Wanderlust

My grandmother and grandfather (St. Patsy's parents) were born travellers. They both had the blood of nomads in their veins, and nothing made them happier than to be part of a caravan headed out across the country. There were epic treks to Canada for fishing camp, yearly pilgrimages to Florida, and vacations with as many of the extended clan as possible to see whatever sights there were wherever we hadn't been. I dimly recall a trip to Michigan, I think it was, and stopping to be photographed with an enormous statue of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe. I also have a snippet of memory in which I see myself running in sand and driftwood along a beach with my cousin Laurie, who is my age. We were chasing little chipmunks. Everyone got food poisoning on that trip, by the way, and my mother loves to tell the story of my cousin Ruthann lying on the side of the road, crying weakly, and saying, "Just leave me here. Leave me here to die."
Grandma and Grandpa even went to the Alaska Territory--it wasn't a state yet--although I don't exactly know what they did there. Grandpa liked to gather rocks and driftwood and other pieces of flotsam and jetsam from beaches and significant areas and paint on them the place and the date. Those were his mementos of his trip. Those and about ten thousand slides.

Grandma and Grandpa had seven children, and all but perhaps one inherited their Traveller Gene. My aunts and uncles have travelled the world, sometimes in campers or trailers, other times by air. They have taken ocean cruises and river cruises. I doubt that, at this point in their lives, there is any place they wanted to go that they haven't been.

St. Patsy and my dad used to love travelling by car, taking a week or two at a time to go up to New England or take the Skyline Drive and decide en route where they might end up. Dad got seasick and disliked air travel after his time in the service, so the car was their major conveyance. They camped in Quebec, hung out in Key West, and hobnobbed with the hoity-toity at the Greenbrier(with my mother saying every moment, "I don't think we belong here.")

I have a somewhat mutated version of the traveller's gene. I love travelling, but I don't pursue it. It's hard to explain. Travelling was a...a sort of drive inside my grandparents. It's that way with some of my aunts and uncles. There is a restlessness there, a need to leave their home environs and see something else, whereas for me, I enjoy travel, but I don't ever feel like I'm between trips. For some of them, travel is a way of life. For me, it's a big deal and a somewhat unusual occurrence, although I have been travelling more now than before. So! Let's get to today's question (and I'm running out of them, by the way):

Where is one place you haven't yet visited but would absolutely love to go someday?

I know the question says, "One place", but I'm going to try and cheat a bit with my answer. Because all of my earlier literature study in high school and college was concentrated in British Lit., I would love to go to England, Ireland, and Scotland. And, what the hell, let's go ahead and toss Wales in there, too. How can any English Literature major not want to go there? Of course, England is the land of Shakespeare (even if you are an anti-Stratfordian, someone who wrote all of the Works lived here!), but also Keats, Byron, Marlowe, and that's just for starters. Ireland gave us Oscar Wilde; Scotland, Robert Burns; Wales, Dylan Thomas. And the history! As some Britisher once said to an American, "Dearie, we have loos older than your entire country!"

In time, Rick and I will go to all of these places, but we have to be patient. It's important to us to go when we'll have time to enjoy seeing them without rushing to cram them into a small time frame. I hate waiting for pretty much anything, but I've learned how. And I think they'll all be there when my turn comes.

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