“We have two lives; the second begins when we realize we only have one.” - Confucius
Jaci M Smith
I have always loved a good adventure. I can remember riding horses in the Cascade Mountains with my mom, biking with my little brother around the island we grew up on, and swimming from one public beach to another in the frigid Puget Sound with a friend as a kid. What were we thinking? Eventually it turned into hiking with my best friends and even some cold plunges in some alpine lakes and snowboarding in my home state of Washington and out into Canada, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. I sprinkled in any bit of fun that I had the opportunity to along the way, wakeboarding, rafting, kayaking, scuba diving, skydiving, flying small aircrafts, ziplines, carnival rides… You get the point. Then I moved onto solo hikes through my broke college years. I tried to work my way through a day hikes of Bozeman book where I graduated from Montana State University with a B.S. in Chemistry.
After graduation, I took a job with a manufacturing company in Cody, Wyoming where I transitioned from local day hikes to international treks as soon as my student loans were paid off. I had been dreaming of hiking around the world for so long and I worried that I had overhyped it in my mind. I was so relieved to discover that I loved exploring this world as much as I thought I would. I continued to trek domestically and internationally whenever I had the opportunity. I slowly realized that my obsession with adventure and chasing new experience was becoming more than just a hobby thus Jaci Explores was born.