocolate milk, both; special treats. After making this trip a couple of times a year for several years, I had the route plotted. Not on a map, but in my mind, marked by landmarks that my child's mind deemed significant. The "dinosaur station" (Sinclair gas) where we had breakfast; "the ugly hill" (my adult eyes can see no difference from any other hill, but I know with a certainty when I see it, that this is my "ugly hill"); the crooked bridge (the draw bridge we used to cross the Mississippi river at Keokuck, Iowa); and finally, when we crossed the green bridge (called so for its chartruse green paint), I knew that Grandma's house was "just around the corner". Thus, long ago, my travel adventures began. Kivi For my part, I travel not to go anywhere,  but to go.  I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. --Robert Louis Stevenson Travels with a Donkey