Utah

Year of First Visit – 1995

Point of Entry – I-15 near St. George

There's probably no state more different from where I live than the state of Utah. Yet there is probably no place (besides places that I've lived) where I feel more at home.

The bulk of my Utah time has been spent in the Southwest corner of the state. Zion National Park is in my top 5 favorite places on the planet (others include Yosemite, Manhattan, San Francisco, and Disney World). And, depending on my mood, it usually ranks #1. I have days that I long to return and absorb all that it is.

Bryce Canyon is a treat, too, especially with my eldest being named Bryce. My kids think Knab was the model for “Peach Springs” in the movie “Cars.” The beautiful waters of Lake Powell set me to dreaming of houseboating there.

And though I'd like to explore much more of the state, like the northern mountains and the LDS Geneology Library, pulling off I-15 at highway 9 near Hurricane makes me feel like I've finally arrived home again.

Texas

Year of First Visit – 1993

Point of Entry – Houston Hobby Airport

“Life's too short not to live as a Texan” says the magnet on my fridge. I got it in a welcome basked of goodies from the women's group at our church not too long after we moved into our house in Houston and I tested that statement out for about 5 years when I lived there.

Before first visiting The Lone Star State for job interviews, I'd heard that everything's bigger in Texas. From day one there I found that to be partially true. The part I hadn't heard is that things aren't just big, they're also brand spanking new.

I taught is a school system so big and growing that the question was “How many new schools are opening this year?” It was a wild switch from the “Can we keep it open one more year before declining enrollment forces us to close?” situations I'd been a part of in other states.

I bought my first house in Texas. Though modest by Houston standards, we were its first owners and it was bigger than pretty much anyone else's in the family. And our “yard of the month” held a pool, 2 decks, an arbor, 9 trees, over 30 bushes, and still had lots of open green St. Augustine to cut (one year growing so fast that we had to cut it 3 times per week).

Our firstborn nearly immediately mandated a big, new van to haul him around.

We enjoyed the big sites in the area, ranging from Space Center Houston to the cowboy restaurants in Bandara, from the LBJ Library in Austin to the GHWBush Library in College Station, the flat dry plains of West Texas to the Riverwalk in San Antonio and Moody Gardens on the beaches of Galveston.

That bigness rubbed off on my spirit and let me dream big of what could be ---- new and growing ministries under Interstate 45 and the possibilities that I might do things that have big(er) impact on the world than what I was already doing.

And though I left my big new house and yard in Houston for a 100+ year old tiny rowhouse in Baltimore and my job at big new school for one at a little dilapidated storefront church, the knowledge of big and new that is deep in the heart of all Texans, native and transplanted, kept me looking for the possible and reaching for the impossible.

And if that's what it means to have a piece of Texas in me, then life truly is to short not to live as a Texan.

Tennessee

Year of First Visit – 1998

Point of Entry – I-24 near Chattanooga

It was a dark November night we traversed I-40 on our way home from the Youth Specialties conference in Nashville.  With every seat in the Suburban filled, we settled in for the overnight drive.

One passenger had trouble with the concept of silence.  If we didn't know this before the trip south, we definitely knew it before we headed home.

As the other passengers quieted down for the night, she kept going and going.  At one point, when no one  was responding, she simply filled the silence by saying, "Squirrel . . .  Squirrel . . .  Squirrel . . . " over and over until she came up with something else to say.

I've had less strange memories in Tennessee as well ----

-Touring Nashville.

-A family vacation in Great Smokey Mountain National Park.

-A retreat at Falls Creek Falls.

-The Dream Year conference in Nashville.

Then there was the rental car agent at BNA who noted that they didn't have any of the 4-door economy-barely-a-car cars available to fill my reservation and wondered if it would be OK to substitute a 2-door instead.  I was by myself so that was a non-issue to me.

By "2-door" he meant "Camero."

And though I thoroughly enjoyed my sweet ride during that rental and have great memories from Tennessee, somehow when I'm there I can still hear a faint echo ------

Squirrel

Squirrel

Squirrel

South Dakota

Year of First Visit – 2009

Point of Entry – I-90 near Rapid City

My life changed the instant I crossed into South Dakota.  My wife had visited more states than I.  I'd been catching up for years and even took some business trips to states she hadn't been.  When we touched down in Denver earlier that week we'd come to a tie in the number of states visited.  And she'd been to South Dakota before but I hadn't.

So as we rolled into the state I officially became the member of the family who'd visited the most states.  When I told the kids, they rolled their eyes and got back to the books they were reading.

We only visited South Dakota a couple days and wasn't be able to see everything we wanted.  We did Mount Rushmore (I liked the mountain but the displays around it would have fit better on the National Mall in DC and seemed out of place in the Black Hills), Jewel Cave, and the Badlands.

We'd seen on NPS.gov about the Minuteman Missile sited.  It seemed out of the zone for the kind of places we like to see but thought that, since we were staying very near it and not knowing if we'd be back in the area, we should reserve tickets for the tour.  It ended up being one of the most fascenating tours we've taken.

And of course we stopped in at Wall Drug.  This capitol of roadside attractions was surprisingly well done and was actually worth poking around for a while.  The buffalo burgers and "Free Ice Water" were a treat as well.

My being the king of the state count only lasted a couple of years as my wife and I had to share the title after our summer trip two years later.  But for a while, at least, I was king of the hill.  It seems appropriate that a place famous for men's faces carved in a mountaintop bestowed that title on me.

South Carolina

Year of First Visit – 2000

Point of Entry – I-95 at South of the Border near Dillon

Perhaps I should have taken the roadside abomination at the North/South Carolina line on I-95 as an oman predicting that weird things would seem to happen to me in South Carolina.

On one trip home from Florida we pulled in to the Econolodge for the night.  We figured we'd have dinner, swim with the kids in the pool, and get a good night's rest for the drive ahead.  Once we walked next door to the Sizzler for dinner a massive storm darkened the sky.  The torrents during short walk back to our room drenched us and only a fence distinguished the pool from the parking lot.

We all got showered, changed, and in bed.  It was then that we noticed light coming from under the curtains.  With the sky so dark we'd lost track of time.  The sun had now come back out.  We were all in bed for the night and it was almost 7:30 p.m.

While on a southbound Amtrak through the state we were awakened by a phone call.  Our home's burglar alarm had been tripped and the police were on the way.

We stopped at Congaree National Park on January 1, 2010, as a part of a Christmas vacation.  We never expected that many of the boardwalk trails would be underwater from flooding.  (Even so, it was still a neat place to see.)

But back to the North Carolina border, where else can I stand atop a giant sombrero?  I guess a few weird experiences are some welcome relief from the monotony that is travel along the eastern seaboard.