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I have a group of photography friends who love to go on "photo adventures."  We'll just pick a destination, and head out with our cameras, tripods and a sense of adventure.  We'll often stop along the way for lunch or dinner and usually a bag or two of Skittles or Cheetos! We have become family.

Last night conditions were favorable to be able to see the Northern Lights.  I have seen them twice in my lifetime and photographed them once.  It was truly an awe inspiring moment.  My friend Gary and I headed north to find the darkest spot possible, away from the lights of the city.  We talked about photography, family and bats!  We stood in the snow and the cold for hours waiting to catch a glimpse of the dancing colors of the northern lights, but the clouds had other ideas. 

See, the thing with taking an adventure is that if things do pan out the way you think they will, there is always something else to see and photograph.  We have never gone on an adventure and come back with nothing.  That's what makes it an adventure.  If you go to Horicon Marsh to photograph the birds on the marsh, and there aren't any, you just head down the road to the first dead end road you find.  It reminds me of the Robert Frost poem.  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled and it has made all the difference.

Life is like that.  Gary and I would have been perfectly content to stay home, but we chose to take a chance on seeing the northern lights.  Did we see them?  No.  Did we enrich our lives by getting out last night?  Yes! 

Go on an adventure.  You don't even need to be a photographer.  Head to the nearest State Park, lake, or nature preserve.  Take a friend, your kids, or go by yourself.  Look at all the beauty around you and start taking your own adventures!