Chapter 1 · America the Beautiful

The Original Explorer

Every family has someone who quietly shapes the generations that follow

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Every family has someone who quietly shapes the generations that follow.

For me, that’s my grandma.

She grew up in the mountains of West Virginia, where family wasn’t something you scheduled time for—it was simply part of everyday life. As a young girl, she helped care for her cousin Dickie’s son, learning early that loving people often meant serving them. In her mid-teens, she married my Paw Paw, and by seventeen, she was already raising a family of her own.

When my mom was three years old, they moved to Georgia to build a new life.

But West Virginia never stopped being home.

Family and lifelong friends were still there. Those winding mountain roads still called to her. She believed distance should never keep you from the people you love, so whenever she had the chance, she packed up her camper and found a way to go back.

She has always been resourceful. If she wanted to do something, she figured out a way to make it happen. She learned American Sign Language as a young woman and has faithfully interpreted for her church for most of my life. She also worked for the State of Georgia, helping people who are deaf and blind. Service has never been something she talks about.

It’s simply who she is.

She’s also the kind of grandma who refuses to let age tell her what she can and can’t do. On her 80th birthday, while the rest of the family stood at the bottom holding their breath, she climbed to the top of a waterslide and came flying down with the grandkids. Everyone cheered when she reached the bottom—partly because she looked like she was having the time of her life, and partly because she made it down without breaking a bone.

That’s my grandma.

Curious.

Adventurous.

Resilient.

Always ready to pack a bag if it meant spending time with the people she loved.

Years before I ever dreamed of traveling the world, she was already showing me what it meant to love the journey.

My earliest travel memories begin beside her.

My original travel partner was my grandma. Together, we road-tripped from Georgia to West Virginia and Ohio to visit family and lifelong friends before making our way back home, camping in whatever pop-up camper she happened to own at the time.

Her love of camping actually began years earlier, in her early forties, when she bought her very first used green pop-up camper for just $400.

One of my uncles lived in a tiny studio apartment in Savannah. Hotel rooms weren’t in the budget, but that didn’t stop her from making the trip. She simply hitched up her little green camper and went anyway.

To her, camping wasn’t settling for less.

It was part of the adventure.

Back then, my mom would take my sister and me to Banning River Club in West Georgia to meet Grandma, who camped there with my younger uncles. It’s a big family. Mom has five siblings, and back then everyone seemed to find a way to gather around a campground.

Weekends were filled with roasting marshmallows, playing in the river, grilling hamburgers and hot dogs, swimming in the pool, and sitting around the campfire telling stories. One year, we even held a family reunion there with nearly twenty relatives.

Looking back now, I realize Grandma wasn’t just taking us camping.

She was giving us a place where our family could come together.

And without realizing it, she was giving me my first love of the journey.