Oh, and I guess I have two other things to add.

To ST:  my late mother was also adventuresome, but she was a basket case when I was out on a canoe trip.  She was convinced that something awful would happen to me.  She, however, was perfectly bold to take me, as a teenager, just the two of us to Chicago for several days of shopping and shows and dining in great restaurants--she drove, parked the car, walked all over downtown Chicago, hailed a cab, etc.  And she, a small-town woman who shocked all of her friends with her courage.  I never knew anything to scare that woman.  She told a story about clubbing a rattlesnake to death with a stick on her way home from elementary school (in Wyoming) and I believe it was true.

But yet she was always afraid for me in the canoe country.  I never could figure it out until I had children.

Pine Knot:  I know what you mean.  It hasn't been just the older people.  Most everyone we know has thought we are crazy, and thought that our method of vacationing is "dangerous".  Spartan1 has shared my photo books with his friends for years and I am always greatly amused when they tell me how courageous I am.   ;)