Costa Rica · My Thoughts · Travel

Remember My Extreme Costa Rica, 2020 Trip?

Featured Larada Horner-Miller
Remember The Rain Forest Canopy in Costa Rica
The Rain Forest Canopy in Costa Rica

Have you ever thought about going to Costa Rica? A year later, I remember the amazing trip we had to Costa Rica in 2020 and sigh deeply! A trip of a lifetime, and I want to go back!! Let’s revisit my blog posts about this trip for your travel pleasure and mine. Victoria, the trip organizer, and Enrique, our guide, put together a fun-filled trip with variety and adventure. We spent time in villages shopping, in the rain forest looking for exotic animals and by the ocean soaking up the sun! You couldn’t have asked for a better experience!

Map of Central America and Costa Rica
So where is Costa Rica?

So, visit any or all of my blog posts about this wonderful trip to get a glimpse of this beautiful country:

I’m a great one to remember anniversaries of special events in my life—this is one that has been reeling around in my mind for most of January and February because we traveled there in January 2020, but I wrote my narrative mostly in February.

Remember a coatimundi we saw on our trip
A Coatimundi we saw on our trip!

I have thousands of pictures that I have revisited; snapshots of a world so different from my dry desert and mountains of New Mexico. Thinking back, this trip challenged me to expand myself in so many ways, and I’m always up for a challenge!

The group we traveled with became known as, “The Dirty Dozen” and has kept connected through the year with a couple Zoom get-togethers. It’s funny how we remember key events and retell the stories again and again. Facebook also keeps us abreast of each other’s lives. Initially, most of us didn’t know each other, but after twelve days of adventure, exploration, and spending travel time in a van, we became close friends. We plan to journey again some time, some place whenever we can. When you find people you can travel with, keep them close!

So, do you travel? Have you had a trip of a lifetime? More than one? Have you been to Costa Rica? If so, what was your favorite city? Area?

Did you miss one of my recent blogs? Here’s a chance to see the last three weeks:

Just Another Square Dance Caller Meme

~HAVE YOU ORDERED YOUR AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF THE FLIPPO BIOGRAPHY? AVAILABLE NOW! Go to the homepage on my website & pay for it there: https://www.laradasbooks.com

~Here’s Christmas greetings from Flippo & Neeca, featuring his song, “When Its Christmas Time in Texas”: https://youtu.be/mpJCUGffU3A

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~VISIT MARY ZALMANEK, A FRIEND’S BLOG: Cooking in a One-Butt Kitchen | Eating Well in Small Spaces: https://cookinginaonebuttkitchen.com/

Published by Larada Horner-Miller

Larada Horner-Miller is a poet, essayist and accomplished multi-genre author who holds a bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in Spanish and a master of education degree in Integrating Technology into the Classroom. She is the accomplished author of six award-winning biographies, historical fiction, memoir, and poetry works plus three self-published cookbooks. Her sixth book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, is available in paperback and four e-book formats. Larada offers the reader the opportunity to look back at 2020 and the global pandemic through her prose and poetry through reading, then reflecting and responding. She addresses all the emotions she felt during this overwhelming time and leads the reader through to a self-access: bitter or better? Her fifth book is the authorized memoir and biography of world-renown square dance caller Marshall “Flip” Flippo. Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flippo is available now in hardback, paperback and four e-book formats. Recently Just Another Square Dance Caller won two awards: Book Excellence Awards Finalist and Silver award for eLit. Book Awards. Another recent book of hers, A Time to Grow Up: A Daughter's Grief Memoir has won many awards including being a 2018 Book Excellence Awards Finalist in the Memoir category at the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and a 2018 Independent Press Distinguished Favorites Award in the Memoir category. Horner-Miller has also been a past national presenter at the Women Writing the West Conference and is currently the creator of Memoir Workshops for others who want to share their family’s legacies through words. Larada and her husband, Lin, enjoy being nestled in the mountains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, near the village of Tijeras. When not writing books, this passionate, energetic, and enthusiastic woman loves to spend time kicking up her heels at square dancing gatherings, traveling, knitting, and reading. As co-manager of her family’s southeastern Colorado ranch, she enjoys spending time exploring her family’s historic ranch and reminiscing with her brother and his children about their mom, dad, and granddad.

4 thoughts on “Remember My Extreme Costa Rica, 2020 Trip?”

  1. Trip of my lifetime? It will take four books to tell my lifetime. Foremost trip in memory was in our (Dad, Mom and I) new 1954 Chevrolet. After Grandma Eva Mathews died, we shipped her to Seattle for burial. Then, Daddy said, “Now that we don’t have to stay close to home to watch Grandma, I want to show you San Francisco. I fell in love with Mill Valley and Mt. Tam, and really, really wanted to live there.
    But, Daddy felt free to move on to another government job (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), so we left Walla Walla, WA (Snake River Dam project was completed) and went to Branson, MO, for the Table Rock Dam project. He went ahead in the Chevy with my cat Snowball and Gramma Bennett (Dad’s mom). Mom and I were left with the ’39 Chevy, which we sold, and friends took us to the train station in Pendleton, OR. During the trip east, a layover gave me my first view of 17th Avenue in Denver, CO. We took a local train from Kansas City to Reed Spring, MO.

    I loved the train so much, I wanted to work for them. My Walla Walla school writing project in 7th grade was about trains. But I couldn’t work for them as a porter, because I was white and female.

    With Mike Stangel, we worked five months in 1996 for Morgan Driveaway, delivering Winnebagos out of Iowa, and other cars and motorcoachs on return trips. We drove 14 trips and slept in 44 states and two Canadian provinces. In 2004, with Homer Ramsey and his Safari Trek, I traveled and danced for three months, and totaled 8,000 miles, west to NSDC in Portland, Oregon and east to Dance-A-Rama in Atlanta, Georgia. With Sam Koen, I shared the driving to San Antonio, TX, for the 2006 National Square Dance Convention.

    For my first visit east to my daughter Ruth and kids, I drove Jim Yaley’s car in 2009. I was overjoyed to be driving across America! Subsequent trips were via Amtrak – another joy for Joy!

    And, now here I am, a “Stranger in a (not-so) Strange Land”, and living happily alone again during a pandemic. My son takes me on memorable trips on alternate Saturdays.

    The best trip? I’ll have to say 2009 to a genealogical conference at Shrine Mont, in Orkney Springs, VA — because I drove across the USA by myself and kick-started my family history research in three memorable days. I went back there (2 years ago?) for family camp with Ruth and kids, and we’ll go again when it is held.

    Hugs! Joy

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