America’s Great Outdoors Tumblr updates

05/01/2014 10:55 AM EDT

Today we’re happy to announce the winner of the 2013 Share the Experience photo contest (this contest is where we get a lot of the photos you see on this account)! This year’s grand prize winner comes to us from a family outing and according to Courtney; it almost didn’t happen as she was not sure she would take her phone with her on the kayak trip for fear of dropping it in the choppy lake.

Lucky for Courtney, she decided to risk it and bring the phone to document the trip. Although she grew up in Michigan, this was Courtney’s first trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and she described it as being on her mom’s “bucket list.” Both Courtney and her mom are always up for adventure in the outdoors as Courtney describes it best by “Nature grounds you where you can get your perspective on life back. That’s what it does for me.” We could not agree more! Congratulations Courtney!