Peggy Chambers "Views from the Hammock" site

My husband and I have traveled a lot in our lives, though not as much as I would have liked. I have a wondering soul, but with my champagne taste came a beer pocketbook. And an aging body. But still we saw parts of the world. Some of our trips were more successful than others.

When the kids were young and we were broke, we mostly travelled to places where we could stay in a tent or cheap cabin (some were not good).

We drove from Enid, Oklahoma to Chicago, Illinois after work one night to be at my sisters’ for Thanksgiving dinner. When it was my turn to drive—in the middle of the night after working all day, with a three-year-old asleep in the backseat—I woke up to flashing lights when I almost slammed into a barrier on the interstate. I could have killed all of us.

A few years later, we climbed the Mesa Verde pueblo with the kids. We drove through White Sands and then trekked through Carlsbad Caverns. More climbing but we saw things we’d never seen otherwise.

We tried skiing once. That was a disaster. We left that up to the kids from then on.

A few years later, we finally took a tropical vacation on Mustang Island, Texas in the Gulf of Mexico with the kids. We may or may not have drowned a crab watching him come and go out of his hole. Poor guy. My son got seasick on the deep-sea fishing trip, and my daughter attracted the deck hands. The wind was relentless, and the lifeguards said the sharks were out. We drove home early.

After the kids left home and we both had better jobs, we upgraded our travels. We took two weeks and flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, and then on to Zimbabwe to a hunting camp right on the Zambezi River. The only electricity was produced by a generator and when it turned off at night it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The cabin had mosquito netting over the twin beds and screens over windows that didn’t shut. At night we could hear hippos forage outside our cabin and the lions’ roar in the distance. That expensive trip took a while to pay off, but it was worth it.

But next it was my turn to pick, and we traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula to climb Chichen Itza. They have since closed the pyramid to pedestrians, but we saw the magnificent jungle from the top of the pyramid, climbed down, and lived to talk about it. I got to swim with the dolphins and my husband went on a deep-sea fishing trip.

The following year it was Kauai, Hawaii, and a helicopter trip inside an extinct volcano. The luau was fabulous, and did I mention beaches? I bought pearls. It was a long way from frying eggs in a KOA campground.

We made several small trips here in Oklahoma on the weekends and one of my favorites was to the Heavener Runestone in southeast Oklahoma. We climbed down the stairs into the valley to see the runestone many times and then back up again. The climb is harder than it used to be.

After we retired, we took a combination bus and paddle boat trip down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. We were the youngest people on the boat, but we saw the rivers in ways you would never see by car.

We now have cell phones so we can stay in touch with family and have enough money to get back home. Even the car is new enough to get us where we’re going without breaking down. So, travel is a little less rustic.

I’m sure I forgot a few trips. But I wouldn’t have traded this life of travel for anything. We were young and poor and still we saw a lot of the United States and a couple of countries. Traveling and seeing other cultures is good for the soul. And my soul, though older than it used to be, has been expanded because of travel.

What are you reading, writing, or traveling to this week?