{"id":6454,"date":"2013-12-04T09:48:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T14:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=6454"},"modified":"2013-12-04T09:51:15","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T14:51:15","slug":"me-and-my-ducky-on-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/me-and-my-ducky-on-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Me and My Ducky, On the Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gadfly_Ducky_585x585\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last winter I hit the road in my pickup for a long road trip to get away from the east coast\u00a0and explore the country. The rough plan was to take a meandering western route across the\u00a0southern part of the United States, visit family outside of Los Angeles, make my way up through\u00a0Canada to Alaska and eventually meander my way back east across the northern U.S. before\u00a0returning home to Delaware. I packed my truck with my camera, about 30 books, an iPod full of\u00a0music and, as a good friend suggested, a rubber ducky on my dashboard. By the end of the trip,\u00a0me and my ducky had seen some beautiful sights as we\u2019d driven almost 21,000 miles, traveled\u00a0through 34 States and 3 Canadian Provinces, endured one breakdown and several cracked\u00a0windshields, while I lost forty pounds, got a lot closer to a grizzly bear than I ever thought I\u2019d be\u00a0and took nearly 13,000 pictures. Along the way, ducky occasionally managed to overcome his\u00a0shyness and pop up in a few of those pictures. What follows are a few of the highlights from\u00a0ducky\u2019s travels with me on the road.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0001-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Perched on the dash on a cold March day, here\u2019s ducky after just hitting the road out of\u00a0Wilmington, Delaware.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0004\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky playing in the snow at New River Gorge National River, West Virginia, on a cold, dark,\u00a0snowy day.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0009\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky looking out from his perch at Monument Rocks, a surprisingly large rock formation\u00a0rising out of the middle of nowhere in flat western Kansas.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0017\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky taking it all in at a partially frozen over lake along the Top of the Rockies Byway,\u00a0Colorado.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0022\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky at Arches National Park, Utah, on a beautiful day.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0033\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky feeling particularly at home at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0044\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– At Joshua Tree National Park, California, ducky decides that he still hasn\u2019t found what he\u2019s\u00a0looking for.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0057\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Here\u2019s ducky after he had a few too many while out with some crazy locals on a boat in the\u00a0middle of Westlake Lake in California.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0061\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Always open to new experiences, ducky enjoys his time in the tasting room at Mosby Winery,\u00a0California.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0070\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky sunning himself at the base of a small waterfall in Sequoia National Park, California.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0073\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Later that same day, here\u2019s ducky taking a short rest along the General Sherman Tree Trail in\u00a0Sequoia National Park, California.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0077\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– After a long day of driving, here\u2019s ducky at the lowest point in the continental U.S., the salt\u00a0flats of Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, California.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0080\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky taking in the scenery at Francis Ford Coppola Winery, California<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0083\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky about to take a dip in the Pacific, someplace just off of the Pacific Coast Highway in\u00a0Oregon.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0085\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– While stopping to spread his wings, here\u2019s ducky along the Alaska Highway just outside of\u00a0Haines Junction, Yukon Territory, with the gorgeous mountain ranges of Kluane Canadian\u00a0National Park and Reserve in the distance.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0087\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– A bit further up the Alaska Highway, just outside of Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory, ducky\u00a0was disappointed to find that he couldn\u2019t go for a swim because Kluane Lake was frozen over.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0093\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Me and my ducky in a tiny plane on a flightseeing tour around Mt. McKinley high above Denali\u00a0National Park, Alaska.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0110\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Having already been to the lowest point in the U.S., here ducky poses on the fuselage after we\u00a0landed on a glacier in front of Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0112a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– After saying goodbye to Alaska, ducky getting ready to head back down the Alaska Highway\u00a0into the Yukon, again just east of Port Alcan at the Yukon\/Alaska border.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0111a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky at the international boundary between the U.S. and Canada, just east of Port Alcan on\u00a0the Alaska Highway.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0125\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ever aware of his surroundings, ducky\u2019s finely tuned ducky senses allowed him to just barely\u00a0escape danger and avoid a herd of buffalo as they tramped by in Yellowstone National Park,\u00a0Wyoming.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0132\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky taking in the majesty of Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota.<\/p>\n

\"Ducky-0136\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– Ducky relaxing on driftwood on the cold and windy shores of Lake Superior in Duluth,\u00a0Minnesota.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last winter I hit the road in my pickup for a long road trip to get away from the east coast and explore the country. The rough plan was to take a meandering western route across the southern part of the United States, visit family outside of Los Angeles, make my way up through Canada to Alaska and eventually meander my way back east across the northern U.S. before returning home to Delaware. I packed my truck with my camera, about 30 books, an iPod full of music and, as a good friend suggested, a rubber ducky on my dashboard. What follows are a few of the highlights from ducky\u2019s travels with me on the road. <\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":6484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,218,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6454"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6491,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454\/revisions\/6491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}