My Bucket List

My Polar Bear Selfie

The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.                  ~ Oprah Winfrey

I remember writing my first bucket list, it was almost thirty years ago.  I only put on twenty items, my thinking was not as expansive as it is these days.  I would write additional bucket lists over the years as the items on my earlier lists were completed.  Not that that I’ve ever completed all of them, the first item on the list has always been on the list.

Aurora while photographing Polar Bears in the Arctic

However, I knew even when I wrote the first list, I knew as a child that I always wanted to travel.  My curiosity is immense and likely insatiable, I have always realized that I’ve wanted to see everything, know everything, as impossible as that obviously would be in a single or even multiple lifetimes.  But that hasn’t stopped me from trying and that will be obvious from my list.  The list is heavy on places, but that shouldn’t be seen as limiting, because the journey to these places, that travel, provides experiences that are priceless.  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my first view of the Treasury Building in Petra, peeking through the Siq, camels kneeling on the ground for anything.  But as amazing as that vision was, it was the journey to Petra that was so fantastic.  My first time in a Middle Eastern country, my days in Wadi Rum with the Bedouin, conversations with cab drivers and locals, almost driving into an ISIS attack that killed 30 people, and bobbing like a cork in the Dead Sea.  All of those experiences were wrapped up in the seed of one item on the bucket list, going to Petra.  Although swimming in the Dead Sea had also long been on my list.

Rev Kane at Petra

So, I’m sharing my list with you tonight (in no order of importance), using this post as a reason to reconstruct a new one, in hopes it will inspire you as well my friends.  Not just to draw up your own list, which I hope you will do.  Writing the list is a fun little dreaming exercise of its own.  But even more importantly in hopes that in creating your list, in reading my own adventures, that you’ll start checking off items on your own list and have happier days my friends.  ~ Rev Kane

My Bucket List

1.  See the Great Pyramid at Giza
2.  Travel to outer space
3.  Complete the Appalachian Trail
4.  Hike at least 500 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail
5.  Hike the Western Highland Way in Scotland
6.  Hike in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco
7.  Hike the Overland Track in Australia
8.  Hike 500km on the Te Araroa trail in New Zealand
9.  Hike to Machu Pichu
10.  Hike in Patagonia
11.  Do a walking tour in Kenya
12.  Hike at least 500 miles on the Trans-Canada Trail
13.  Bicycle across the United States
14.  See Stonehenge
15.  Walk on the Glaciers of Greenland
16.  Go to Iceland
17.  See Mount McKinley
18.  Take an Ocean Voyage
19.  Kayak the coast of California
20.  Kayak the Zambezi River
21.  See mountain Gorillas in the wild
22.  See an elephant in the wild
23.  See a lion in the wild
24.  See a hippo in the wild
25.  See a right whale in the wild
26.  See a grizzly bear in the wild
27.  See a tiger in the wild
28.  See a snow leopard
29.  Go on a bigfoot expedition
30.  Photograph the great migration
31.  Swim in the Devil’s Pool at Victoria Falls
32.  See Iguazu Falls in Brazil
33.  Do a cage dive with Great White Sharks
34.  See a Rhino in the wild
35.  Go to Marrakesh (done)
36.  Go to Tangier (done)
37.  Hike the Muir Trail
38.  Hike Rim to Rim at the Grand Canyon
39.  Photograph the Wave in Arizona
40.  Go to Tonga
41.  Go to Tuvalu
42.  Go to the Cook Islands
43.  Visit Cappadocia, Turkey
44.  Go to Up Helly Aa
45.  Go to Angkor Wat
46.  Go to the Great Barrier Reef
47.  Visit Australia
48.  Go to Antarctica
49.  Visit the Galapagos Islands
50.  Visit Vietnam
51.  Go to Carnival in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil
52.  Surf a sand dune in Fortaleza, Brazil
53.  Visit Italy
54.  See the Taj Mahal
55.  Backpack in India
56.  Backpack in Thailand
57.  Go to Bangkok
58.  Hike Rainbow Mountain in Peru
59.  Visit Norway
60.  Attend Diwali in India
61.  Run with the Bulls in Spain
62.  Visit Cuba
63.  Take a hot air balloon ride
64.  Skydive
65.  Do Peyote
66.  Do Ayahuasca
67.  Search for a buried treasure
68.  Do a century bicycle ride
69.  Float in a sensory deprivation tank
70.  Go to Timbuktu
71.  Go to the Louvre Museum
72.  Go to the Van Gogh Museum
73.  Climb Kilimanjaro
74.  On the same day, sunrise from Mt. Whitney, sunrise from Death Valley
75.  Go to Glacier National Park
76.  Watch a game at Wrigley Field (Done)
77.  Swim in a Great Lake
78.  Learn how to surf
79.  Go to Spanish language school in Oaxaca (done)
80.  Oaxaca for Day of the Dead (done)
81.  See an Orca in the wild
82.  Meet a penguin
83.  Photograph Antelope Canyon in Arizona
84.  Hang with Grey Whales in Baja
85.  Visit Bhutan
86.  Photograph the race track in Death Valley
87.  Go Parasailing
88.  Learn how to play the saxophone
89.  Learn Akido
90.  Publish a book of fiction
91.  Catch a stage of the Tour De France live
92.  Swim in Jellyfish Lake – Palau
93.  Start a business
94.  Too personal to post
95.  Hike to Kuang Si Falls in Laos
96.  Take a boat from Manaus to Fortaleza, Brazil on the Amazon
97.  Vagabond for at least 3 months
98.  Create an art prank like fairy houses
99. Find a meteorite
100. Swim in Iceland’s Blue Lagoon

Have any better suggestions, add them in the comments ~ Rev Kane