Travel

For the largest and most memorable part of my childhood, my father was a fifth grade teacher. This meant that he had summers off, so he would take my sister and me on road trips. The most memorable of these took us from our home in northern Delaware to my Grandfather’s cousins’ house in Seattle, Washington. Along the way, we made stops including, but not limited to, the Gateway Arch in Missouri, Colorado National Monument close to the Utah border, and Yellowstone National Park in northwestern Wyoming. 

It took us a week to cross the continent. Naturally, we weren’t driving to make great time. Rather, we’d budgeted our time to allow us to meander and enjoy the country along the way. If you ever get the chance to visit Mt. Sunflower, the highest point in the state of Kansas, I highly suggest you take it. Off the main road and over a cattle grate, a dirt road up the slightest of inclines took us to a little display apparently made from scrap metal: “Mt. Sunflower: 4,039 ft.” Kansas is widely considered to be the flattest state, which fools most people into thinking it’s also the most boring state to drive through. Most people are wrong; I looked out the window far longer than I expected to as we drove through Kansas. Similarly, the view from Mt. Sunflower is spectacular. I’d never seen so much sky.

My travel experience isn’t limited to the United States, though. Through church and nonprofit organizations, I’ve been to Africa on three separate occasions. They were service trips to Kenya, Tanzania, and Burundi, and I’m scheduled to go to Burundi again this summer. 
This is about where I’ve been, what I intend to do with the rest of my travel, and what it is about places and things that I like so much.