Driving west from Lincoln to Grand Island, Nebraska, Paul A. Johnsgard remarks, is like driving backward in time. "I suspect," he says, "that the migrating cranes of a preice age period some ten million years ago would fully understand every nuance of the crane conversation going on today along the Platte."

The rollicking and often poignant adventures of a family, hell-bent on discovering what lies just over the horizon and willing to walk, ride, paddle, and crawl to get there. From the Outer Banks to the wild Pacific Rim, from the Canadian Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico-few areas of the continent have been spared the footprints, tent stakes, and occasional trespasses of these intrepid travelers. Blizzards, bears, angry moose, and tippy canoes were their lifetime companions, and they stared them all down with the appropriate degree of terror and ineptitude. These adventures take the reader on a journey across country as well as a journey through time. As the miles and years slip by, the travelers were reduced to three-the author and his wife and their loyal dog, Sophie. Now it was time to travel more slowly, to paddle quietly through canoe country and ponder the meaning of life, death and the unknown, destinations still beckoning beyond the horizon.