Day 30: I'm Going to Blame My Folks

Day Thirty: I'm Going to Blame My Folks

7/9/11:
Five days prior to July ninth, my folks departed from my hometown of Waverly, Iowa. Winding their way west, they stopped at Saint Benedict’s, a Cistercian monastery at Snowmass. From atop Snowmass, they saw the Continental Divide and a string of Colorado’s Fourteeners. 

A few days later, they drove on down Highway 70 West, taking in the jagged up-sweeps of the Rockies and, just beyond the Eisenhower Pass, pausing as they passed the remnants of a car that had rolled down the highway in an explosion of broken little pieces.

In Utah, Dad marveled over the miles of empty expanse, while Mom wondered at the eroded and wind smoothed rock formations and the shocks of color at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. 

In Arizona, they moseyed around up by the North Rim, camping at DeMotte Campground, taking in the view from Point Imperial (the highest point on the Grand Canyon), and hiking the meandering Widforss Trail. Swinging southward, they dipped into the South KNF and, on July ninth, they threw up a tent at Cataract Lake, a campground mere minutes away from the Williams Ranger District, North House, and me.

My parents’ wanderlust never ceases to amaze me. In 1981, my dad studied abroad in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This led to a year-long stay in San José, Costa Rica, and a two-year long stint in Lima, Peru. During these three years, Dad explored Machu Picchu, rode with Peru's Olympic bike team, and poked around in Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil.

Not to be outdone, my mom, in summer 1985, traversed much of Europe with nothing but a backpack, a Eurail Pass, and her best friend, visiting Portugal, Spain, Morocco, France, England, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Vatican City, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Sweden.

Three months after getting married in 1986, Mom and Dad moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to teach at an international school. It was in a village north of Addis Ababa that Dad, attending a religious festival, crawled on his hands and knees into a cave to visit hermits, ambled around in the remote countryside (apparently suspiciously), and was arrested, detained and finally escorted back to Addis Ababa by the Ethiopian Army. After two years in Ethiopia and forays into Tanzania (for a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro) and Kenya, my folks got teaching positions in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. Tommy was born a year after the move to Abqaiq, with me following two years later. During this time, they took in Turkey, Jordan, Cyprus, Bahrain, Greece and Egypt, experienced the first Gulf War, and got to scuba dive in the Red and Arabian Seas. All told, Mom and Dad ended up in Saudi Arabia for a total of seven years before returning to the States with Tommy and me in tow.

Now in their fifties and having settled in the Midwest for the last sixteen years (“too long,” according to Mom), my folks still have a lot of adventure left in them. They’re not afraid to live out of our car for weeks on end, clamber around in the Boundary Waters, or bike long stretches of RAGBRAI. We spent three weeks camping, hiking and biking in the White and Green Mountains of New England after I graduated from high school, and two years earlier took a similar trip from San Francisco to Portland for Tommy’s graduation.

My parents, still curious and willing to rough it, are generally up for anything. Five years from now when I have a passport full of stamps but haven’t put down roots anywhere, I’m going to blame my folks.

My wanderlust, like theirs, is here to stay.

* “4, 10, 14, 20” is a short snapshot of some of my travelin’ memories.

Photos: 1. Gettin' hitched in Michigan 2. Mom with her class in Ethiopia 3. Dad at the Nazca Lines in Peru 4. Mom and Dad leaving for Ethiopia 5. Mom at her baby shower for Tommy in Saudi Arabia