Road Trip
For the next few weeks, the Saturday Stories will be from our recent vacation. The past few years I have shared stories from our vacation road trips on social media and have gotten positive feedback from a number of people. If you follow me on Facebook you may have seen some of this already. I apologize for the rerun. If not, it is new to you and I hope you enjoy riding along with us.
One of the reasons I am doing this is because of the fall ministry schedule. I will be traveling and teaching a lot overseas so I am getting ahead of things with my substack writing, getting it written early and scheduling it to be sent out.
Now, on to today’s Saturday Story…
There is a percentage of us, although exactly what that number is I can’t say, within whom the spirit of Marco Polo lives on. We are explorers at heart. Unfortunately, we were destined to come into our place in this world after Columbus, Drake, Magellan, and Livingstone laid claim to the best exploring gigs. So, we settle for vacations, two-week forays into places other than our own, hoping, as we go, to be a little more de Gama and a little less de Griswold.
Of course, many love the normal destinations. They are about Disney’s and Destin’s and there is nothing wrong with that. I’m cut from a different cloth. Not better cloth. I make no claim about that. Just different. My preference is backroads, small towns, and out-of-the-way places that aren’t normally thought of as vacation destinations. I prefer a direction over a destination and a direction of a general sort at that. It’s the closest I can come to unleashing the repressed explorer inside me.
In this, I am not alone. I’ve talked to too many people who are likewise drawn to places other people aren’t going. Not unfound places. I don’t think those exist. Rather, places that one wouldn’t normally plan on traveling to because there’s no purpose in going there except to attend the funeral of a distant cousin.
Back in the early 90s, I was sitting on an airplane headed overseas on a mission trip. The old man assigned a seat next to me confessed, “I love doing these mission trips. It is about the ministry, but to be honest, it is also partly the wanderlust in me.” Wanderlust…that’s it.
In the April 1872 edition of “Overland Monthly,” John Muir wrote this advice:
To the few travelers who are in earnest – true lovers of the truth and beauty of wildness – we would say, heed nothing you have heard; put no questions to “agent” or guidebook, or dearest friend; cast away your watches and almanacs and go at once to garden-wilds – the more planless and ignorant the better. Drift away confidently not the broad gulf streams of nature, helmed only by instinct.
For us, this is wise advice. As much as possible we close our ears to the siren songs of the agents, guidebooks, and dearest friends. We go as planless as possible and ignorant as advisable. We have managed to stumble into more festivals, good food, natural beauty, and interesting people than we could have ever planned for.
So, off we go. We shall see if our vacation philosophy results in discoveries or disappointments.
