What is an Epic Journey

For all of my life I always thought an Epic journey to be one big adventure, traveling from one exotic location to the next, always trying to go to someplace new, never the same place twice. So here I sat planning my next trip, going over my usual roadblocks as little ever goes to plan. Mentally I placed myself in Vietnam, my mind took in everything it was, everything that it would be. I read over travel reports, looked at various locations, with each one I Imagined what it would feel like to be there.
South East asia is amazing, the flora and the fauna absolutely explode in your brain. Sites inn the philippines almost brought me to tears, if there was a garden of Eden surely it was somewhere nestled in Asia. I took in the sites of Hanoi, In my mind I rode on creaking trains which bounced back and forth on the tracks, bumped into crowded people, and road on boat thru a bay where rocks jutted up thru the water. But when my mind came to the legendary water puppet show I felt something was wrong.
I sat there and looked about the crowd, scanning over the faces as they looked on in wonder. The crowd would laugh, clap husbands smiled as their wives arms weaved into their own. I looked down at my own and saw nobody there and I knew what the next epic journey had to be. You see I have always got to do things others did not, I rode trains thru Europe, hiked an active Volcano in the Philippines, stood on Red Square in Russia, and pushed thru street Vendors in shady Mexican Border towns.
But all the while I did it alone, now don't get me wrong, it was amazing, but each time I had someone to greet me when I came home. My friend Scott picked me up at the airport after Europe, kept me out of jail as he held me from splatteringn a cooks nose across a grill at a greasy truck stop over a burnt steak and rubber eggs.
 Dads always seemed to be home when I would call from some crazy location, he would always ooo and aww at what I told him, and tell me how much he wished he could be there. But each time I came home there was someone to greet me, someone to carry my luggage with the secret intent of seeing what treasure I had brought for them which lay hidden inside. But this time I knew as I stood at the water puppet show in my mind, there was no one, no one to share all those great experiences with. Dads voice would not be there when I called to report in. Scott would not be at the airport, both of their souls were already in heaven, they had already made their final journey.
So it brings me round to what is the epic journey, I guess it is whatever makes you who you are, for me it has always been Travel hands down, for most it is family. You see people look from their own life of monatany at those of us our exploring the world,, they take in every word in the story we weave of our trip. But they forget their own Epic journey lays in family, they to often take for granted the kids running around their feet, those times spent alone with their partner holding hands at a theater, and finally watching their children graduate. That is lifes epic journey, merely experiencing what life is, be it a rocking bus driving down a rutted road in India. Or helping their children pull in their first trout from a cold Montana Lake.