Edith Cook
One benefit of retirement is travel “on a shoestring,” with the “shoestring” glowing a gilded hue when using an inexpensive travel club. My preferred modus is The Affordable Travel Club, “atc” for short. For a modest gratuity, guests arrive sometime post-supper, when the hosts will sit and chat with their charges. Travelers obtain a restful sleep in a guest room, plus a leisurely breakfast before heading out in the morning.
I have used the travel club as far away as Germany (where I traveled by train) and as close as Casper, Wyoming, a three-hour drive from where I live. Some of my repeat atc visits have become long-distance friendships. Conversely, I have hosted guests from abroad as well as from various states of the Union. My signature breakfast consists of sourdough waffles (or pancakes) with a choice of maple syrup, yogurt, fruit, and coffee.
Some atc members have hosted me repeatedly. My dog Abby and I have stayed with atc hosts on the way to my youngest son and his family in California, to my middle son and family in Idaho, and to my eldest and family in Texas. On my way to Texas, I have stayed repeatedly with a retired university professor of physics who lost his wife several years ago to cancer. His city in Kansas, Hays, is a university town that boasts an extraordinary natural history museum, the Steinberg Museum, which advances an appreciation of Earth’s natural history and the evolutionary forces that impact it, with an emphasis on the Great Plains.
This year will be the first time I’ll travel without my dog, who died a few weeks ago. On the plus side, my domestic partner has said he’ll accompany me on my next round of winter travel. He loves to drive my sedan, a hybrid, and sings its praises on fuel economy. He owns (and is devoted to) a gas-guzzling truck, which he used after his wife’s death to repeatedly visit adult children and their families in eastern Nebraska. (The travel takes an entire day.) Until we met a year ago, he’d never heard of travel clubs, much less of atc.
Since then, we have hosted several atc couples and singles. Most are on their way to someplace else, others want to enjoy Saratoga’s mineral hot springs. Last year, one such couple on arriving alerted us, they wanted to watch a harvest moon rise from behind the mountains of the Snowy Range and asked us to drive them around to find a convenient spot.
“It’s a super harvest moon,” they told us, “because it’ll be full at a time when its orbit is unusually close to our Earth.”
A nearby park on a rise passed muster. While scouting out a picnic table, they asked for a dinner recommendation. We pointed them to a local pizzeria with a reputation for delicious Italian fare, The Grumpy Italian. Since time was of the essence, our guests ordered a pizza to go, saying they’d share it with us at the park while waiting for the moon’s appearance. Although we’d finished our supper, we’d never turn down a slice of Grumpy’s pizza. My partner, who at the time had yet to graduate from widowed neighborhood friend, offered to contribute a bottle of brandy, having no beer at hand. So we drank water with our pizza while our atc friends used veggie juice. Afterward, we sipped brandy from the glasses my friend had packed. When the moon rose in all its glory, we jumped on the picnic bench for a view unobstructed by treetops. It was a moment to be savored.
In Salt Lake City I have repeatedly stayed with a favorite atc couple, whose male half prides himself on preparing steel-cut oats in a potpourri of oatmeal, nuts, and berries, with side dishes
of fresh fruit and cinnamon rolls. His wife, who suffered polio as a young woman and walks on crutches, taught school until her retirement. I told the couple the story of my late husband’s case. At six, a case of polio left him with an atrophied leg and damaged spine, which necessitated his lifelong use of crutches.
During a recent breakfast with my atc friends, I mentioned that I started reading one of their books, a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by a best-selling American author. They insisted I take the book with me. “You can return it next time you visit,” they said.
Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany who, during the Nazi reign of terror, persevered in his conviction that every individual has the right to adhere to her or his chosen religion. In the face of monstrous evil, Bonhoeffer became a dissident, spy, and saboteur who participated in efforts to smuggle Jews out of Germany into neutral Switzerland. The Nazis executed him via firing squad a few days before the Reich collapsed.
In Casper, Wyoming, I used to attend an annual series of lectures at its college and was glad that atc hosts accepted me and my dog. Regrettably the lectures, which drew presenters from all over the world, came to an end with the advent of COVID. In 2024, the lectures changed into a summer camp for high school teachers.
Another time, my Chinese friend and I stayed with the Casper hosts on our way to Yellowstone National Park. It was my friend’s last hurrah; she was being recalled to Beijing by her government, which had financed her American graduate studies. I have since visited her and her parents in Beijing.
Fort Collins has several atc hosts, couples and singles. When recently I was obliged to make an appointment with a medical specialist in their city whose only opening was at 7:30 AM, I emailed an atc widower who had hosted us before, and inquired if he was available to host us the night before my appointment. He replied he’d love to welcome us again.
A lot of good things concerning The Affordable Travel Club have not made it into this report. Suffice it to say, our next atc adventure awaits as a bright spot on the horizon. Although it will be without my beloved canine companion, who used to take up most of the back seat in my car, my partner and I look forward to traveling together again.
Miss Edith (Dr. Edith Cook) is German by birth and a naturalized citizen. She worked as translator before emigrating to California. She taught at several colleges and universities in California, South Dakota, and Tennessee; as a writer, she earned the Wyoming Arts Council’s Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award and its Professional Development Grant. Visit her at www.edithcook.com. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect the editorial stance of The Cheyenne Post.
