How do I start to write about my recent trip to the Galápagos? To quote Maria con Trapp, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.”
So when did this adventure begin? I would have to answer that it began when my dad asked me to consider doing this trip together, November or December, 2022. I had always wanted to visit the Galápagos and thought I would eventually either make the trip solo, or else ask a girlfriend to go with me. I had no idea that my father was interested, but he told me that the Galápagos was the only place he had any desire to visit, and that at the age of eighty-eight, he knew he better get busy! After contemplating his offer for about two minutes, I accepted.
So not only did I get to experience this magical place, a zoo without cages and an aquarium without glass walls, but I got to experience it with my father. If this was the only place on earth to which he wanted to transplant his body and spirit, what a privilege it would be for me to accompany him.
Growing up, my father was pretty much in charge of our family vacations. They were of three varieties: nature-inspired, educational, or a combination of the two.
My first vivid memory of a family vacation was a camping and boating trip to Kentucky lakes. My parents loaded up the interior of the motorboat my dad had purchased with a giant smelly canvas tent, a Coleman stove, lantern, and cooler, our clothes, and toiletries. We would set up camp in a state park that had a boat launch and spend the day cruising the lake. I loved just lying on the floor of the boat (protected from the itchy fiberglass by a towel), looking up at the sky and the vivid green hills as we glided by. My sisters and I learned to waterski on these lakes.
When my dad downsized the boat for a canoe, or two or three or four, we had later family vacations floating down a placid river, camping on a sandy bank. Obviously, our gear also downsized to accommodate the smaller watercraft, but the Coleman stove and lantern still made the trip.
One spring break, when my mom needed to stay home to study for an exam, my dad took my two sisters and me, all three of us then teens, on a trip to the Everglades where we camped and canoed among mangroves and alligators, then snorkeled around a coral reef off Key Largo. What a brave man!
So it was only fitting that my dad and I had this outdoor, adventurous, and educational vacation, maybe for the last time. It encapsulated all that he taught us about experiencing life through immersion into the beauty and mystery of the natural world.
I’ll tell you more about the actual trip next week, but this one is for my dad. Thank you!