enjoying an unexpected journey
While we were in Utah this summer, we went hiking with some of our cousins. My sister-in-law has organized weekly hikes with some other mothers. They drive up a little way into the nearby Logan Canyon, and take all of their children for a day hike, once a week. Doesn’t that sound fantastic?
Tell me again why I moved to the prairie. I’m jealous of these people with mountains in their backyards.
This is one of my two big brothers. For blogging purposes, I’m going to call him Bill. Hi, Bill!
Some of my earliest memories of my brother Bill took place on a family vacation, when I was just a little squirt of 2 or 3 years. My grandparents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, and took all their posterity on a cross-country road trip. While I remember very little of any of the sightseeing we did along the way, I do remember sleeping in a pop-up trailer, near my brother, Bill.
This seemingly insignificant detail was made memorable by Bill’s whispered revelations of our family’s past, before we fell asleep each night in that pop-up trailer. After all, he told me marvelous bits of family history previously unknown to me. Until Bill told me all about it, I had no idea that–prior to my birth–our family had lived in the jungle. [Read more...]
I’ve mentioned before that I love to travel with my family. Roadtrips tend to be our most frequent form of travel. (You can read about a couple of them here and here.) Even as newlyweds, the Bionic Man and I used to jump in the car and see how far we could get before it was time to turn around and head back to school.
Since we’ve had children, the Bionic Man and I don’t get into spontaneous roadtrips like we used to. Generally, we spend months preparing for our roadtrips: researching routes and destinations, planning stops and activities, putting together detailed itineraries, making reservations. Often, we depart for vacation with a thick binder that maps out all the details of our trip.
Our 2011 summer trips weren’t going to be any different. We’d been planning a family trip to see our Connecticut friends and East coast sites for weeks. And Bionic Man had been prepping daily for a special backpacking adventure in Utah’s Uintah mountain wilderness.
