John Kubal is a writer at the Brookings Register and a 35–year Navy veteran.

Just prior to and during a just-returned automobile trip to Waco, Texas, I’d been reading Mark Twain and Paul Theroux, two nonpareil travel writers. Travel is a genre I have never wandered into seriously. Is now the time?

Among the globe’s many large cities, I have been to Hong King, Singapore, Tokyo, Munich, Dublin and London, where Bea, I and our four children lived as a Navy family for three years.

While I have been to Hong Kong several times — courtesy of the U.S. Navy — the most memorable visit was one when Bea joined me there in (I think) 1972. My ship, the aircraft carrier USS Constellation (CVA-64) was in port for about five days and Bea had flown over with other Navy wives on a chartered plane. I’d been in Hong Kong two or three times previously and always found it a favorite port-of-call. Too be there with Bea made the place one of the most memorable travel experiences of our lives. At the time Hong Kong was still a crown colony of Great Britain. On July 1, 1997, control was passed to the People's Republic of China.   

On the national scene, again as a Navy family, we lived in the Washington, D.C., area, San Diego, and San Antonio, where I did a tour of duty with the Fifth Army. In a place less familiar to non-Navy readers, we did a two-year tour of duty on Midway, a roughly 2 ½ by 1½-mile island, aptly named by virtue of its being roughly in the middle of the Pacific.

Over the years Bea and I together have taken several sort-of vacation trips by air — which I have always made a determination somewhere along the way that this trip would be our last and we would never again go by air. That left trains and automobiles.

If there’s a created-by-God way to travel, it’s by rail. Bea and I, sometimes with one or more of children in tow, had traveled by train in the UK and in Europe. Always on time and in comfort, to me rail was the way to go. Here in the USA, rail is the way to go — however, I have put aside the always-on-time piece of the equation.

The last rail journey Bea and I took was about 10 years ago: Amtrak from Los Angeles via Chicago to Washington. There were several stations along the way where we could have boarded: We settled on St. Cloud, Minnesota.

We drove up the night before, found a hotel and parked our car. We went to bed early, knowing we had to be at the station and ready to board at 5 a.m. The train arrived at about 9 a.m. From then until our return to St. Cloud was as good as travel gets. After a coach trip to Chicago, we boarded a sleeper car. From there to D.C., we had a small sitting area where the seats were converted to a pair of upper and lower bunks. Naturally, I took the upper bunk, which was somewhat like sleeping in a coffin. I cannot imagine any wife taking the upper bunk on a train trip. I would again go by Amtrak or any other train.

For the Waco trip, Bea and I did a lot of soul-searching before making the decision to drive there and back. Why don’t you fly? We fielded that question from both friends and family. I don’t know the answer, really. Were we on the horns of dilemma? Now it’s a moot point.

So on Wednesday last, with the crew at Ron’s having given our 2013 Toyota Highlander an all-systems go, we were on the road about 9 a.m. Bea was under the wheel; I was co-pilot and navigator. Two octogenerians with navigational tools that included an old Garmin and a 2022 road atlas. Our first stop was to be Emporia, Kansas.

Due to a navigational error, we missed our exit and entered the Kansas Turnpike, from which there was no exit. We soldiered on to Wichita, with Bea still driving while I phoned ahead and found us a hotel. After some over-the-phone directions we made it — more than an hour later than planned.

Thursday morning we breakfasted and were on the road for the final leg of our journey. Bea was again in the driver’s seat and got us past Oklahoma City and around the Fort Worth area after a couple pits stops along the way. We arrived in Waco that afternoon and settled in for a two-day stay.

On Friday our granddaughter picked us up and showed us bit of Waco and the Baylor campus. The two Baylor bears were beating the brutal heat, chilling out inside their cave-like dwelling.

Saturday completed the mission that brought us to Waco: Our granddaughter graduated from Baylor. We topped off the day with a small celebration that included Texas barbecue.

Sunday it was time to come home, on pretty much the same route we had taken going down. However, we spent the night in Salina, Kansas, as heavy rain rolled through the area. Monday found on the road, all the way driving under sunless skies with drizzling rain and arriving home in Brookings about 5 p.m.

As I looked back at the above events, I ask: Was this Bea’s and my final long automobile excursion? There was more to say about this one, but I’ve run out of space. Maybe one more column to come later? For now I leave you with some universal travel lessons from the two Americans cited above.

Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Paul Theroux: “Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don’t know and trusting them with your life. … One of the greatest rewards of travel is the return home to the reassurance of family and old friends, familiar sights and homely comforts and your own bed.”

Have a nice day.