Family's triparound USAis compelling tale
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 The Graham family |
Family's triparound USAis compelling tale
|
The Graham family |
By Chuck Woodbury
EDITOR, OUT WEST
Sometimes people say things to you that change your life. Sometimes they even write things that change your life.
Marlene Smith-Graham, a 40-year-old mother of two and wife of one, has written something that I suspect will change a few lives -- a book called "Headfirst Into America," about a year-long, 50-state trip she and her family took around America. You can't read it without wanting to go. I suspect a few readers will be so motivated by the book that they'll hit the road in a similar fashion.
A few years back, Marlene and her husband Craig were feeling burned out by their work, she a suburban newspaper publisher, he a successful real estate broker. "Our middle-class lives had simply become too complicated," Marlene wrote in her book. "Something had to give. So we did."
What they did, after a couple years of dreaming and planning, was sell their home, give up their businesses and buy a $19,000 GM cargo van that they outfitted into what amounted to an RV. And then the family of four hit the road into America. They camped in parking lots and KOAs, stayed in motels and in the homes of people they met along the way or through the Internet. They tried to keep their expenses under $2,000 a month, but ended up spending more.
They posted their travels on the Internet and were the subject of countless newspaper and television features. Barbara Walters said that Marlene and her family had "done what others may only dream about."
Marlene home-schooled her then 11-year-old daughter Courtney. By the time the family had completed its year on the road, pre-schooler son Collier could recite the names of 30 state capitals.
In her 704-page book (available through the Out West Bookstore) Marlene tells the story of her family's incredible journey. It's part travelogue, part how-to-guide on living on the road, and it's so inspirational it made me want to turn off my computer, hop in my motorhome and hit the road. And right now!
The trip, though, wasn't exactly an original idea: Marlene had taken a similar 50-state road romp with her parents at age 17 in a Volkswagen Beetle. "This turned out to be the richest experience of my young life," Marlene wrote in her new book.
And so now, a year after she and her family arrived back home in Kansas, the book has arrived. For anyone with an ounce of gypsy blood in his or her veins, it just might prompt an escape from a stressful lifestyle, or fuel the desire to hit the road.
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