The train originated in Chicago and got into Ann Arbor in the early evening. Since Ann Arbor was a s

Continuing my series on the key unschooling threads in my young life, I share some of my key developmental hampton inn philadelphia travel adventures, which were mostly endeavors engaged in outside of any classroom, school or other formal learning situation. Yet they were some of my most important developmental experiences, giving me a useful orientation along with a sense of agency that I have taken into my adult life, more significant to the person I ve become than anything I learned in school.
hampton inn philadelphia With the wrong mindset, travel can be cast as an arduous logistical chore, long dull hours in a seat, or the discomfort of unfamiliar food, people or circumstances. But when traveling is cast in the light of adventure, I think it can be the greatest of experiences, particularly for kids. If life is a journey, then a trip to somewhere else can be a microcosm of life's journey, a metaphorical education on perhaps how better to lead one's life.
This is quite a long autobiographical piece (over 8000 words) weaving together a handful of pieces hampton inn philadelphia I have written previously in order to capture an important unschooling thread in my young life that has had a profound impact on who I was able to become as an adult.
I was about seven when my parents bought the first of a series of used station wagons, including that wonderful peculiarity, that third row of seats in the back, and in the case of our Mercury, even facing backwards. Since the second row of car seats was generally referred to as the "back seat", my brother and I came to dub the third row as the "wayback seat" or simply the "wayback", which also riffed on the wonderfully creative "Rocky Bullwinkle Show" we watched religiously, and particularly the history traveling time machine of Mr. Peabody (the professorial talking dog) "and his boy Sherman".
Since my mom was in homemaker/parent mode during the week (certainly not a natural fit for her, though she loved her kids), and she and my dad tended to get on each others nerves if they spent too much time together (they divorced when I was ten), my dad took the opportunity often to take my younger brother Peter and I out on day-long adventures on Saturday or Sunday.
Our dad took us on many day trips which were launched with no specific hampton inn philadelphia destination in mind beyond simply a direction to start off in. I think he craved encountering things that were unexpected, and therefore perhaps, more interesting. Throughout the course of the day s drive we would end up at some fast-food place for lunch, a miniature hampton inn philadelphia golf course hampton inn philadelphia or bowling alley for a few games and maybe a donut shop for "goodies" and jolts of caffeine (Cokes for us and coffee for dad). He seemed happy to be alone in the front driving hampton inn philadelphia while we were seemingly at times miles away in the "wayback" playing out some fantasy world which might or might not be incorporating the world we saw going by.
Sometimes my brother and I were tail-gunners in a World War II bomber being shot at by, and returning fire on, the other cars and truck behind us. This was usually more narrative invention than simulated first-person shooter hampton inn philadelphia video game, because each of us tail-gunners had a back story and a long relationship with the other. We were often injured by enemy fire invoking dramatic prior-to-death confessions and/or hampton inn philadelphia miraculous recoveries. Sometimes we rolled the time-clock forward a century and wielded imaginary laser-cannons instead of machine-guns.
Other car trips we would informally hampton inn philadelphia survey the general friendliness and shyness of the drivers and passengers of other cars behind us by animatedly waving at them from our perch, and seeing if they would return our boisterous and friendly waves with the same, or a more restrained wave or none at all and perhaps even a grimace. It was certainly an interesting informal survey of the range of human behaviors.
My brother and I were not always off in our own invented worlds but also spent plenty of time collaborating with our dad on the logistics of the day s agenda. Which cheap fast-food restaurant to stop at. How to best recover from getting "lost" and getting back on the intended path, even consulting maps where necessary (we even might have asked for directions hampton inn philadelphia once or twice). We learned to expect the unexpected and go with the flow, and that every ostensibly wrong turn could lead to something interesting, fun or even memorable. We learned how to entertain ourselves for hours on end where others might succumb to boredom. We learned all the techniques (making up some ourselves) to spice up the adventure of travel.
The pinnacle of travel adventure in the "wayback" were our vacation trips from Ann Arbor Michigan back east to either Binghamton, New York (where my maternal grandparents lived) or Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Either of these was a day-long drive usually begun at five in the morning to avoid a long hot summer hampton inn philadelphia afternoon driving in a car with no air conditioning.
Because of the pre-dawn start time, the car would be configured for the trip the night before. hampton inn philadelphia The backseat and wayback seat were put down flat and we would put down two thin cot mattresses to cover the entire hampton inn philadelphia area of the station wagon behind the front seat. Suitcases were squeezed into corners or somehow underneath the seats, leaving hampton inn philadelphia a large flat cushioned area which would then be festooned with pillows hampton inn philadelphia and blankets for my brother and I to initially sleep in and later play in during the long day's trip. This of course was before the days of seat belts and I shudder to think what would have happened in this configuration if we had gotten in a crash.
The morning of the trip we would be awoken by our dad (he never seemed to sleep very much), and bleary-eyed and still in our pajamas, we would stumble outside and climb into the back of the fully decked-out station-wagon. My dad usually took the first shift driving would as we set out on this grand day's adventure. My brother and I would nestle ourselves under all the blankets and amongst the pillows and peek up through the windows and watch the street lights go by.
These trips, taking us farther afield from mostly flat same-old southeast Michigan, included following and crossing larger rivers (like the Mohawk and Hudson in New York), or crossing big suspension bridges or the long rolling ridges of the Finger Lake region of upstate New York (with my mom s commentary of this or that town she had memories hampton inn philadelphia of from growing up), or cutting through the granite-laced mountains of western Massachusetts. On our trips to "the Cape" we would heighten our anticipation of the destination by all four competing to see who would be the first one to see the Atlantic ocean.
hampton inn philadelphia There would also be those funky one-of-a-kind places where we would always stop. Like a little restaurant outside of Binghamton that had this really cool pinballesque bowling game played by sliding this heavy metal disk down an eight-foot metal alley. The disk would slide over metal triggers which would cause the pretend pins to fall, and then the mechanisms would calculate and display your ten-frame bowling score.
We all understood that the whole point was the change of scenery, the change of perspective, going with the flow and rolling with the punches. Even bad weather was reframed from an anxiety hampton inn philadelphia producing obstacle to an exciting challenge that would make this trip that much more memorable.
Part of the adventure of travel was sleeping in strange and interesting places. Nothing fit that bill more than having a sleeping compartment on an overnight train. No travel experience from my youth was more romantic and thrilling than the winter holiday train trip we took several times from our home in Ann Arbor to my grandparents' house in Binghamton New York. "Over the meadow and through the woods " as it were.
The train originated in Chicago and got into Ann Arbor in the early evening. Since Ann Arbor was a smaller town and just a short stop, we had to wait for the approaching train on a cold outdoor platform and quickly drag ourselves and our luggage on board. The conductor then led us to our small compartment, what they called a "roomette". With our luggage either stowed in the baggage car or in a small "closet" in our room, the seats in the room folded down and a mattress was pulled down from the wall and pretty much covered the entire floor of the compartment. This in effect turned the small space into one maybe queen-sized bed, shared by all four of us, with a window looking out at the passing countryside.
It was particularly that window, and the view it provided, that was the key to the exciting adventure ahead. My brother and I would change into our pajamas and sit on the bed looking out while our parents maybe had coffee or a drink in the lounge car before joining us kids under the covers. The fun was being all warm and snuggled under the blankets while being able to watch the cold winter world go by outside.
The train's path took us from Ann Arbor some forty miles east through Detroit with a major stop at the big station there. From Detroit the train continued east, and in one of its most exciting anticipated moments, took the tunnel under the Detroit River, reemerging in Ontario Canada. The descent into the blackness of the tunnel, with only an occasional light zipping by for maybe a quarter of an hour underground, was one of the big highlights for me of the train journey.
After crossing the farmland of southern Ontario, the next great moment of the journey was crossing the Peace Bridge over the St. Lawrence Seaway to leave Canada and arrive hampton inn philadelphia in Buffalo New York. Picture a small boy in a darkened train compartment under the covers in bed looking out a big train window down through a metal frame railroad bridge at the icy waters below, full of small icebergs, ghostly white against the dark water. What could be more memorable?
I still love riding the train whenever and wherever I can. Maybe not the fastest way to get across town or across the country, but a multi-faceted adventure in ways that few other means of