The Ride That Sparked The Wanderlust

I was a very young man, not yet a teenager, when I first traveled alone. From San Diego I rode a Greyhound bus to Salem, Oregon in order to spend the summer as a guest of a family that once lived across the street from us in San Diego (basically, this family, the Millers, took me off my Mothers hands for the summer).

That summer was an an adventure-filled, extraordinary time, but the one thing I remember most clearly was the bus ride. The Greyhound took nearly two full days to get from S.D. to Salem, as it stopped at nearly every large city and small town along I-5. Having never traveled further north than Los Angeles, everything beyond L.A. fascinated me. 

I sat in a window seat the entire time, my eyes devouring the landscapes of the less populated areas of California and Oregon. One of the strongest memories I have of the early part of the trip was the bus making it's way through the San Fernando valley over a mountain pass up to Pyramid Lake. Periodically, the driver would point out various places of historical interest when he made announcements regarding the expected time of arrival at the next city or town on the route.

I faintly recall that by the time the bus was approaching Sacramento, it was late in the evening and I was too tired not to drift off to sleep, and I stayed asleep for the entire drive through Northern California and into Oregon. 

It was early morning when I woke up to see the heavily forested low mountains of Southern Oregon, a sight that filled me with awe. I cannot actually recall the first small town the bus stopped at that morning, but I can recall the air being very damp, and smelling incredibly fresh - it had to be the freshest air I ever breathed up to that point in my life.

Traveling alone as a pre-teen wasn't unusual in those days. Now I imagine child protective services would be called in, or I would be thought of as a runaway. 

When the bus pulled into the station in Salem, Patrick Miller and his younger brother Lawrence were there to meet me, having been driven into Salem by their oldest sister Trina to pick me up. The drive back to the small town of Dallas, where the Millers lived, was lively, with me, Patrick and Lawrence talking up a storm about what we were going to do that summer.

It was a summer of hikes, fishing, berry-picking, my first paper route, learning how to shoot a .22 rifle (I even took a hunters safety course), tubing on the Willamette and at the swimming hole, building forts, and playing explorer - in short, a grand summer any young boy would be lucky to experience,

But it doesn't hold a candle to that first bus ride alone.