Reverb 10: Day 22 - Travel

Today's Reverb 10 Prompt:

December 22 – Travel

How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year?

(Author: Tara Hunt)

This was actually a kind of slow travel year for me.

I made two trips.

The first was in May.  A cross country road trip with my dad, after unexpectedly losing my job, to attend the Ontario wedding reception for my brother and his wife, and see a friend.  The trip is pretty much a blur in my mind, hazy from the pain and shock of the sudden job loss.  I was moving through life pretty much shell-shocked, and I'm sure it showed.  On the way to Ontario, the conversation was pretty minimal.  I slept a lot.  Dad and I had one conversation the first night about the circumstances that had me accompanying him, and that was about it.  The rest of the conversation centered around whether or not we should keep driving, where we should stop for the night, and where we should eat.  The answer to where we would be eating while driving through Wisconsin or Minnesota, by the way, is Culvers, for a Butter Burger.  The answer to whether or not we should keep driving was almost always yes (we're sort of long-haul road trip fans, dad and I).  That answer actually led to us spending a night sleeping in our seats in the truck in a rest stop parking lot, after all the hotels in the small town where we'd decided to stop were filled up with people in town for a state-wide high school tennis tournament. 

The highlight of that trip was stopping at the Eerdman's Publishing House Clearance centre in Grand Rapids Michigan on the way home.  My brother and sister in law drove back home with Dad and I and I think my poor sister in law was wondering what she'd gotten herself into when she experienced three book nerds in a store that we would define as "heavenly".  The poor girl just kind of sat while the three of us went a little nuts shopping at extreme bargain prices, without the trouble of airplane luggage weight restrictions!

The second trip was to California, in mid September, to meet a friend in person for the first time, after a few years of conversing on my blog and by email.  I wrote about it quite extensively in several posts.  (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)  That trip was also an escape, a chance to pause and pray and consider steps of healing and rebuilding.  It has very much shaped the way the months since then have played out, and I'm so incredibly thankful for that change of scenery and time with a dear friend.  I'm also still amazed that palm trees actually do grow outside!  I think in my head I really was convinced that it was all a photo-shopped marvel, and to see that they do exist was quite shocking to me, followed by a prompt falling in love.  I'm now convinced that my life will not be complete until I've lived for at least a period of time in a place where palm trees live outdoors!

As for travel and 2011, my dream travel year would be this:  A repeat visit (at least one!) to California.  Time in Europe with my dear friend and former roommate, L, who is now living over there, and then a stop in North Africa or maybe even the middle east.  South America remains on my list, but the timing for that doesn't seem right just yet.  So, if I could go anywhere this year (aside from California, which is the only one that might fit my budget!), it would be some European adventures with a friend and proven excellent traveling companion, and then some time in North Africa.