Following one another's family footsteps

My son is transferring from his training at Tinker AFB to his deployment location up in Alaska.. In practical terms, he’s on a two-week government funded road trip across the Southwest, up the West Coast, and onto the Alaska Ferry in a rambling Land Rover that he picked up from a friend in Oklahoma.

The trip has been producing a stream of text messages detailing the sights: wondering about inexplicably eroded buttes outside Albuquerque, clearing the security cordon around Hoover Dam, and marveling at the fundamentalist road signs littering the west Texas highways. It sounds like grand fun in true ‘road-trip’ style: two friends and an open highway, no deadlines or destinations and diverting to whatever catches their interest.

It’s vicarious fun: For year’s I’d felt like none of the kids had the same wanderlust that I had, but their sense of adventure is starting to blossom as they reach their 20’s. The Service is giving my son the opportunity to make wide-ranging weekend trips, and he’s talking about visiting the Far East on leave. My daughter is considering study and internship abroad and would move to Amsterdam in a moment.

It’s definitely interesting to watch parallels develop as they get out exploring the world on their own.