Not a trip per se, but in 1968 when I was13, I flew unaccompanied from Bordeaux to London on Air Algeria.
After reading all y’all’s stories, my tale feels a whole lot less sexy, but we traveled from Suffolk, Virginia to Elko, Nevada and back in the summer of '16. My dad and her girlfriend (my dad is trans, hence the pronoun) took their car up from Florida to meet us in Suffolk. They proceeded to drive in our old car, a Chrysler PT Cruiser, while Mom and I traveled in our new car, a Toyota Prius. We gave the old car to my sister in Nevada. She proceeded to wreck it inside a month.
We didn’t really make very many stops along the way. Dad and Tim wanted to keep moving.
Twice, I’ve had to walk out of Iraq. The first time, I got stuck at the border with Kuwait and I paid a guy driving a truckload of camels into Kuwait to take me to the Kuwait City Radisson. The second time, I was traveling in Iraq during the Sadar uprising and I ended up driving to the border with Turkey, took a cab to Diyarbakir, flew to Istanbul, then to Chicago, then to DC, then to Kuwait and then drove back to Baghdad. I think I posted about that in real time here.
My second WestPac, which included visits to Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, and Guam, as well as a couple places I’m not supposed to talk about 
(though the latter really weren’t very exciting). Bought some nice sapphires for a friend whilst in Thailand, saw the Olympic flame in Korea, and got a couple tattoos in Guam.
In 1973 my friend J bought an old mail truck, one of those with the steering wheel on the right side. She asked me and our friend M if we wanted to drive with her from here in Memphis back to school in Fort Worth at the end of the summer. We decided to make a real trip of it and go there by way of Aspen Colorado. We were 19 and thought this would be a great adventure. Our parents told us we were going to die.
We put up some shelves and curtains on the windows of the truck to make it like a camper. We stocked up on canned food and off we went. Now the truck would not go over 35 miles an hour and had a problem with overheating but that did not deter us. Neither did the fact that we didn’t have much money. It was going to be wonderful and everything would work out.
We spent the first night in Searcy Arkansas with a friend and headed to Oklahoma City the next day. We got there near dark and realized we couldn’t sleep in the truck in the city. We found a phone booth and looked through the phone book for somewhere to stay. We thought we could find a convent or something who would take us in. We finally got in touch with a guy who said we could stay at the halfway house he worked in. When we got there, he was wearing a tuxedo and said he just came from a wedding. He said we could sleep in the office and he would be in another room, probably awake all night because he didn’t sleep well there. We slept on the carpeted floor which smelled bad and there were bugs. It was a little scary but, hey, adventure right?
J was supposed to meet her boyfriend in Amarillo and drop off her stuff so we wouldn’t have to carry it all around with us. He wasn’t home but his grandparents lived next door. They didn’t know where he was (very pre-cellphones) but let us spend the night there.
We started off for Colorado. Somewhere in the flatness of Texas in the middle of nowhere, we pulled off to a rest stop for the night. There was a family there but they left at dusk. We laid on sleeping bags and just looked at the sky. The Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon. It was the most awesome thing I had ever seen. But M got scared later and we decided to leave. Only to realize we had a flat tire. We laughed hysterically about that, joked about serial killers and locked ourselves in the truck (with a mosquito) until morning. There was no traffic on this road. J and M started walking and I stayed with the truck. They eventually got picked up by a guy who brought them back and put on the spare. We stopped at the nearest town and bought a new tire. And we were off again.
We got to Denver and went to the Museum of Natural History. Then we decided to visit the Coors Brewery in Golden to take a tour. The truck overheated in the line to get in and nice people helped us push it until we got to the parking lot. We drank beer after the tour, put some water in the radiator and then drove to a campsite next to a beautiful stream where we spent the night. One of the other campers made us hot chocolate and read poetry to us.
The next stop was Pike’s Peak. At a campsite there we met several other campers and we explored the area. Then J went with a few of them to a concert in Colorado Springs. After they returned, we set around a campfire and drank a whole lot of tequilla. When we retired for the night, J said she had a bad feeling about them and that we should leave first thing in the morning. At daybreak, we packed up to sneak away but they heard us and one of the guys said he couldn’t find his sunglasses. He searched the truck but they weren’t there and we finally got on our way.
We headed toward Aspen and stopped at Independence Pass. It was like being on top of the world. There was snow there. It was breathtakingly beautiful. I’d never seen mountains like this. We met three guys from New Jersey and a photographer there. The photographer suggested that we go a little further up the mountain and have a picnic. We drove up there and had a nice picnic (we had canned food, they had canned food, it was a match) but the photographer never showed up. We ran into him later and he said he suggested it because, you know, three girls, three guy, he thought we would get along. The guys said they had found a great spot to camp so we followed their car. We were having a very pleasant night when a Park Ranger showed up and told us we had to move. The winding roads were scary as hell in the dark in that truck as we looked for another place to stay. Two of the guys rode in the truck and were pretty freaked out. We found another camping area and again settled in. The photographer had been right. We really had a great time with them.
We made it to Aspen later the next day. We explored the town, treated ourselves to a nice dinner and then found a campsite for the night. The next afternoon, we were hanging out in a park, watching a baseball game and asking people if they had a can opener (somehow we had lost it), when we heard someone yell “hey Memphis, still looking for a can opener?”. It was a guy we had met earlier in the day. He invited us to his place for dinner. He fed us, let us take showers and one of the records he played was by The Four Tops. I had never heard them and loved it (still do). He said he worked nights cleaning bars and we could spend the night there. We were just amazed that this guy could be so cool. He was 30 years old! Later we climbed up the mountain a ways and looked at the stars above us and the town below. It was magical.
And that’s where the adventure ended. In the morning we cleaned up the guy’s apartment and left after he came home. We drove to Amarillo to pick up J’s things, spent the night there and then headed to Fort Worth. We spent a night in J’s dorm and then M and I flew back to Memphis. There’s a whole lot more to the story, all the hitch hikers we picked up, all the restrooms and fountains and streams we “bathed” in, all the pot we smoked, all the wonderful people who helped us out. We got all their names and addresses and sent them postcards letting them know we got home okay. We didn’t die and it was the first (and most awesome) of many adventures we had together.
I was once debriefed at a US Embassy, which is not nearly as dramatic as it sounds. I was the first American allowed into Syria (after a 3-day wait for a visa at the border) in the aftermath of the 1973 War. In Amman, they wanted to know what I saw. A smoldering piece of mobile equipment next to the road. And the nicest, most hospitable hosts in any country I ever visited.
I want to thank the OP for an awesome thread. (I realize I didn’t even contribute a tale!)
I was undertaking a few days of house painting the day I saw the thread title, which lead to an afternoon of musing, while painting, Exactly which adventure would qualify as “greatest adventure”? It was a fun afternoon, as one thing after another came back to me. And I’d grin a great big grin.
Hubs and I have spent 30+ yrs setting off to backpack, for a couple of months usually, around some intriguing location or other. Lots of rickety buses, dodgy boats, ancient trains, night markets and ruins. And grand adventures too numerous to count!
At a break in the painting, I joined hubs on the porch and posed the question to him. And so began an entire afternoon of rollicking fun reminding each other of this occasion or that. It was such fun, we laughed and laughed till the sunset.
What followed was two full days of seeking the other out to say, “Hey, but what about this? Remember that fetish market in La Paz?” Always followed by one of us saying, “Oh, yeah, I forgot all about that!” HaHa!
During this pandemic we have withdrawn into a small sleepy existence of sorts. Two small people, living in a little house, on a quiet street, in a small quiet city. Both aware it could be a long time till such adventures are possible again, a very depressing thought indeed.
But your thread took us away from all of that! Three days or more, of loads of laughter and reminiscing about all those holidays. It was like taking a trip away, almost. Anyway we are both much refreshed from the experience.
So a great big Thank You to you!
I was in La Paz, Bolivia, and took a day trip to ski at Mt. Chacaltaya. World’s Highest Permanently Established ski ‘resort’ (Not much of one, I’ll tell you!)
Story here: I skied here in 1984. It was great! They gave me the longest skis they had, an old pair of Dynastar 185s with a huge chunk of edge missing. You had to carry a rope with a big metal hook to use the tow rope. Get to the top and tie it around your waist. Cable entered a hole in the wall of the little red building, went around a wheel on an old car chassis then out a hole in the other wall.
I was there with maybe a dozen locals (I’m from Tahoe) and I flat tore that place up! Had to watch out for the odd cravass, but had a killer time. Did 12-15 runs, crawled into the back of the taxi and passed out from lack of oxygen. Woke up in town a couple hours later.
Sad to see it go…
Pretty tame here, compared with most of the others:
When we were newlyweds, I got a bee in my bonnet about doing a cross-country drive. I’d never traveled west of the Mississippi, at all - in fact my entire life was along the eastern seaboard from NC to NY, with very brief jaunts to Florida and Ohio. I saved up my vacation time and Typo Knig was in grad school, so his time was flexible. We took a month and went for it. Loads of planning beforehand, of course - we bought a tent and made sure we knew how to manage it, we got a car-top carrier since we were driving a smallish car , we invested in a propane stove and lantern and a good cooler (still have the cooler and the lantern…).
We did a combination of motels, mooching off of friends, and camping, and saw a few national parks and loads of mountains.
The scariest bits were when a huge bull moose walked through our campsite - no more than 20 or 30 feet away from us. We stayed still, and he just munched on a few leaves then went on his way. And when we were driving on some very narrow, curvy roads to get to the coast in northern California - and being tailgated by logging trucks each bearing about 4 logs (they grow some BIG TREES out there).
The memories are priceless. Bison. Moose. Mountains with snow on them (we don’t get those hereabouts, unless there’s just been a snowstorm). Cliffs over a blue ocean (the ocean on our side of the continent is ugly green). Snowfall - on Memorial Day weekend. My dream is to get a small RV and do more of it - 4 weeks was not nearly enough.
Riding the subway into downtown Boston every day for 20 years. Hoo boy!
Not mine, but I feel obligated to mention my son’s greatest travel adventure - a solo trip to Europe, when he had never travelled overnight on his own before.
Told here (at times, in near-realtime 
).
Maybe if things open up this summer, we’ll gift him with funds to do something similar this year after he graduates college.
I have a similar dumbfuck-lost-in-the-serious-desert story…hell, a couple of them really.
I also did an Oregon-to-San Francisco bike ride, though I started in Eugene. That was great but I would not do it again, at least not southbound, because Highway 1 was terrifying. Highlight of that trip was a place called Tule Lake, known for its herd of elk. I set up in the campground there and wandered a discreet distance off into a meadow to smoke a bowl (yes, this was long enough ago that you had to do that even in California!). I did that and then I got engrossed in my book for a bit. I looked up and I was SURROUNDED BY MOOSE. Elk. Whatever. I just hung out with the elk for a while, thinking that this was pretty awesome and wondering if they were going to crush me. I reasoned that if the elk were dangerous, there probably would have been prominent signs to that effect. On the other hand, this was not a usual situation. I figured it would be better for me to start moving than to wait for them to do so, so I just got up and walked slowly away. They never seemed to take much notice of me.
Crew trainee on a tall ship from Nova Scotia to Grenada. There’s a thread about it here, somewhere.
I’m sort of torn between two of them.
One was a solo trip to Europe to go to a six week study-abroad opportunity that I’d basically signed up for, but didn’t go to that school, so it was sort of a leap of faith. And on top of that, I had an extra week in Europe as far as my flights were concerned, but nothing planned after the study abroad. So a lot of leaping, then looking on my part. But… to make it less crazy sounding, it was the UK, the study abroad was with Georgetown University, and I was 30 years old at the time. So maybe not quite so crazy.
The other is my wife and I’s honeymoon. We basically decided on 3 cities (Prague, Budapest and London), and booked hotels and flights, but nothing else. So we basically made the rest up as we went; we basically planned the first day ahead of time, and the rest were planned the evening before. Lots of walking, lots of exploring, etc… If you do choose to go this route, Rick Steves is your friend. His guidebooks were fantastic for finding restaurants and other stuff like that.
Most of the other trips I’ve taken have been in the US, or in foreign countries where I’m part of some larger event- weddings mostly, so there wasn’t so much uncertainty.
When me and my family went island hopping while we were on a vacation in Asia and we thought that the waves are just normal but then when we got home we found out there’s a typhoon. I thought our small boat was gonna crash!
I love reading these stories, and though I have traveled some, I’ve never considered it an adventure on the level that some of you have experienced. I use my volunteering at races as an excuse to travel whenever I can afford to and tack a few days on for sightseeing if possible. Many of us volunteer race workers do so. Want to go to France to work a race? Sure. Korea? I haven’t yet, but I’d like to. I worked a race in Reno, Nevada and took an extra day to explore Lake Tahoe. I explored Ottawa and local tourist attractions when I attended an event nearby. It’s how I learned to love Montreal, parts of France, the Monterey peninsula and So Cal. It’s been a great way to see the world and to share it with friends.
Getting shot at during a daytime robbery in Berlin.
I rarely drink socially, at home or traveling, but a few times I got caught up in the spirit. Two of themwere in Budapest and Casablanca, where I was checked into very inconspicuous, out of the way lodgings. In the case of Budapest, an unmarked private home. Casablanca, hidden in the old casbah. Apparently, drunkenness brings out an uncanny sense of navigation, because finding my “home”, in retrospect, were among my life’s mot amazing and inexplicable. accomplishments. Luckilly, Soviet eastern Europe and Muslim countries were the two safest places in the world to be out, lost, at night.
Pretty tame compared to most of the others but a week-long rafting trip in the Grand Canyon that is nearly indescribable. I dreamt about canyon walls and cliffs for quite a while afterwards. Seven days of jaw-dropping scenery with guides that knew the canyon, its history and geology like the backs of their hands. The lead guide had more than 300 trips down the river. It was the best vacation money that I ever spent.
That’s one I’ve been wanting to do. I thought that rafting down the whole Canyon took more than two weeks. Where did you start and stop?