The Haxtun-Fleming Herald - What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope

Decades ago, our youngest daughter, then around 12, uttered a question to her mother and I that became part of family history and just this week popped back into my mind.

Her question was, “when are we going to take a real vacation, you know, one without horses?” In those years we were rodeoing pretty hard, traveling across the country, not only pulling a trailer full of horses but also dragging along our young one, too little to leave alone. Horses, vital to our reason to travel, were always first priority. That is, until our little travel analysts pointed out the problem.

Eventually we all grew older, Sue and I decided to make the ranch our priority and daughter got big enough to run her own life, at least that was what she told us.

Now, fast forward 30 or more years. The ranch now consumes most of our time and attention. Sue and I hardly ever get to travel together. She slips away to visit family or attend art classes around the country while I stay home and work. Several years back, a new development changed that. Son David and his wife Kathy, moved home to the ranch and proved they can run things just fine without us. Finally, it is vacation time for the parents. I wrote this smack in the middle of one of our first vacations, sort of.

I guess old habits are hard to break. The first thing we did to prepare for leaving was hook up a trailer. This time it was not a horse trailer but a 24 foot flatbed gooseneck, the perfect thing to pull through city rush hour traffic and ninety mile per hour interstate race tracks.

We were off to a popular vacation location, southeast Kansas to load up a 35-year-old pickup truck which had belonged to Sue’s departed father. The family had all agreed their father would enjoy looking down and seeing his old truck bouncing across Colorado ranch land.

Our trek took us to some well-known vacation locations, Peru, Havana, to name a couple, both towns in Kansas. After visiting every gas station between Brush and Riverton, Kan., our destination, we are now on our way home.

The trip has allowed Sue and I to discuss, in great length, how “vacation impaired” we are. The next attempt will follow our daughter’s long ago question. “When are we going to take a real vacation, you know, without trailers?”

Good question. Still working on the answer.