Born to Travel

I think I was about 10 years old when I really started feeling the bite of that insatiable travel bug that affects so many of us. We lived in a neighborhood that was under the airport’s direct flight pattern, and every day I watched jet after jet fly over. Just for something to do, I started counting them.  At some point, I realized that these planes were actually GOING somewhere. Somewhere cool and fun, where there might be carnival rides or wild animals or desert landscapes in faraway lands. A voracious reader, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the thought that people were up there traveling to all the places I’d read about (okay they were more likely traveling to Seattle or somewhere less mysterious than I imagined, but still!) I was hooked.

By 14 I’d started saving my babysitting money throughout the year so I could go somewhere during my summer break. As an adult, I realize how odd this was, that a teenaged girl would be more interested in traveling to visit some barely known relatives than spending her hard-earned money on lipstick and record albums (yes, there were record albums when I was a teenager) but that was always my focus, figuring out a way to travel.

One of my first solo trips was going to see a grandmother in Texas. She wasn’t even a blood grandmother but a former step-grandmother. She welcomed me though and I stayed with her in her retirement condo in Fort Worth for a week. She took me to see Debbie Reynolds perform, which was, to my unworldly view, pretty damned cool. I then hopped a Greyhound bus and went to Paris, Texas to visit another grandmother, this one a step-great-grandmother who was the widow of my late great-grandfather, who I never even knew. She was thrilled to have me and I spent a week with her, sitting on the porch and drinking sweet tea and talking about how hot it was. If you’ve ever been to Texas in the summer, the heat is the number one topic of conversation, all the time. I then took the bus back to other step-grandma and flew home to Alaska. Honestly, I don’t know what my parents were thinking, letting a 14-year-old gallivant around the country like that, but I guess they knew that feeding my hunger for other places was better than trying to tie me down.

And so it went. Every summer I visited friends and family, nothing international, just places like Washington or Northern California. As I moved into adulthood the trips became more important, until I decided a career in the airline industry was the only way I was going to satisfy this need to wander. So I embarked on what became an 11-year career as an airline ticket agent. This afforded me the opportunity to really travel, and being young, single and usually broke, travel on a shoestring. There were several of us girls who were in the same boat, and we made the most of it. Weekend jaunts to Mexico, trips to Hong Kong, Thailand, London, Ireland, Paris, we went all the places, sometimes last minute, sometimes crashing on couches or staying in hostels or the cheapest of roach motels. And we loved every minute of it.

Through it all,  Alaska remained my anchor. Despite traveling the world, I never felt the urge to actually move somewhere else. I've always loved it here and I've always known I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. No matter how much I need to escape on a regular basis, this is home and I always come back to it. It revives me, invigorates me, keeps me real and brings me peace.

I eventually married, had children and left the airline industry. But I was lucky enough to take an early retirement package that afforded me a limited number of standby tickets per year, so my travels were hardly done. Travel with kids was a whole new ballgame and I dragged my children along on more adventures than they were probably interested in.  But interested or no, I made sure they saw things, saw the world. We went through some rough spots, divorce, moving and break-ups, but we traveled. Travel was the one consistent gift I could give. 

And now they are grown and here I am, still traveling, with no end in sight. I have a wonderful guy who loves to travel as much as  I do, and he is always willing to go along with my crazy plans.  I decided to create this travel blog as a way to start streamlining my freelance writing career and focus more on travel writing. And my guy and I have some pretty amazing trips planned over the next 18 months that I really want to document! I can’t promise you I’ll always have insta-worthy pictures, but I will share my insights, experiences and suggestions on both budget friendly and bank-busting trips. I'll even share the occasional jaunt around my home state, during those times we manage to get out and explore all the wild adventures of Alaska too! 

So come away with me to far away places! Maybe you'll be inspired to plan your next getaway, or you'll just enjoy the virtual ride, some laughs and if we're lucky, a cold glass of sweet tea on a hot day.