These young ladies were our "Naturalist" on our snorkel trip to Molokini and the Turtle Arches with the Pacific Whale Foundation. As they started talking to us about the fish, whales and turtles we might see on our tour, one of the ladies jumped off the boat to dive down and grab the permanent mooring to "anchor" us to our spot and all I could think was,"Wow, I could of been doing this at 23 (bang head, band head, bang head)".
When I was 23, I was ready for an adventure. I was on my 5th year of college getting a degree in biology, it seemed to be taking forever. I was offered an internship at the SF Zoo and offered an opportunity to study dolphins at Marine World, USA after asking my professor a question she didn't know the answer to about her research dolphins. For some reason these two opportunities seemed too "tied down for me".
I had spent 3 months in Paris a couple years earlier and I knew I wanted to travel more, have an adventure. My boyfriend innocently mentioned that his dad invited us to come to Alaska, stay with him, until we got settled and check it out. At this time, we were pretty active hikers and skiing as often as we could, two things we could definitely do in Alaska. 
A few months later, we were on our way, driving the Al-Can to Alaska, in our cars both packed to the tipping point with our belongings (except our bicycles, for another story). Eighteen years later, we're still here and it still, occasionally, feels like an adventure, but more and more it's home.
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