Re: The Last Trip

Dave Bugg wrote:
Well, my youngest son, Ethan, just finished his high school sophomore year. As I've done with each of my kids when they've reached this age, I'll be taking him on a two week road trip to an area of America that he has chosen to visit.

Friday morning we head out for Utah and northern Arizona, with our route also hitting parts of Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, and Nevada.

We will be hunting trilobite fossils and topaz, renting ATVs, visiting a gaggle of National Parks, touring Anasazi ruins, scrambling through slot canyons and various back-country areas, target shooting our handguns and .22 rifles, mountain biking, hitting a few Hopi and Navajo trading posts (I spent four months as a midwife at sage Memorial Indian Health Hospital in Ganado, AZ a long time ago), getting to know some regional history and cultures, and doing whatever we feel like doing.

Outside of making sure Ethan gets an authentic Navajo meal of mutton and fry bread, we are playing our eating needs by ear. We will eat at a lot of hole-in-the-wall joints, hit some fast food places, snack on junk food, keep alert for the favorite places of local inhabitants, and seek out regional specialties in the locations we travel through. We will avoid -- like a plague of boils and festering sores -- any place that even remotely smacks of fussiness and dress codes. We will eat when we feel like it, sleep when we get tired, and avoid burning daylight with insignificant crap.

The goal is to create a singular life-long memory for Ethan, so things are geared toward his needs and sensibilities. Nothing is set in stone so we can be flexible about what is going on and make changes as needed.

As for me, this is a bittersweet trip. It will be - just like the other trips - a wonderful and special time that I will always cherish. But it also marks a passage. It is the last trip of its kind that I will take since Ethan is the last child. Sigh.



Dave, I envy you. Enjoy it all.

I took a similar trip (alone) about 18 years ago. If you get the chance, detour north from colorado on hwy 15 (I think it is) into Wyoming. The painted desert is incredible. When you get to the Little Big Horn memorial, browse a minute.

--
Dave T.

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a
person to use the internet and they won't bother you for
weeks.
.

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