Flashback Friday: Travel bug

When I was growing up, my family took two epic road trips. The first, when I was almost 8 years old, was to the Pacific Northwest via every state in between Oklahoma and Washington. This trip was really amazing. We camped a lot in our Volkswagon Vanagon (see below), which was always really exciting for my sister and me because we got to sleep in the bed that was up in the pop top. We saw Old Faithful, The Grand Tetons, and Seattle's Space Needle. The photograph above was taken at Yellowstone. (Who's that cute little boy standing next to my sister?) A park ranger there inspired me to pursue a career in the park service (later, when I was working at the entrance gate to Rocky Mountain National Park, I met a woman who had been that ranger's roommate at Yellowstone). We drove into British Colombia, where I remember a waiter at a restaurant hesitated to give me a menu because he didn't think I could read (!). We went on a ferry that had a wonderful hammered dulcimer band, The Wild Rose String Band, whose music would become the soundtrack for every road trip our family took thereafter. On this ferry I also met a man from New Zealand who taught me that (at the time) NZ had 3.1 million people and 65 million sheep.

This photograph is from our second major road trip, to the East coast. This was probably the coolest place I've ever car-camped. I'm pretty sure it was in Tennessee, and the camping spaces were giant decks on stilts. In case you're wondering why my sister is wearing a blue bootie on her right foot, it's because earlier in the summer, she stepped on one of these:
And she had stitches in her foot. I guess she couldn't wear a shoe on that foot, until after my dad removed the stitches in a hotel room in Washington D.C.

By the time this photo was taken, we had been in a car wreck in Virginia (we were rear-ended on the highway by a man who was asleep at the wheel) and so here we are standing in front of our second rental car (a Buick Regal) but still making progress on our trip. Looking back on it, I am sort of shocked that my parents were so willing to persevere on our trip after such a harrowing experience!

These road trips are some of my favorite memories from my childhood. I sure hope to be able to give Little Omi experiences like them when she's a bit older (without the car wreck, obviously).

Thanks, AJ, for this week's theme!