For Jody, (my Love, my Life.)

 From the ice breaker trip to Port Aux Basque,
to the Florida swamps and the Sea of Grass.
And in between we've seen wonderful sights
from Kansas wheat to the Big Sur nights.

We've trod many places, You and I,
making beautiful memories that will never die.
The Canadian Glaciers, across the Great Divide,
To Telluride and the tragic Mud Slide.

From Montrose to Durango with it's twists and turns,
the million dollar highway where a miner still yearns
to uncover the gold that the roadway has taken,
it lies there forever, unused and forsaken.

From Durango to Silverton on the Narrow Gauge train
in an open car with the smoke and rain.
Along the Animas river 'neath the soaring peaks,
where the souls of the dead still come to speak.

The Rio De Los Animas was the river's first name,
The 'River of Lost Souls' where the Spanish first came.
And the Lake City site, where Alfred Packer was said
to have eaten his family who were already dead.

The small town museums along the byways
remind us that these are the real good old days.
Meeting ordinary people throughout the land
we realized who makes our country so grand.

The capitol buildings of each and every state
posed a feeling of grandeur that made us feel great.
The Smithsonian we toured for six tiring days
finding food for our minds in this wondrous maze.

Then the art shops of Taos, the OK corral,
and old Fort Sumner where Billy the Kid fell.
The Yuma prison with it's dry dusty cells,
a story of misery and death it still tells.

We loved the beaches of Old Mexico
and remember the friends with whom we'd go.
The Pyramids and relics of the Yucatan
speak of the life and struggle of man.


The friends that we met on mountain trails
who still visit often, if only by mail.
And isn't it nice to have done all these things
so we can better enjoy what later life brings!

 Copyright © 1999 by Henry Custer. All rights reserved.