Family & Traveling

One of my favorite things to do is visit our children and their families.  I'm really not much of a traveler - although I find myself enjoying it when I do travel - so the incentive has to be pretty strong.   Other than trips between Idaho and Utah, any major trips we've taken have had to do with family -- Seattle WA (Chad & Rosa live there), Jamestown NY (Monica & James got married), Madison WI (Monica & James were going to school there), Denver CO (Carolyn & Dustin got married), Mount Rushmore (Montgomery family reunion) -- do you see a pattern here?  Now Monica & James have moved to Champaign IL, so a trip to Illinois is in the works for this summer.

Most of the time, we drive -- occasionally, we fly.  For years Roger tried to convince one of the girls to get a job with an airline so that we could fly free. (Nope, didn't happen.)  He loves to fly, so his only concern was getting me on an airplane.  Again the incentive has to be pretty strong -- getting on an airplane equals seeing family.  It's not that I'm petrified on a plane -- just slightly uneasy.  My mind is mentally trying to figure out how this huge airplane full of all these people and luggage manages to stay up in the air and hoping that it does stay up in the air until it's time to come down and then that it comes down the way it is supposed to and not unexpectedly.  (Roger is sitting here trying to explain Bernoulli's theory to me -- you know, the one about the air going over the wing and under the wing and "lifting" the airplane -- sounds like a fairy tale to me.)  Hawaii or Scotland are big on Roger's list of "places to visit" -- however, that would mean flying for a long time, in the air, over the ocean, etc, etc.  Get the picture?  (Just so you know I'm not prejudiced -- I feel the same way about being out in the middle of the ocean on a cruise ship with no land in sight.  You know - those huge ones that weigh many, many tons and supposedly don't sink.)

We actually did make one trip that didn't involve visiting family.  At the end of July, 1980, Roger and I had the opportunity of going on a Church History/American History tour. Roger had been asked to drive the motor home for the tour. His flight would be paid for and he would be paid an additional fee. He asked if they would consider paying for my flight instead of paying him and they agreed, so I was able to go with him.

My parents came down and took Chad, Lynnette, Jennifer, and Carolyn home with them. We left on July 28^th and returned on August 13^th. It was the longest we had ever been away from the kids and was really hard in that way.

 

 

It was a neat experience, though, to see places like Palmyra, the Sacred Grove, Kirtland, Nauvoo, Carthage Jail, Adam-Ondi-Ahman, the Hill Cumorah Pageant – all places that were significant in church history.  We also visited (among others) the Liberty Bell, Boston, Colonial Williamsburg, New York and the Statue of Liberty, Washington, D.C.    We also tossed in Niagara Falls and a lot of beautiful country in the middle of the United States.  (By the way, this is the trip that started my bell collection.)  We slept most nights in the motor home except for a couple of places like Chicago and New York where that wasn’t possible because it wasn't safe.

It was quite an experience -- Roger's job was driving a huge motor home that was slightly shorter than a Greyhound bus.  (I am not kidding!) Because I'm a notorious back seat driver, I rode at the back whenever we were in the big cities.   Big cities intimidate me:  too many vehicles, too many people, buildings that are too high, worry about not being able to figure out how to get where we need to be.  (By the way, I'm really not a pessimist, but I have been accused of being a worrier.)  We decided the tour guide was a much better navigator than me in places like Chicago, Boston, New York, etc where the impulse to say something like "don't hit that car" or "that light is turning red" or "you should have turned left back there" or even "I think we're lost" would have been too strong.   Until you've driven something almost the size of a Greyhound bus in New York, you'll never understand the logistics.  However, we survived and made it back home.  Occasionally, the subject comes up about seeing New York City or Washington, D.C. or some other big city on the East Coast and my first thought is "no thanks - been there, done that".  So until one of the kids moves there (or some other major reason comes up), the East Coast will have to survive without this member of the Shurtz family.  (But I can guarantee that if our kids are there, we'll figure out a way to get me there -- even if it means flying!)