What Was My FIrst Big Trip?

 

What was your first big trip?

First Travel

J.M.Pontious

Jan 2023

My parents were not very well off. Because of this vacations and travel were not really part of my childhood, other than going to my grandparents home in Perry. It was a trip of 45 minutes or so from my hometown of Enid.

My family owned a 1958 yellow Buick Roadmaster that had a dark roof, as well as a malfunctioning radiator and my dad could not get it fixed. Now I say “could not” but indeed he had a habit of putting things off so it may have been more accurate to say that he “would not” get the radiator fixed.

Anytime we took the trip to Perry, we had to make sure that we had a container in the trunk to collect pond water in order to refill the radiator with water. Anytime that the car overheated, we (my sister or I) took the container and filled it in the roadside creek. Sometimes it took one or two trips to the nearby creek or pond to get enough water to make the trip.

This was not at all fun in the wintertime.

The first real trip that I remember was a trip that was arranged by a med school classmate of mine, Steve Temerlin. We met in Salt Lake City and then he drove us to the Uintas Wilderness in Northwest Utah. We spent a week backpacking in the Uintah Caribou-Targhee National Forest ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=High+Uintah+wilderness&atb=v390-1&iax=images&ia=images&iaxm=maps&strict_bbox=0&bbox=40.593904375039145%2C-112.56988600036829%2C39.73761713365252%2C-110.78267947749046 )

We lived in a tent and snow caves for the week. No airplanes or utility wires for an entire week. I remember such beautiful silence at night and bright skies. The stars seemed like they were just stuck in the sky and brilliant in terms of light quality.

Packing in our provisions and traipsing through the snow in snowshoes for a week. As I recall, it was extremely exhausting, difficult and cold.

The entire time you focused on what it took to stay warm.

Another early trip that I recall is taking my parents to see my sister Patti, who was married to an Air Force pilot, Frank Gahren. They were stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. It was my first experience at International travel. We flew out of Oklahoma City to LA and then on to Hong Kong and the Philippines. I took my parents, it was their first adventure outside of the United States.

The travel was eye opening. The only difficulty was losing my luggage at the airport in Manilla. Several days later they said I could come and look for it. Once I arrived at the airport, they took me into a building that was the size of five football fields with lost luggage piled ten foot high. Needless to say my luggage did not catch up with me until weeks later.

We got to stay for a week. I think my parents were fascinated by the concept of international travel, although they never got to experience that again. It’s more than likely where I caught the bug for traveling.

And not sweating the small stuff…