What is your idea of the trip of a lifetime?
In 1942, my family took a trip from Kentucky to my grandfather's farm in West Virginia. We stayed in a hotel, visited an airport where we saw several airplanes on the ground*, and hiked all over the farm.

That was the trip of a lifetime until 1948. In that year, I rode a Greyhound bus from Kentucky to Norkfolk, Virgina to visit my Aunt Isabel. We toured an aircraft carrier and went to the beach. It was the first time I had ever seen the ocean.

Norfolk was the trip of a lifetime until my family moved to Ft. Pierce, Florida. We rode Greyhound on that one too. We went to Nashville, Birmingham, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach and finally Fort Pierce. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. We stayed almost three years.

Florida was the trip of a lifetime for a long time. I dreamed of Grand Canyon, England, and California, but money was tight.

Finally, with a family of my own, we started camping. We went to state parks, national parks and Myrtle Beach. All were nice trips, but hardly the trip of a lifetime.

Then in 1970, the teacher's association sent me to a National Education Association representitive assembly in San Francisco. They provided airfair of $600 and the rest of the expenses were up to me. But I didn't fly. With my wife and four kids, we hitched a pop-up camper to the car and headed west. This time, the trip of a lifetime included Dinosaur National Monument, Great Salt Lake, the Mojave Desert, Yellowstone, Disneyland, five days in San Francisco (We camped at San Rafael across the Golden Gate Bridge.) and several days at my sister's house in Onterio. We were gone five weeks.

That tour of the West was surely the trip of a lifetime, or at least it was until I went to another NEA convention in L.A. and won a trip to London in a drawing. I don't know if anything could top that, but Alaska, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal came close.

Next summer? Paris, maybe.
How"travel addict"ard

*I had seen them flying high overhead, but never
on the ground.