Turning Toward Travel — October Memoir Challenge
This is the third of three posts on the theme Roots and Wings. Memories of home, leaving or finding it, and of travel or journeys for the October Memoir and Backstory Challenge hosted by Jane Ann McLachlan. My first two were:
- Family Vacations — October Memoir Challenge, about childhood travel
- Shallow Roots — October Memoir Challenge, about the places I’ve made home, but not necessarily set roots, as an adult
Today, I want to continue the theme of my travel autobiography that I started on Monday with our big vacations in the 1970s. My first, brief, marriage was all about travel or desires for travel.
Since I was looking for as much change as possible in my second marriage, it didn’t worry me that travel had a much lower priority in our joined experience. Our honeymoon, in fact, was one night in a novelty suite at the Cheshire Inn. I was back at work on Monday.
Honeymoon suite with an exotic Arabian Nights theme
We did take a longer trip that we called our honeymoon the next fall — three weeks in a cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on Lake Superior. That was a completely new sort of travel for me, more retreat than vacation. Over the next few years, we repeated that several times in the UP and in northern Minnesota — sometimes returning to the same cabins. About half the trips were in late fall, with lots of hikes, and about half were in the winter with snow shoes.
This must have been right after I took a drink of water. Most of the time, the bottle had to go under my outer shirt or the water would freeze.
Then, we got distracted by life and quit traveling all together for several years. When we renewed our travel dreams, there was a marked difference. Out with the hiking boots and snow shoes, in with art museums and great restaurants. With some urban travel experience in Kansas City and Chicago under our belts, we felt more confident about taking our first two foreign trips — Ireland and France:
Dingle Peninsula, Ireland, 2012
- Ireland Trip 2012 on Flickr
- Last Day in France with links to all my France travel posts
Has your travel profile changed over time?
Travel is so important to my family, and we definitely go through stages in the places we decide to visit. Love your photos!
It is fun to look at your travel history, goals and the changes as we age! Thanks for bring up this changing concept.
Love the idea of travel in the fall and winter (as long as the water in the bottle doesn’t freeze!). Great pics. My travel profile? Oh, my… very low. Always has been as life and a low budget has been a distraction all along. Yay for you on your trips to Ireland (a dream destination for this Irish gal!) and France. I’ll live vicariously through you and other travelers until I can one day get a passport… or at least on the road.
Cheers!
I’m itchy for a road trip myself. We drove between CA & MI 10 times in two years. Tough to get that out of your blood.
You look so young in that first photo.
What an interesting way to approach this subject, Joy. Yes, my travel habits have changed. When I married, Ian had no interest in travel – but he wanted to improve his french. We went to St Pierre et Miquelin (off the coast of Newfoundland) to take a summer immersion course in French, then the next year, we took a French course in France. That was our last holiday B.C. – before children – and for a LONG time there was no travel, except a few family trips in Canada. Until they grew up, and we began traveling again.
Travel desires change as we grow, I think. I love that final photograph of you both. It’s like a postcard!
I’m envious of your trip to Ireland. It’s on my list of places to see. Where will you and your husband travel next?
England is next on my list. But we haven’t got a specific plan, yet. Waiting to see how some other things play out first.
I, too, am a fan of your photos. The last one is adorable!
I have not gone overseas and my hope is to visit the village my grandmother grew up in in Hungary. There are vineyards in the family and I want to walk them and see the graveyard with the headstones and the small church my grandmother loved, hopefully access the archives there.
Mostly I travel for my work. I love that. I apply for residencies for art and am looking to apply at european sites this winter–once I produce enough new work to submit with an application that is!