When I was a little girl, I always looked forward to trips. We'd get up early, in the cool just before summer dawn, pile into our car and head off...through the prairies to visit relatives in Omaha, to the beginning of the Rockies in El Paso, across the desert to Los Angeles, We visited museums in Chicago, gazed in awe at New York skyscrapers and at Niagara Falls. Along the way on these journeys my sister and I fought over who would get to lie down in the back seat and who had to sit and look out the window. Once we got into a fight at Gettysburg because I, a civil war aficionado, wanted to walk through the battlefield and she, thinking about her current boyfriend at home, wanted to move on. She hauled off and slapped me.
We made occasional train trips. On one memorable one we slept together in the top bunk and, tossing in my sleep, I hit her and gave her a black eye. My mother was mortified.
The lure of travel persists. My husband and I took a cruise to my number one dream destination, Antarctica, land of ice and penguins and, I reminded him, no shopping. We went to Alaska, to New England for fall foliage, to Hawaii for a speech pathology convention where he took scuba lessons and I actually attended lectures.
I've been to Troy, the top place on my bucket list. I took Latin in high school from a teacher so inspiring that her students raised the money to send her on a trip to Rome.
My sister and I no longer fight; we enjoy traveling together and have an ongoing Scrabble tournament for down times. Next spring I'm hoping to join my daughter at a convention in Banff, another place I've always wanted to go.
Travel gives me the chance to visit iconic places, see how other people live, shop of course, learn about history and politics and penguins and llamas. Mention a trip and I'm ready to go.
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