I have been talking about my 50 by 50 goals, it is a list of 50 things I want to do before I turn 50. What are these mysterious things you want to do, you say. Well, here is my list. 50 plus some bonus items. All the things I would like to accomplish by 2023! #50by50

1. Do a hot springs tour in Colorado
2. Hike at least 2 14ers
3. Travel to Greece
4. Have my businesses well established
5. Travel to Poland (at least 2 times)
6. Find my forever home
7. Hit 15 of the 58 National Parks I have not visited
8. Hike in 6 of the 13 National Parks I have been to
9. Camp for a weekend
10. Camp for a week
11. Camp in 1 national Park (at least)
12. Learn how to crochet
13. Learn how to knit
14. Complete my family Tree Kopij/Rogowski
15. Travel to Hawaii
16. Travel to Fiji
17. Stay in a beach side/over water hut/house
18. Travel to Iceland
19. Napa Valley Wine Tour/Wine Train
20. Write a book
21. Publish a book
22. Visit Lake Havasau
23. Take dance lessons
24. Get a tatoo
25. Stay in a bed and breakfast
26. Stay at a resort
27. Play a round of golf
28. Go to a professional football team game
29. Go to a professional lacrosse game
30. Take a trip with my brother
31. Attend a theater performance
32. Visit the Seattle Fish Market
33. Stars home tour in LA
34. Brewery Tour in Colorado
35. Travel to Canada
36. Coast to coast road trip
37. Take my daughters to Chicago
38. Travel to Italy
39. Go on a cruise
40. Train trip across America
41. Take Angelika to Las Vegas
42. Take Angelika to Old Town San Diego
43. Read 500 Books
44. Create a fairy garden
45. Take the train to Glenwood Spring, CO
46. Complete half o my needlework kits
47. Make the beaded ornaments I have
48. Hike all the hikes in 2 of the 4 hiking books I have
49. Ride at least 100 miles on my bike
50. Ride on a mountain bike trail

Here are the extras that I have added

• Stay in a mountain cabin for a week
• Go to 3 movies a week
• Go ice skating
• Visit the Golden Gate Bridge
• Visit the castles built in Colorado
• Have my grocery shopping automated
• Hit my 30 day challenges consistently
• Small train tours in Colorado
• Visit the Hollywood sign
• Visit Malibu Beach
• Visit Venice Beach
• Hot Springs tour in America
• Stay in one hotel in a National Park
• Grow my record collection
• Take a geology course
• Go to the Smithsonian
• Get my wine tasting degree from the Napa Valley Academy
• Take the blue wine from Spain
• Get healthy and in shape
• Be organized and pre-planned
• Make my blogs visited and successful
• Write my blog continuously
• Loose 100 pounds
• Go to another concert
• Go to a Polka Dot Power house Celebration.

Quite a list you say. Yes, yes it is! It puts a fire under me and excites me to be able to plan and execute these goals. And to write about my journey is a plus and a dream as well. I would love to hear about your goals and any suggestions! Until next time! Thanks for reading!! #50by50

Happy New Year everyone!!  Time for a new slate some would say.  I see it as a time to regroup and pick up the pieces that fell away during the previous year.  And that is one of my goals for the first 3 months of 2019, pick up the pieces, put them back together and get back on track!   My blog has been one of those things that was dropped, (with great sadness as I love to write!) and it is one of those pieces I am going to pick up and put back in place.  Especially since it has to do with 50 by 50 goals!!  At this point, I am 4 years away from the dead line, 4 years and 2 months to be exact!!  So it is time to continue planning and completing my challenges.

When I left off last time, I was going over one of my challenges which I was planning. the number of national parks I would like to visit before February 2023.  To recap, there are 58 National Parks in the country.  Of these,  have visited 13 and I have 45 left to visit. That is a lot of parks!!  On top of the 45 I have not been to, I am wanting to revisit some of the ones that I have visited to hike and possibly camp in them. A lot of these parks I visited when I was younger and did not do my research only to find out when we got there, a lot of what we wanted to see was a hike.  And with 2 small kids, not prepared clothing, food, shoe and equipment wise, we had to forego them.

Here is the last excerpt from my last blog:

To try to hit the 45 that I have not yet visited in 5 years, I will have to travel to 9 a year to hit that! It is already July, so I technically have 4.5 years left to complete this!  The only one of any of the national parks I can be sure that I hit this is Rocky!  One of my go tos!  LOL!!  So add back the 11 I want to see again and there are 56!!  56 national parks to visit in 4.5 years!   11.2 a year to reach my goal!!  I am going to have to figure this out!!!

So this is where I left off, in the middle of planning my national park adventure.   In the proceeding weeks, I am going to list out all my goals, including some bonus goals, finish my national park plan, plan my other adventures and talk about a trip to a destination that is on my list but I am hoping to go back under better circumstances.

I invite you to follow, enjoy, comment and partake on my journey!!

At the beginning of this year, I joined an awesome women’s networking group called Polka Dot Powerhouse where I have met some amazing women and a few have inspired me and help me grow.  I am so super thankful to them as my life has changed for the better and they have given me tools to get there.  One of these amazing people is the Managing Director of Polka Dot for the Arvada, Colorado chapter, Jacki Cox.  She announced that she was doing a 40 by 40 challenge to celebrate turning 40 next year.  She created a list of 40 things she would like to accomplish by then and she invited others to join in with her.  I thought and pondered and then realized, hey, I will be turning 50 in 5 years!!  That is super crazy, right?!?!?!  Where did the time fly?   So I decided to do a 50 by 50 list.  50 things I would like to accomplish before I turn 50!  I have been thinking on this list and pondering, what exactly I would like to accomplish.  There are so many things that I have said I wanted to do, but have I really written any of them down? Not really.  Have actually planned any of them?  Not really.  I just hoped they would just come up naturally and I could cross them off “my list”, the one that is not actually written down!  I have had this list on my to do list for awhile as well and have kept putting off and putting it off.  Well, Jacki completed one of her items this weekend, she hiked her first 14er!!!  I am so excited for her and she and Alana Wright, who completed this 14er with Jacki have so inspired me today, that I actually complied my list.  And I am super excited to get going on it!!  I am actually going to be planning and making this all happen!! My heart is soaring and the surge of energy I feel right now is so amazing!!!

I started to work on the list and I have come to a bit of a challenge here!!  I wanted to visit every single national park we have in this country. But how many is that???  Well,  I Google this fun fact and, did you know, that there are 58 National Parks in the U.S.??  58!!!!  That is a feat that you need a lot of time off and flexibility to be able to travel around the country, seeing these national parks.  So, time to start eliminating!  I created a list of the parks I have had the chance to visit, all I have visited with my ex-husband except for 1.  So here are the parks I have been to and they are not in order of when I visited them.

1. Arches – Utah
2. Bryce Canyon -Utah
3. Canyon Lands – Utah
4. Carlsbad Caverns -New Mexico
5. Glacier National – Montana
6. Grand Canyon – Arizona
7. Grand Teton – Wyoming
8. Joshua Tree – California
9. Petrified Forest – Arizona
10. Rocky Mountain – Colorado
11. Mesa Verde – Colorado
12. Yellowstone – Wyoming/Montana/Idaho
13. Zion – Utah

So I have 45 left to visit.  Not bad, right?   9 parks a year!  That is still something you have to have great flexibility for! But there are some of those parks above that I want to visit again.  So I listed those out.  Ha ha!!!  It comes out that I want to go to all of them again!!!   Yellowstone and Rocky I have been to a lot.  Rocky is my go to at the moment and I can go there every week if I like, or at least 1 to 2 times a month as this is on my hiking schedule!  So I can say 11 of the 13 I want to visit again!

To try to hit the 45 that I have not yet visited in 5 years, I will have to travel to 9 a year to hit that! It is already July, so I technically have 4.5 years left to complete this!  The only one of any of the national parks I can be sure that I hit this is Rocky!  One of my go tos!  LOL!!  So add back the 11 I want to see again and there are 56!!  56 national parks to visit in 4.5 years!   11.2 a year to reach my gaol!!  I am going to have to figure this out!!!

Below is the list of the national parks in the U.S.  I got this list from http://www.nationapark-adventures.com.  It is by state and it has the year it was established.