2 . Like many young people, Jessica wants to travel the globe. Unlike most of them, this 25-year-old is doing it _______ . She and her husband have spent the last two years traveling the world, stopping everywhere from Paris to Singapore. It might sound like one long, expensive _______ , but the couple has an unusual way to make their travel _______ .

They’re part of a new form of the _______ economy: an online group of house sitters. Throughout their no-cost stays in _______ homes, they feed pets and water plants in the homeowner’s _______ .

It’s not all sightseeing. The two travelers carefully _______ their trips, scheduling their days around the pets that are sometimes difficult to _______ . But house sitting also offers a level of _______ they can’t find in a hotel. “It’s like ________ at a friend’s house,” Jessica says.

The couple has a high ________ rate in getting accepted as house sitters and they always go beyond the homeowner’s ________ . For Jessica, that means ________ plenty of pictures of happy pets, keeping the house ________ and leaving a nice small gift before heading to the next house. “You want to make the homeowner feel that they made the right ________ ,” she says.

3 . I’ve reached the turn-around point of the day’s kayaking (皮划艇) trip. Sweat runs down my cheek as I ______ my fingers through the cool water. I look around. It’s just me, a couple of seagulls, and shining freshwater to the horizon. This, I whisper to myself, is ______.

Solo outings had never ______ my mind before because I always had loyal friends willing to tag along. But three years ago, I moved to Cleveland. Meeting close friends in a new city is ______. And a world wide health crisis made ______ impossible.

In October 2022, I decided to ______ a whole day on a solo hiking trip. I went to Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) to ______ the autumn leaves. Five miles in, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so alive. I was more ______ of my surroundings than I’d ever been while hiking that day. I studied the markings of trees, focused my ears on each forest sound and did something I had almost never spared ______ for: I listened to my own thoughts. Every word in my mind pointed to a newfound ______—solo hiking is my happy place. From then on, I have adjusted myself to any solo activity.

Pride ______ through my body when I first launched my kayak. My chest, ______ tightened by nerves, was bursting with happiness as I finally reached the middle of the river that I’d long ______ standing on shore before.

Adventuring alone has become like medicine for me! It’s also pushed me to go ______ my comfort zone and to meet new people. Through meetups and social media, my adventure friend circle has ______. But at least once per month, I schedule time to hit nature with my favorite trail buddy: me.

4 . I've always loved mountaineering (登山) and the mental and physical challenges that go with it. This time the peak (山峰) of Mt. Whitney is my ______. There are quite a few ways up to the big mountain, but we ______ the traditional one at last, almost 12 miles to the top.

I decided to make this trip less about ______ and more about the climb and my personal journey with a friend. Thinking about it this way, I decided to carry only one camera to ______ the course, but it still added 3.2 pounds to my backpack, which ______ 2.8 pounds without the camera equipment. Fortunately, climbing with a friend ______ sharing the weight, keeping our packs a little lighter. Therefore, we ______ reached the top just two days later. This particular trip was prepared for a personal trip on purpose to get to the peak and enjoy the breathtaking ______.

Climbing such tall peaks ______ every aspect of you, as a nature photographer. It can test both your physical strength and photographic ______. Can you imagine being 14,000 feet up, ______ the thin air of the high-altitude (海拔) environment while also trying to be ______ with your compositions (作品)? That’s what we were doing! And that’s the joy that comes with climbing Mt. Whitney as well.

Like any other ______ in nature, there are risks in mountaineering, though, Extreme altitude and the unpredictable (无法预测的) weather will test even the most ______ climber. Despite the fact, mountaineering for me is all about the experiences, which makes me live to the ______.

5 . Last summer, my grandma took our large family on a vacation to Tanzania for a few weeks. While we did spend a large amount of time _________ wildlife in the Serengeti national park, the most memorable part of the trip for me was _________ the local culture. I was moved by how friendly and _________ everybody there was.

Whenever we rode somewhere in the ‘safari trucks’, the local children would, at the sight of the trucks, rush to the side of the road to _________ and shout “hello”. I could tell by their huge smiles that they were really _________ at the sight of us, not just doing what they’d been told to do in front of tourists. We were happy to _________ a wave or a high five, too. At one point when our guide was showing us around a local village, a woman came over and started talking to us in the local language, which our guide _________ for us. The woman wanted to show us the baby rabbits that she was _________. She welcomed us into her house. I was very _________ by this. I would never think of inviting a stranger off the street into my house back in the United States.

After we saw the super-cute newborn rabbits, we continued through the village. At the next house, there was a family __________ fish over a fire for dinner. Our guide asked if he could buy some. While he ate his fish, the family invited us into their yard. Everybody’s attitude was so __________ from that of people back home, who now seemed boring and __________ . Things that seemed so unusual to me, like letting strangers into one’s house, are completely __________ to these people.

When the trip ended and we got back to the United States, I almost felt a __________ connection to the people I met in Tanzania than to the people at home. The time that I spent in Tanzania was the time in my life when I felt the most __________.

6 . When it comes to my fathering lessons, few adventures compare to the motorcycle trips I’ve shared with my daughter, Ewa.

Our first_______, in August 2017, was a winding (蜿蜒的) ride around the Catskills and Finger Lake districts of New York state. We _______ big highways and spent the week on_______ scenic back roads. At one point, I found myself _______along a Catskills meadow (草地) not far from Woodstock, keeping pace with a deer and shouting, “Go Bambi, go!”

On our second day, we _______ in a small town for ice cream. I asked the woman at the picnic table next to us: “What’s the_______ of this town?” “Interlaken,” she answered.“Where are you trying to get to?”

Me: “We don’t know. ”

It _______ to me then that I’d always wanted to do this no-schedule kind of trip, when you ride just for riding. Ask any middle-aged _______: We’ve all dreamed about doing the Easy Rider (逍遥骑士) thing, throwing our wristwatches into the ditch and heading toward the horizon without a_______. Now, travelling with no plan became a________ of my rides with Ewa.

Since we almost ________ knew where we were going, we were almost never ________ when we arrived, pulling ________ the road at the end of each day with satisfaction. The reason to celebrate? We________! The truth is that life on a motorbike is one close call (死里逃生) after another. On the way, riders must stay ________ 100 percent of the time. A tiny stone can be deadly. I used to be nervous, but Ewa had a different take: “To me, motorcycling is like meditation(冥想). ”

8 . I grew up in Michigan and have loved boats since I was young. I’d go out on my dad’s fishing boat, and every birthday I’d get a miniature boat with a viewing window. In Michigan, we’re _________ by lakes and I soon discovered that I loved diving and _________ skipped school days for the beach.

Three years ago, I _________ put forward an idea of running glass-bottom boat tours to an investor. It started in 2018. At present, My sons _________, manning the deck(甲板)and phones. We head out on the Cheboygan river and Lake Huron. We sail past lots of places of_________, with a historian on board explaining the history. We often scan the river to see what we can find.

One weekend this year, I met a _________ client. I thought I should find something to show him and managed to find a giant shell. Then I saw a green bottle. I swam to my boat, took a photo and then opened the bottle. It was full of water and had a paper inside. I _________ the paper and saw the date —November 1926. We were all amazed. The note_________: “Return this paper to George Morrow.” I was so excited to have found it.

We made sure to keep the paper safe. Before leaving the harbor, I posted a picture on my Facebook page and didn’t expect what followed.

The next morning, my phone _________ with messages. While I was driving home, I got a phone call from Michele Primeau. She told me she was George Morrow’s daughter. I didn’t believe her __________. She said her dad would float notes in bottles when he went on vacation or __________ them in walls when redecorating. She __________ he had posted this one on his 18th birthday.

In autumn, Michele came to visit. She brought some of his writing and the handwriting matched. She __________ I keep the message and the bottle.

It now sits in a display case in my shop. That Facebook post now has 87,000 __________. In a hard year, the discovery has brought purejoy.__________a Scuba diver(水肺潜水员), this feels like a lifetime achievement.

10 . I found a wonderful picture of Maolan karst cones online and presented it to the innkeeper. “You can’t go there,” the innkeeper ______ me. “The viewing platform has been closed due to ______ that too many visitors could cause geological damage.”

Despite our disappointment, we ______ an alternative: a seven-hour hike through the “funnel forest”. Initially, we were ______ to run the risk. However, I had ______ the tourism motto in the nature reserve: “If you don’t do it now, you won’t do it in your lifetime.” Three of our group ______ decided to venture into the forest. The innkeeper responded with a knowing ______ : “Great. Bear Grylls went there.”

The next morning, we set off with a local ______ . Rain came and went three times, and before I actually ______ to climb over the first mountain, I had already got wet to the skin. I was a walking ______ of mud and water.

Our guide, in his 50s, behaved like a botanist, introducing the locally specific plants to us, but I was hardly in the ______ . Every step sank into the muddy, sucking ground. Every log or rock in front of us was a physical ______ . “One can never reach those places without strong willpower,” I murmured, reciting that millennium-old ______ , over and over again.

Sinkholes and entrances to underground rivers kept popping up along our ______ . Thinking of them leading to an unknown world, I began to ______ the road that I can control even more.

Wandering in a green chaos without any obvious landmarks is also breathtaking.