I flew on a plane for the first time when I was 10. My grandma, Uncle Willie, and I flew to California to visit my Uncle Dick for a week. The following fall, I would fly to Washington D.C. with my mom on my grandpa’s dime. He decided it was time for me to see the nation’s capitol. He paid for my plane ticket, mom covered my meals, and I was young enough to stay at the hotel for free.

My family traveled a lot. We would drive 2 hours to visit family and friends in St. Louis for the day. Pile in the car to attend WWII army reunions for my grandpa in Iowa, Indiana and Alabama. Went to Disney World in a passenger van in June the year I was 12. While some of my peers hadn’t yet traveled outside of the state, I had traveled to 16 states by the time I graduated high school. All thanks to my grandparents. They loved to travel and instilled that same love in their 4 children and, thankfully, in their grandchildren as well.

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The anchor in Nyhavn, Copenhagen, Denmark. /  A selfie with The Screamer at The National Museum in Oslo, Norway.  /  Enjoying the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway.

When I was 18, I had the opportunity to go to Europe on a trip for 3 weeks led by my high school librarian. I was going to save my money from working and ask my grandma and uncle to help me pay for the trip. A few days after sharing my plan with my grandma, I arrived home after school to find she had written a check to pay for the entire trip. Thanks to my grandma, I traveled to England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy that summer. I sent her a postcard from each country we visited. It was an incredible trip. I saw the white cliffs of Dover, viewed Paris from the Eiffel Tower at night, felt the heavy air of Dachau, and had the most amazing ice cream that has ever touched my lips in Florence. I attended college that fall as an international traveler.

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Nyhavn in Copenhagen, Denmark.  /  A snowy Stockholm, Sweden.  /  The entrance to Christianshavn, a hippy commune, in Copenhagen, Denmark.  /  The pink pussy hats worn during women’s rights protests in the U.S. spotted in Copenhagen, Denmark.  /  The beautiful city hall in Oslo, Norway.

To date, I have traveled to 35 states and 14 countries. While my grandparents often paid for my travel while I was growing up, I covered my own travel expenses once I began college. My grandfather died in 1993 and my grandmother in 2014. Grandma left me a small inheritance that I, of course, used to do some traveling. I saved most of the money to participate in a trip to Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. It was an amazing experience. I wandered along the canals in Denmark, dined in Nyhavn, rode a train through the snow-white Scandinavian countryside, explored the old city center in Stockholm, and walked along the waterfront in Oslo.

On the final night of the trip, I hiked as far as I could along the docks in Oslo, not wanting to go back to the hotel. Not wanting the trip to end. As I watched the sunset, I realized that travel was my grandparents’ legacy to me. I recognized for the first time the incredible gift they had provided to me – the love of travel and the means to do so. I also realized that this was the last trip my grandparents would ever pay for. It was a sad and funny epiphany but it also made my future travel all that sweeter.

The sunset over the bay on the last night in Oslo, Norway.

Travel is a way they continue with me after they have left this world. They were with me when I biked the Paul Bunyan Trail in 2018, when I stood on the very windy Cliff of Moher in 2019, and every time I take a road trip be it to Wyoming or Winona. They take the most economic and precious travel route – a first-class seat in my heart.