As I said in my earlier post, my travel addition didn’t start until college. However, I did have a few travel experiences before then. My father, an international businessman, didn’t care for travel with us because he did so much of it for work. For him, JFK-FRA meant seven hours of bad sleep and being thousands of miles away from his family. Not surprisingly, he preferred to take vacations closer. But we did have a few adventures, outside of my yearly trips to Miami. And adventures is a good way to put them. My father’s style of travelling is not “lay on the beach,” but to seek out and find things, to explore, and to see things off the beaten track. The three trips we took while I was in middle and high school represent the trilogy of domestic travel I did before beginning the grand tour.
Las Vegas
A pretty stereotypical vacation, we all flew out to Las Vegas by way of DFW (being in Texas fascinated me, especially seeing a guy in a 10 gallon hat and spurs as soon as we left the jet way, no kidding). We stayed at the MGM grand, which was fabulous, and the Excalibur, all told, a great trip. Many travel people say Las Vegas is a “fake” destination, and to some extent, that is true, but it sure is a sight to behold. It’s a place I plan to return to now that it’s really built up. Also, when we were out there, we trooped out into the Mojave desert, saw the Grand Canyon, the Hoover Dam, Zion and Bryce National Parks, and Death Valley.
The lasting memory of this trip, which really encapsulates my father’s attitude toward travel, and one which he definitely imparted on me, was Christmas Tree Pass. This remote road in southern Nevada is most definitely “off the beaten path,” but my father insisted. This spirit of adventure stayed with me.
California
Building on the success of the Las Vegas trip, we decided that we’d take a trip to California and see Los Angeles and San Francisco. In true fashion, my father flew us into LA and we rented a car, driving up the meandering Pacific Coast Highway. We stopped at Hearst Castle and saw the missions up the coast. In LA, we did the tourist stuff, the walk of fame, Graumann’s Chinese theatre, the Queen Mary, and all the way down to Tijuana. Then, all the way up to San Francisco, wine country, the Redwood Forests of Marin County, Sausalito, and Sonoma.
I never got to go to Alcatraz on that trip, because we overslept and missed the boat. I would return 10 years later and finally get to go out to “The Rock.”
Hawaii
The decision to go to Hawaii was motivated in part, by my mother. She had been, and thought everyone would enjoy it. Although, in retrospect, we could have put a bit more planning in with it. It was also the only trip of the three that we did on miles. Again, LGA-DFW-HNL. I had always gotten a kick out of flying on planes, and this trip was interesting, because it was the last time I would fly on a Lockheed L10-11, as Delta was phasing them out of their fleet at the time.
As soon as we landed in Honolulu, we connected to Kona Airport, on the Big Island…to date the only airport I have ever been to that is outdoors. We were greeted with Leis, and made our way to the hotel via rental car. The next few days, we toured the Big Island, saw the volcano parks, went to Ka Lae, in yet another travel fascination of my dads. But yet again, another adventure I wouldn’t soon forget. Driving 30 miles out of our way to be the most southern family in the U.S. was exhilarating, especially the gigantic wind farm we had to drive through on the way there. Windmills create the most unearthly noise…Oh, and we ate Loco Moco.
Back on Oahu, we toured the USS Arizona, took an unorthodox city tour on Honolulu’s city bus system (Regarded as one of the best in the US), made it out to a Luau (There is such a thing as bad poi), and saw the Polynesian Cultural Center, a fascinating living museum of South Pacific Culture.
As we got older, and people were busier in the summer, it became more difficult to take time for vacations. This signalled the end of our family travel until our trip to London, which forms the basis for my international travel.
What does it all mean?
A lot of people I know got to travel abroad when they were very young, to strange places. One of the reasons that my parents gave for not going to Europe or elsewhere was “Well, you [kids] are just too young and wouldn’t remember it.” In retrospect, this isn’t a great excuse, because I remember all of the above trips pretty well. However, it did something interesting. It gave travel a mystique for me. Flying across the Atlantic was like going to a different world. If I had travelled there when I was younger, I don’t know if I would have had that.
+++
If you liked this post, you can grab my entries by RSS Feed, e-mail me, or follow me on Tiwtter.
[...] Visit link: 3 Trips That Got Me Started [...]
I would agree that Vegas is “fake” destination for an experienced traveler, but for someone like myself it was a perfect get away for a few days seeing as I hadn’t even been on a plane in over ten years. I of course was fascinated by seeing parts of the country from the air that I hadn’t seen since elementary school. The amount of farm land was incredible, actually seeing how barren these massive parts of the country are with my own eyes instead of a google map was a reality check growing up in a rather urban area. When we arrived in Vegas I insisted that we made the trip to the Hoover Dam. We spent a good deal of money to take a small tourism bus out to the dam, it was worth every penny. Here I was standing on top of an American icon, TV specials and even a movie screen could not do it justice. I was also pleased to say I had set foot in Arizona, and that I had seen the dam before the bypass bridge was built, which I feel is going to ruin the view.
Agree. Vegas itself is probably “fake” but if you build on it and take advantage of being out there to see more of the sites there that are really worth the time/money, you can somewhat justify the indulgence. So supplementing it with the damn, Grand Canyon, and a handful of the many national parks in the area sort of balance it out. I’d say this is probably a decent travel strategy regardless of where you go….hit some of the touristy places that are what draw people to the area, but counter balance it with the nearby “attractions” that are generally under stated but memorable.