Why I Travel

When I was a kid, my family used to vacation at my grandparents' cabin in northern Minnesota. Every year we made the same journey, caught the same bass and crappies, and fought off the same mosquitoes. It was fun, but it was sort of like being at home except we could hear loons calling and see bears at the dump. Still, it was all I knew about being adventurous.

But then one year, my father bought a camper and we took to the open road. He made me his navigator (even after I steered him over the Big Horn Mountains when it was still a gravel road!) For many summers, we camped all over the western United States.

I loved it. Moreover, I loved how I felt when I was out of my element, when I was seeing something besides midwestern cornfields, when I was meeting new people around our campfire. I learned that folks in other places spoke and thought differently than we did and that was ok. Camping created a hunger in me for more experiences, more unexpected vistas, more understanding the greater world.

When I was a senior in high school, I was invited to join a national choir that sang at Carnegie Hall in NYC & the Kennedy Center in Washington. One of the pieces we did was based on Walt Whitman's

Song of the Open Road

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Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 

Healthy, free, the world before me, 

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. 

...

The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. 

...

All seems beautiful to me.

...

Camerado, I give you my hand! 

I give you my love more precious than money, 

I give you myself before preaching or law; 

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? 

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

(This vid isn't of my choral group, but if you want to hear the music, click away!)

The text spoke to me and I vowed then to make travel part of my life plans. I craved the adventure, the sense of expansiveness, of getting out of myself and exploring this wide, gorgeous world.

Good thing I married a guy who eventually went into travel technology and worked for multiple airlines, finishing his career with Google! Thanks to his flight benefits, our kids had passports from the time they were 8 & 6. We took trips we'd never have been able to afford otherwise, both foreign and domestic. Here at home, I've been blessed to visit 49 of our 50 states.

Louisiana is the last, so this cruise begins by crossing off that milestone for me.

Our bags are packed and we'll leave at oh:dark-thirty tomorrow morning, heading south! Can't wait to see what other things this trip has in store!