Blog Friends around the world – greetings!  Chad here on what is the very last day of the summer.  As I type in our now-quiet office, I’m receiving text messages from leaders in San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle, all to the same effect – “all kids through security – lots of tears and we’re really tired, but really happy, too…”  Oh, my friends, the bittersweet end of the Apogee season!

It was, without question, Apogee’s best year yet – from picnics on Nantucket beaches to riding through sequoia groves, from camping in the shadow of Yosemite’s Half Dome to eating gelato in Pitigliano, from descending through wildflowers on the far side of the Continental Divide to making it up Mount Washington on a perfect July day, from planting hundreds of tropical trees to glissading down Olympic snowfields, from paddling with sea lions off of Santa Barbara to cycling past the cows in Vermont valleys, from warm baguettes in Quebec and Montreal to swimming in the cold waves of the Pacific Ocean – this summer was enough to give us all goosebumps.  So – from me, from Kevin, from Michele, Sam, Ally and the rest of the gang back here at headquarters and in the field – thanks so very much for being a part of this amazing project – whether you were with us in Tuscany, California or anywhere in between, and indeed, whether you were with us in the field or enthusiastically following along from home.  We can’t imagine a better way to spend a summer.

One last picture for the summer blog – this courtesy of California Mountains & Coast leader Tim Hunt.  This is his group camping in the Yosemite backcountry under a perfect nightime sky, but the fact of the matter is, it could have been any of our groups, anywhere in the world.