The End, For Now

 Journal of Our Journeys

Chapter 20 - The End, For Now

By 1979, I had a summer job and couldn’t take off for a family vacation. It appeared that Mom and Dad stopped going on the family vacation then, too. They went away just on weekends or for a few days at a time, but stayed close to home. Sometimes I would still go with, sometimes dragging a friend along.

          Pat and I started going on camping trips in a small dome tent she had bought. Over time, we even took Judy with us. We had our share of excitement and saw lots of new sites, but we never went further than Michigan’s UP.

          In 1984, I moved to Colorado on a whim with my best friend from high school. We needed a change of scenery. Little old Tomahawk had nothing to offer either of us, or so we felt. We settled in Castle Rock, a town which at the time was the same size as my hometown, but it was twenty miles from Denver, thirty miles from Colorado Springs, and just down the hill from the Rocky Mountains. There was a lot to see and do out there, or so we thought.

          Brenda only stayed nine months before moving back to Wisconsin. Thanks to the man I met and married, I stayed three years before moving back home. In that time, Mom, Dad, and the dog came out several times in the fifth wheel. It was the only big trip they took anymore, and I wonder if they would have gone on any long trips at all if I hadn’t moved so far away.

          The last trip to Colorado in the fifth wheel was in 1986. The rest of the pages of the camper log remain blank.

          The following year, my parents just drove out in the car. My son Nick was 18 months old, and I let them take him back home with them. My husband and I were flying home a month later for a friend’s wedding, so we would bring him back to Colorado then.

          While we were in Wisconsin that summer, my husband applied for jobs at a couple of places, and he actually got one. So I moved back to Tomahawk, and my big adventure was over. For years after that, my annual vacation was a car trip back to Colorado to visit my husband’s family.

          My parents sold the fifth wheel to my cousin’s son. Last I heard, it still goes on the road once in a while, but not too far. It gives me satisfaction, though, that it has stayed in the family.

          My dad passed away in 1993, and Mom sold the truck, Big Red. A few years later, she sold the house and moved into town.

          My sister Pat and I bought an old pop-up camper, which we took to state parks and federal lands in northern Wisconsin and the UP. We took my two kids along a few times. Then Pat was diagnosed with cancer just four months after Dad died. That is another whole story. Her body succumbed to the disease in 1999, but her spirit lives on in everything I do.

          I still travel; I inherited the wanderlust from my dad. We started out driving the car and staying in impersonal hotel chains. Eventually, I talked my second husband into taking that old pop-up camper to the UP. He was immediately hooked.

          We bought a second, newer pop-up a few years later and eventually graduated to a 27-foot travel trailer. I’ve filled four travel logs of my own, the trips being a mix of camping and “moteling”. Those books include lengthy narration in addition to just the facts.

          I recollect a plethora of stories from my childhood, but the family vacation has to be where a lot of them begin and end. Sometimes I think that my family has been to so few places, but if I put it all together - 

          Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan. Oh, and of course, Ontario.

          Did I miss any? Well, I did fly to Alaska with my aunt one Christmas to stay with her son and daughter-in-law in Juneau. Does that count?

          It appears that I covered a lot of ground as a kid. But more important than the miles are the memories. The time spent together as a family in tight quarters, with acres of the great outdoors just outside our door.

          My wish is that all of you have those memories, and if you don’t, get out there and start making them.