TRAVEL COMPANIONS PAST & FUTURE

Travel companions come in two varieties:

Two legged and four legged.

The two feet in the top pic belong to my best road-tripper.

Wife travel keeps everything in order, like checking in at the airport.

But what if you skip the flying?

Together we’ve flown over both oceans, up and down the west coast.

We’ve made plans to get in a small plane and fly over Mt. St. Helens, but she’s never been in a small plane and people have unexpected reactions to the noise and height.

More noise and lower altitude than the big jets can make people nervous, people like me, so that plan continues to evolve.

Together we’ve walked the narrow streets in the gothic district of Barcelona, the narrow streets of Brugge, and the golden bridge of Paris.

We’ve walked on the college yards in Cambridge with one of King Charles’ tutors, stepped off the knee-high curbs in London, and traipsed across the Cotswolds.

As husband and wife travel companions we’ve done some stepping.

Four Legged Travel Companions

Is this a face that says, ‘Let’s hit the road,’ or what.

Ready for some active travel. She’s a go-getter.

People travel with dogs?

A lady on a jet from Atlanta had a carry-on companion pet.

When the plane landed and she got off, the nice older lady was dripping in dog pee like it was normal.

I needed some emotional support just watching that scene unfold.

My dog would never do that, but if she did she’d create a flood on aisle 23.

Big dog with a big dog bladder. A Bladder-Doodle?

I’ve gotten good advice from other dog-travelers. Thank you Karla and Lisa and Bridgette.

And thanks to John Steinbeck and his dog Charley.

Traveling Writer With Dog

John Steinbeck at the advanced age of fifty-eight.

I remember the good years of fifty-eight from ten years back.

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck’s goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and  the unexpected kindness of strangers.

The New York Times did a fact-check on Steinbeck’s book.

Did I read it? No.

But I did read a fact-check on Walden that was disappointing.

I want to read what the writer has to say, not some news-ninny making a name for themselves by correcting the classics.

Would I emerge my dog and I in some mythological ‘Search For America?’

Would I seek out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go?

My travel goals are all about getting back home in good shape.

Travel Memories

This is Stu Abbe.

We were travel companions in the summer of 1973.

Our shared goal was hitch-hiking from the Oregon coast to Iowa, wrestle the rest of the nation for a National Championship, and get back in one piece.

And that’s what we did, except for the championship part.

I placed third at 190 lbs, Stu I don’t remember. Maybe he went back the next year and won it all?

When I was twelve years old my family took a drive from North Bend, Oregon to Dallas, Texas to meet my Mom’s relatives.

We traveled some of the same roads Stu and I hitch-hiked five years later.

The first time through I figured in my boy-brain that I’d never pass that way again.

The second time I was sure of it.

What about a third time with life-time travel companions?

Dog and I for three days, pick up wife in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then, THEN, search out the soul of America in the earliest cities.

It might be in Moab, Arches, or Monument Valley?

Monument Valley is one of the most familiar landscapes in the United States, yet it remains largely unknown. “White people recognize the valley from the movies, but that’s the extent of it,” says Martin Begaye, program manager for the Navajo Parks and Recreation Department. “They don’t know about its geology, or its history, or about the Navajo people. Their knowledge is very superficial.”

Superficial? We’ll see with my Mom and Dad and Stu riding shotgun.

Stay tuned; leaving soon. Travel updates to follow.