Salmon Fishing, Soldotna

Women can be and are adventurous too.  And that doesn’t make us an anomaly.  If I have to hear one more time “You like to do this?! I would never get my wife out here!”, I might lose it.  On this road trip we have met lots of people from all over the country and the world, from all walks of life, taking lots of different kinds of road trips.  Over and over and over again, Ryan has been congratulated (almost exclusively by men) on finding himself a wife who would agree to a trip like this – the implication being that women aren’t supposed to like to do these kinds of things; outdoorsy, adventurous, rugged things.  “Wow you’ve got yourself quite a wife, I could never get mine to live in such a small camper!  She couldn’t live without her kitchen or her bathroom mirror!”  Nobody is looking at me wondering how I managed to get my husband out on the road like this.  Now there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to go camping and not wanting to live out of a tiny camper spending your days hiking and fishing.  I know plenty of people for whom this would be miserable – both men and women.  The problem is that solely because I’m a girl, people assume that these aren’t supposed to be my hobbies, and I’m not supposed to want to go adventuring and wandering like this.

Arizona sunset from the camper, Sonoran Desert

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