I think in an old post I referenced Sylvia, but I never really explained how she’s part of our trips now. I know this is a travel journal, and not really all that personal, but as Sylvia is very much a part of our travels now I thought this post was overdue.
Exploring new destinations is so important and interesting to me, personally, that I love hearing about my friend’s trips or reading trip reports, etc. Not all people are like that, but my friend Sylvia definitely was. She used to love hearing about our trips in detail, and I loved reliving them with her. When some friends and I (all from the US) visited Sylvia (in Canada) a few months after my trip to Africa, I was still high from the experience. Sylvia was basically a shut in at that point due to poor health, so one evening I asked if she wanted to see some videos we had taken on safari. The videos ranged from several seconds to several minutes, and there were over 70 of them. I had no idea we had so many, and I repeatedly told her we definitely didn’t have to watch them all. I thought it might be extremely boring, but she wanted to see them. We watched every single one and she truly enjoyed seeing the African terrain and marveled at the vibrant colors and the animals (especially the elephants).
Almost two months to the day after the visit Sylvia passed away. I truly struggled after that as I loved her dearly and she was the first close friend I had that passed away. 
I wanted to think of a way to keep Sylvia’s memory alive, and one day as I was looking around on Etsy I discovered these small marker stones that people get engraved to put on headstones, etc.. All of the sudden I knew exactly what we should do: get some stones made in Sylvia’s honor and start leaving them in the new places we traveled to.
I wasn’t sure if it was crazy doing it, and to be honest I didn’t care. Sometimes it was tricky, sometimes it was teary, but it always felt right.
The first five stone placements can be found in the next post, or right here.
Neeners Travels 