A few days ago, our friend Betsy from Travel Leaders posted on Facebook about from where she got her “travel bug”. Wrote Betsy, “I caught the
“travel bug” doing road trips with my parents & eight siblings in the ‘woodie’ station wagon! My dad was truly a ‘Griswold’, stopping at every imaginable tourist spot he could find! They were great memories!”
It reminded me of a piece I wrote for a local alternative newspaper about 20 years ago on the origin of my own “travel bug”. It’s why I’m so grateful for each year’s WAPL International Incident. (Limited space still available, February 25th to March 4th at the Valentin Imperial Riviera Maya All-inclusive Resort. Join us if you dare!) I figured I’d trot that old article out here to give you something to read that will inspire you to join us on this year‘s Incident!
P.S. Betsy said “woodie”.
ROAD LESS TRAVELED by Rick McNeal (December 2002)
I LOVE TRAVEL! I love doing it. I love talking about it. I love hearing about it. I love reading about it. I love watching the Travel Channel. (And I especially love Travel Channel host Samantha Brown but that’s the subject for another column and a pending restraining order).
Recently, a friend of mine, exhausted from listening to me once again prattle on endlessly about places I would like to visit, asked, “Where does your obsession with travel come from?
Frankly, I don’t think he really wanted an answer. It was just that if he had to listen to me babbling for even one more second about which cool hotel I would most like to stay at near the Ringstrassa in Vienna, Austria, on a trip that will probably never happen, his head would have exploded! A vein in his temple was already throbbing like a worm in the throes an epileptic fit!
However, his question did make me think. What is the source of my wanderlust? Where did I pick up this travel bug? What awakened within me the desire to answer the clarion call of the open road and friendly skies?
Perhaps my desire to trot the globe was instilled in me by my parents and can be traced to our very first family vacation.
It was the summer of my seventh year. The previous September many of my classmates had returned to school with stories of their Griswald-ian sojourns in faux wood-paneled station wagons to exciting and faraway places. The Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the home of an uncle in Santa Fe who would give shiny quarters to nephews that let him do magic tricks inside their underpants!
Emboldened by my friends travel tales, I asked mom and dad to take me on a vacation. When asking didn’t work, I pleaded, I cajoled, I begged with the tenacity and desperation usually only seen from Tommy Thompson trying to get one more scotch on-the-rocks after last-call. Finally, they caved.
So it was in August of 1966, mom, dad, and I left idyllic Menasha, Wisconsin and set off in search of America.
Our trek did not take us to historic Route 66, bisecting this great nation from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. Nor did our excursion lead us to California’s scenic Highway 1, with its hairpin turns and breathtaking vistas. No, the journey took place on the equally historic and no less scenic Highway 47!
Leaving the city of Menasha, we soon rolled through, well, the Town of Menasha. I marveled at the passing scenery. The old Goodwill Store, the putt-putt golf course, Valley Fair Mall. When PBS Travel guru Rick Steves says, “Travel is intensified living” this is clearly what he’s talking about.
Before I knew it, Highway 47 turned into the tree-lined boulevard that is Appleton’s Memorial Drive and I swelled with excitement as we passed over the magnificent span of the Memorial Drive Bridge. On that hot, humid day in the pre-environmentally friendly ‘60’s, I was awed by the sight of the many smoke belching factories in Appleton’s industrial “flats” and inhaled the fragrant bouquet of the Fox River, a smell that would not have been unfamiliar to a third-world gynecologist.
Having successfully traversed the Fox, we headed for College Avenue where we turned left, over the viaduct into Grand Chute and on to The Strip, baby! There, we pulled into our final destination–Biggar’s Best Western Motel.
Grand Chute in 1966 was not nearly the exotic vacation paradise that it is today. Yet, Biggars’ Best Western was a swanky place. Among its amenities were “powder rooms”, “combination tub and showers” and “telephones IN THE ROOM!” If Louie the XIV had lived in the 1960’s, this would have been his Versailles.
For the next eight days, we would live among the Grand Chute residents. Observe their customs. Eat their local delicacies. And participate in their indigenous activities.
Most of my days were spent swimming in Biggars’ indoor, heated pool until I was so wrinkled I looked like I could have been mistaken for Larry King’s ball sack.
After swimming, it was on to the “41 Bowl” where my ball spent more time in the gutter than Nick Nolte on a four day bender.
After all that fun I was hungry enough to eat a horse, which given the dubious taste of the meat in some of the restaurants we patronized, was more than a little ironic.
However, we ate most of our meals at the Marcs’ Big Boy, conveniently located right next door. It was at the Big Boy that I came to realize just how different the exotic cuisine of Grand Chute was from the food I was used to eating back home in Menasha.
I ordered a “Big Boy Burger” thinking it would be just like every other hamburger I had ever eaten. Oh, how wrong I was! When the waitress delivered it to our table, I could scarcely believe my eyes. It was not just a patty between two halves of a bun. It was TWO patties and the bun had not only a top and bottom but a MIDDLE as well. Most confusing of all, the pickles and tomato slice were not inside, but rather, perched atop the bun like a colorful party hat and held in place with a decorative toothpick. It all made Menasha seem very far away.
Between the swimming, bowling, gourmet dining and occasional forays across The Strip to Treasure Island (not the casino, the discount department store with the “squiggly” roof and crappy merchandise) the eight days flew by and soon I was heading home.
I returned to Menasha a changed seven year old. I was imbued with a deeper understanding of the diversity of the human experience and filled with a full-blown desire to see even more of the world. This year Grand Chute. Next year, who knows? Maybe Ashwaubenon! After that first trip, the world was my oyster and anything seemed possible!
(The next year we did, in fact, vacation in Ashwaubenon.)
