Latest / Her Journey Her Way / Can you travel when you're not rich? KC did Europe on $3 a day in 1979.
Transcript
- Rita: Imagine you're 25. It's 1979. You land in London with $2,000, a sleeping bag, two skirts you made yourself, and a pair of red high heels. No tent, no hotel, no plan. You walk out to the highway and you stick out your thumb. When it gets dark, the truck driver pulls over, you climb over the guardrail, and you walk into the woods to sleep. And that's only your first trip. I'm Rita, and this is Her Journey Her Way, a She Travel Simple podcast. I've traveled in a camper, a shuttle bus, a van, a car, and now I'm building a 40-foot bluebird bus. The places were great, the people were better. These are their stories. Her journey, her way, the tips, and the lessons they learned along the way. Here's one of my favorites. I have a treat for you today. Casey Newman, that's with a K and a C, is with me today. And boy boy, we could probably go on for days with her stories. She is one of the most renowned travelers I know. She does it all which way. So Casey, why don't you start by telling us how old you are and where you're from and As a bonus, because I know you know this number, how long you wanna live for? yeah. I'm Casey. I was actually born and raised up here where we are. We're in Bainbridge at the Schoolie Swarm and I was raised born and raised up near Albany, New York. And when I graduated from high school I hung around for a year and actually the first time I was ever on an airplane was right after I graduated from high school. I flew out to Oakland California because my brother was in the Navy and he was stationed there. So a girl who was one year older than me in high school, we flew out together and she ended up marrying them. And they my gosh. Yeah, they were married for forty five years. But that was in when I flew out to California was nineteen seventy one. So that was fifty-five years ago. Yeah. And I how old are you today? I'm now seventy three and I'm going to live for another thirty years. All right. I'm going to a hundred and three. So far, so good. I mean, 30 years. There's a lot of ground you can cover in 30 years. I'm trying to pack it all in. You are. You're you're acting as if you got thirty days left the way you travel. Okay, so y the first time you're on a plane is nineteen seventy one. When did the bugs start for you to travel? well, I was married for twenty three years and we traveled kind of a lot, but not really. We take vacations a couple times a year, went to Alaska, Ireland, we toured Europe. but after I got divorced and I was retired, then or, you know, early retirement, I married well. So that's why people say, What'd you do for a living? I say, Married well. What'd you do? No no shame in that. No, no. Actually when we got divorced, my husband helped me or my ex husband, we're friends, and he helped me trademark the word alimonette. because I was gonna make t-shirts and hats and everything says I'm an alimonette. I live on alimony. I got patents on everything, but nothing ever came to it. my gosh. I had no idea. Yeah, I made up a word. it was nineteen seventy nine. And I was working as a legal secretary in Tampa and had never had never traveled. Had I been ever been overseas? no, because this was 79. I didn't get married till 84. So a girl, we had a copy machine. So this girl would come up, we charge them two cents a copy. So everybody would come to our office and write down how many copies they made. I didn't know her. but she said, you know, I've got a girlfriend and she wants to travel. And I said, I'd love to. So I met her and we took off it was nineteen seventy nine. It was April, maybe the end of March, because I remember being over there on April Fool's Day. we took a Freddie Laker flight. She was hang on, a Freddie Laker flight? You don't know Freddie Laker? No, I don't. Okay, they use a flight out of New York City and he did a hundred doll ninety nine dollar one way to London. and so everybody Freddie Laker, he was the way to go. Okay. so I met her and she said, you know, I wanna go to Europe and travel around. I said, that sounds good. So it was right before I turned twenty six and they had the URL passes that you could buy up to twenty six years old. So we bought a URL pass and we said, you know what, let's just buy it because we get a full money refund if we don't use it. So I can't believe I even did this now when I look back. one thing I really remember is going downtown Tampa to a to like a Walgreens or a crestes or whatever the drugstore was, and I bought a a tube of Prel shampoo because I wanted, and this is my first really backpacking trip. But so that's the one thing I remember carrying. But we went over there. I made two skirts and two tops and they matched. I brought a pair of red high heels. I know and I didn't even bring a tent. All I brought was a sleeping bag and And we got over to London and stuck out our thumbs. And I was gone for seven months The only time I paid for a a ride was when I hitchhiked down to Morocco and I said, that's a little sketchy. We're gonna go down to Casablanca and Marrakesh and I better take a train. Okay, wait. I gotta unpack that a little bit. Twenty-five years old. Twenty-five. And you go to Europe for seven months, but you don't have hotel rooms. Never. You have a thumb. A backpack and a bottle of Perel. Or a tube of to Perel. I'm sure I had some toothpaste. Where was your mother at that time? She was actually at home, taking it she lived right around the corner from me, so a girl I worked with took over my house and took care of my dogs. So my mother was right around the corner and she had a new daughter with my friend who moved into the house. And so my mother was as happy as could be. And I've got all my letters that my mother wrote me and actually her signature mom I had it tattooed on my on my arm. We had so many letters. And I would take tissue paper. if you could find toilet paper in in Europe. It was so thin, but I would write letters on it because it was very, very lightweight. So I would write letters on it and email them home. Tissue paper. Wow. Yeah. So anyway, so we were hitchhiking around And then we had a lot of trucks that would pick us up. And I we would just say when it started getting dark, we'd just say pull over here. And we would jump the guardrail, walk into the woods, unroll our sleeping bag, no tent, and wake up in the morning, walk back out to the highway, stick out our thumb and do it all again. how did you pay for food? Well, we had a a okay, this is still funny because we still laugh and I still do it. If you still don't know. If you're walking by somebody's plate and they haven't finished it and they're my God, Casey. and they're not there, you pick up what food that they left there. That is brilliant. And you'd eat it. We had a budget of three dollars a day for food. So we ate a lot of fresh bread, like from France and fresh cheese. And I gained a little bit of weight because even though we walked and hitchhiked and did a lot of things, I ate a lot of bread and cheese. But yeah, that was pretty much the food. Never ever ate out. But you know, a lot of people, this is funny. when we were hitchhiking, we'd be in somebody's car. And if we were like in Germany, their thing for I'm hungry is Ich habe hunger. So we would always say, Boy, I'm sure hungry. Well I'm sure hungry. And if we were in France, we'd say, I'm famished. And they'd pick up on it and they'd take us home and feed us. You know, they take us to their house and they say, my wife is the best cook. So this big old truck driver would bring us home and we'd have the best meal. Or we'd go to a wedding. I went to a wedding in Thessaloniki in Greece and I hitchhiked through Hungary when it was a communist country. yeah, went down to Marrakesh and before we decided to get a public transportation, we got off in Al Kaziris in Morocco and met this guy and he says, I'll take you to my my house. And so we're like, This is great. But you're in a Muslim country and we are walking over a desert and it's really dark and we're like, I don't know if this was a good idea. Here we are following this guy in the desert. He's taking us to his home. And he did, but we didn't stay. We left and it was perfectly safe, but it was it was kind of scary You know, they were like, huh? Well, I mean, I think only you thought it was okay. I'm pretty sure anybody else is like raising an eyebrow. they were. my gosh, that's historic. Never and I mean we would back then, this is in nineteen seventy nine, hostels were three dollars a night. So I remember when we got down to Alcatheris, we went to this hostel and it was three dollars a night and we walked in and there were only two beds. I don't even know if it was a hostel. There were only two beds in the room, but no sheets, no nothing. Of course we had our sleeping bags, but it was seedy. I mean it was I remember that pretty pretty wrong. A hostel is CD to you. That's saying something. And then in in where was I? In Athens it was three dollars to sleep on a rooftop. And if you got there early enough, you could get a mat to sleep on. If not, you just slept on the concrete floor. Which still doesn't bother me. I still can sleep on a floor in my sleeping bag. I'm actually sleeping on a floor right now 'cause my sister our tent leaked. So she's in my bus with me. So I gave her the bed. And you know, my bus only has seventy five square feet in a single bed. So she's in the bed, I'm on the floor, my dog is under my legs and my cat is doing parkour all night long. Parkour, parkour. Well it's a kitten too. Yeah, it is a kitten. Still the same. my gosh. So what's the highlight from that trip? Or I mean there's probably too many. the highlight from that trip, one highlight. We were in Spain and it was I think it was April early April, it might have been April Fool's Day, 'cause we immediately hitchhiked out of London. we did have to take the hovercraft over to Calais, France, and then we started hitchhiking south to get some some warm weather because in April it is freezing. So we hitchhiked down and passed through a town a city in in Spain, Alicante, and these guys picked us up and one guy, Santiago Cecilio Leo. And over there in in Spanish Castilian they pronounce their C's and Z. C if it's before an irony, they pronounce it a T H. So his name was Santiago Cecilio Leo. So when I say his name, people say, Do you have a speech in Panama? No, that's just the way they pronounce it. So I fell madly in love with him and I'm like, man, this is this is great. And I I will say I think I fall in love very easily because last night I actually had a dream that I was in a pharmacy and there was a guy waiting in line for his prescription and they asked him his name and he said Jerry Garcia. And so I'm a hugger. So I went up and hugged him and we ended up making out like for an hour. And I'm explaining to him in my dream. I said, you know, I can understand why women and men say I love you so soon. I do. I I kissed somebody one time and I'm in love. So I said, because I really feel like I love you. I mean he and he wasn't married and so we anyway, then I woke up unfortunately. But by the way, Jerry Garcia is an excellent kisser. You've kissed Jerry Garcia. Not in real life. Just last night in my dream. So that was probably so I after my friend we were only supposed to stay three months. So after that we we split up We met in Madrid and I went back to see him and she went home. So I stayed four months in Spain by myself and hung out with him and then I have relatives up in Germany, so I paid him and his friends a hundred dollars, shared the gas with them, and they drove me up to outside Munich and I took a very different from my hundred dollar Freddie Laker flight. I paid six hundred dollars for a flight home and I still remember that. I went over with two thousand dollars. I paid a hundred dollars for the flight over. I paid six hundred dollars for the flight home and I came home with twelve hundred dollars. Wow. Yeah, well if you eat food off of people's plates, I guess it'll work. It was and I didn't drink back then, you know, now I'm like a sieve, you know. Give me more I need alcohol. my gosh. So what a culture shock. You go from seven months of that and then you come back and How long did he get married? I actually knew my husband 'cause I was working for him. I had a job as a legal secretary. My boss became circuit judge. So and I was planning on going to Europe. So I worked for him for three months, had my friend take over. I went over to Europe and or before I did that when I was a when I was working for the judge, I would go into my future husband's office. He had just started a law firm with his best friend and so I would work from four thirty, the courthouse closed at four thirty. I would go to my other job at five and work till ten every night and just listening to their tapes and, you know, so they loved me because they would come in in the morning and they had like three feet of letters all stacked up with a paper clip and the envelope. So they were sorry to see me go, but I was going to Europe. So I was gone for seven months and when I came home they're like, Will you please come back to work for us? wow. And so I did and ended up being the office whore, I guess. You married him. Married him. I got back in nineteen eighty I never went to college. I don't know anything. So I I went to college then. I took a class in Spanish and Western Civ. So after those two courses, then I'm like, okay, I like this. So then I went full time. Still worked, but I went full time. And I did that for like two years and I was with my husband or with my future husband and I said, you know, we were we were very serious. And I said, if we're gonna get married, I need to do this again before we do. So the last credits, the last sixteen credits of my college career, they let me go over there and write stories. And I still have the book. I wrote like fifty stories so I'd visit somebody with a garden and I'd talk to them. you know, I'd visit a anybody, a homeless guy. You went over to Europe. I went over and did the same thing again. I got another friend to go with me, did the exact same trip, got to London, stuck out our thumbs. This time I was only gone four months. When I came back, I graduated and we got married. So he kinda waited for me and the in the meantime he, you know, cheated on me and got another girl pregnant, but that's all Well I mean you did go to Europe. Hey people, four months is a long time. If you want the relationship to last, you might not want to go over to Europe. without him. There you go. That's it. That's it. All the lessons you need. Yeah, right. my gosh. So you get married. Yeah, I get married. You are now a step mom and you just don't know it. Yeah, I had he had two kids by a previous marriage. And so you know, we were of the generation, let's start a fan we weren't that. Let's start a family. Let's get married and start a family. No, you get married, you have sex and if a baby comes you're stuck with it. So I got stuck with a baby. Kept her. You know Yeah. She's st she's still out there. She's now forty years old. but then after that, I mean, as soon as her Apgar scores came in, he was in the doctor's office getting a vasectomy. He says, Man, you tricked me. I thought you were a hippie and now look at you. You're nine months pregnant and big and that thing squirted out of you. So you go on a few trips while you're married? Yes, we did. I was the impetus. I got him to go. We would go over to Europe and rent a car for three weeks. we took a cruise up to Alaska. We went to England and and drove around for a long time, you know, three weeks probably. We went then over to Ireland and drove around. So yeah, we did trips and then when my daughter, when our daughter was eleven, maybe ten or eleven, She was in the third grade and she was in a private school. I didn't like the headmaster and so I said, you know, I I've always wanted her to be bilingual. I wanna be bilingual. I still spuddy Stanish. I still that's called a spoonerism, by the way. I still study Spanish. I'm not any good. But I said, you know, I'm gonna take her over to Spain. We're gonna live for a whole school year and she's gonna be fluent. So I packed up four boxes, four cardboard boxes. I got the measurements from the airline and I maxed them out. You know, they say it can't be any more than the height, the width and the length all together, however many inches. And man, I had maxed out. So we flew over there. My my eleven year old daughter and I flew over and landed in Madrid. I had a car. I had rented a car for two, maybe only one week. I think just one week, and although I was gonna stay a year. Rented a car. We went out. We had this big cart and we had our four boxes on it. And I rented the cheapest car I could find. We got to the car and there was no way these four boxes were fitting on my car. But I had everything. You know, I had measuring cups and mixing, you know, because I was gonna live there. So we unpacked all the boxes, threw them in the back of this car, and we took off. My first stop was Avila, and because I had looked at that and it was a town of sixty six thousand people, and they had some schools there, and I thought, you know, let's check that out. Well, sixty six thousand people is a lot of people. Not my style. So I said, This isn't gonna work. So we just got in the car and started driving south. And if you go south from Avila through the Sierra de Gredos Mountains, bunch of tiny they're not even villages. They are two huts maybe and that's so we would stop at a mall and say, Do you have a school? Do you have a school? So wait, you're going over for a year but you still don't you don't even have a school picked out. Had no school picked out. And they don't start until they start in September, and we went over in August. So we had a month to figure it out. So we came to this little town, excuse me, called Mom Beltran. And it was in just at the base of the Sierra de Grados Mountains. And we stopped in and went to the playground there. They had a playground, so I'd always stop and let her play. But they had like a thirteenth century hospital, they had an old fifteenth-century church. It was this little tiny town and it had nine hundred people. So we stopped at the candy store and her name was Moda. And so I I asked, you know, we're looking for a hotel. We want to stay here. This is the kind of town we want to stay in. We're looking for some place to stay. And she said, there's a hotel in town. I said, No, we're gonna stay a year. So she said, I've got an I've got an uncle with an apartment for rent. So she showed us where the apartment was and the school we were in the apartment directly across the street from the school. Not even directly across the street. We were the first one. So our apartment was here, you cross the street and there was this entrance to the school. Wow. So she went in there, she started school and I lived in the apartment. Of course if any everybody knows there's an English speaker there, they're all knocking on your door. Will you teach us English? Will you teach us English? Well I'm not a teacher, you know, but I I learned real quick. So two people hired me. One was the Ayuntamiento, which is the government, and the other one was some they fought with each other. So it was a political party and they hired me to teach the kids. And then the government hired me to teach everybody in town and they gave me the school. But they also gave me a carte blanche at the little stationery store. So I bought all kinds of books and papers and it was great fun and I paid for my way. But I had this apartment, I think it was $300 a month. And then I was, you know, and they're all these little Spanish people, they're all n you know, nigga, talking about everybody else. you don't want to stay there, you don't wanna stay there. So I'm in the meat shop and this woman comes in, she goes, Are you still staying at Moday's cousin's house? And I said, Yeah, and she goes, Well, I've got an apartment. She goes, Check it out. This apartment, it was in these, God, it was probably hundreds of years old. But this building over in Spain, all the buildings are connected. You know, there's so I had three-story apartment. It was three hundred dollars a month. You walked in on the bottom and they had a bodega for your wine. They had a washer, no dryer. You had to go up to the attic and dry them, and then a bathtub. And then you'd walk up the stairs, and that was our kitchen, then the bedroom, one bedroom, and a living room. And the kitchen it was so cool because we had a wood-burning fireplace. Then the third floor was this kind of thing you can picture a probably a 400-year-old building. You can picture what the roof looks like. There were pigeons up there and everything, but there was a big clothesline, so I'd have to walk up to the third floor and hang up my clothes. But and Abby went to school before she started school. We hung out at the playground, and I am not kidding you, in three weeks, she was totally fluent, totally fluent. At the playground, at the playground, and then she was not only so fluent when she would go on school trips, field trips with the school, she would go up to Tor Molinos or Valladolid, any place, and they'd say, You're from Mont Beltran, aren't you? So whatever the accent was, she had it. They know exactly what region she was from. Wow. How about that? And her degree now is in Spanish. She came home. Yeah. So if you ever want to do your kids a real favor, because how many times have kids come home and they go, Mom, I've got a project. What am I gonna write about? And you're sitting there going, I don't know, let's write about the neighbors' chickens. But if you take overseas, they got something to write about. this town was so safe. She would stay out till four o'clock in the morning. My doors were wide open. And they would be jumping over fires. They'd start a fire in the park and they just spend all night, the kids, jumping over fires. my gosh. It was great fun. It was just wonderful. even though you were married, you were doing solo trips. Yes. He came over six times throughout the year. He would come over every couple months and I bought a car when I went over and some friends I met in this little nine hundred population village, they knew somebody who had a car company and so they turned me on to it, got a really good deal on the car. And a year later, without ever changing the oil I sold it for the same price I bought it for. It was bad. my god. But they were happy to have it. It ran great. wow. Yeah. let me add one more thing. In this school that she went to, second and third grades were together because the school is so small and there were only twelve students. And two years and there were only twelve students in her classroom. So yeah, it was great. Yeah. But it was great for her because even their division is totally different. The way we do our division, we put our numbers up on top, they put their numbers on the bottom and work up. It's weird. Yeah. But yeah, so he came over at the end of the year, I had sold my car, so we rented a car and drove all over for three more weeks and flew home from Munich. We went up to Munich, I've got relatives up there and we flew home and then it was married life. You know, just in time for the thirteen year old daughter, twelve year old daughter to hate me. You know, I would walk in and I'd say, Listen, I'm just gonna get a big old log and sit it at the front door. So whenever I come home, you can just pick it up and clobber me in the head and we'll be done with it. You know? That was that was what I'd say. Mom, you always used to tell me to hit you in the head with a log. I said, Well it would have been easier than the crap you're putting me through. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And Rita, you've got three daughters, so you I know, I know. Well, I've lucked out. Okay, so you get married life and then you get to a point where there's no married life. Yes. he was an attorney. I when I got pregnant, I started a paralegal business out of my house. I would go to different lawyers' offices and do demand letters. And then I just didn't like that. in two thousand he retired from being a trial attorney and he just did mediations. He was kind of piddling in mediations. And he had a big firm in Tampa. He was he was pretty pretty big guy in the legal field. So, I was working for him. We we I built a that was one of the highlights of my life. I built a forty two hundred square foot house, not hammer and nailed by myself, but I didn't have a contractor. I started I took me three years of studying to find people around town. bricklayer and mason, foundation guys, the framing guys, the roof guys, the everything electrical, the plumbing, and I found all these guys and had all lined up and in six months and one day we went from living in the house that we were in, to it being torn down and a forty two hundred square foot mansion being built. And it was the best time of my life. Every day I'd be out there with a hammer and pounding out nails straight and the carpenters would say, We use nail guns. We don't You know, we don't need your nails. We have on a long string of, you know, thousand nails. But what am I gonna do if I don't straighten out your nails? So, yeah, that was great fun. So then he did the mediation business for I don't know, five years. And then we decided to go our separate ways, but we're still good friends. He got an apartment you know, six miles away. I kept the mansion and we did everything. Even then we went over to Germany together. we did a lot of traveling. We'd fly up to Maine and rent a car. So we were really good friends. so we got divorced. I stayed in the mansion, he rented an apartment, and then he ha his two sons were spread out. His oldest son is a PhD professor in University of Michigan in Amro Ann Arbor and his younger son is a neurosurgeon. And so he was kinda going all over, you know, wherever the money was. So he my husband moved up to Ann Arbor to be with his son and his wife and their three boys. So he moved up to Ann Arbor. Then I was by myself. Then I was left to my own devices. And I don't know if it worked out or not. Freshly separated. 'Cause you got divorced and then you finally separated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When he moved up there. So that was it. I mean I just started traveling and the first thing I did was join meetups. I went out to have a drink with one of my friends. We were great happy hour people and we heard this whole group of people talking next to us and I go over and I go, okay, what is this? Because clearly you people don't know each other, but you're all talking about kayaking and camping and things I'm interested in. And they go, that's a meetup group. And I go, What's meetup? And they it's an app you download. And you just type in there where you are and what you're interested in. I mean you it could be I okay, I'm from Tampa, Florida, and I want a group that it includes lactating mothers. I mean anything. Yeah. So I got then I started off hiking and that was it. And so you are how old are you at this point? Let me see. I got divorced in two thousand six and I was born in fifty three. So here we go. That's fifty three years old. I was fifty three. And now you're starting again a different type of solo journeying. Right. I know you're in a bus now, but you didn't have a bus then. I didn't. Did you least get a tent? I would fly some pace and rent a car, you know. But I can't even think after my divorce what I did. I did a lot of local backpacking trips. I flew out to Utah and got a ride down to I forget where it started, but I threw hiked the John Muir Trail, which is one of the highlights of my entire life. Twenty six days in the wilderness, thirteen mountain passes, you know, I lived half of my time there at sixteen thousand feet. It was just wonderful. I did it with a friend with a girlfriend. And yeah, and then we of course slept outside every night and put our food in a bear canister or hung it up because the bear canisters were only like in certain spots. And crossed many bears on the path, you know, you're walking along hiking and you turn a corner and there's a bear right in your path and go, okay, I'm not gonna stress. I'm just gonna wait here. And he just lumbers on, goes on his way. So we never had any trouble with bears, although there were a lot of them. And so I did that. I was gone 26 days, and that was my big trip. But other than that it was just a lot of little hikes. I did about a hundred and sixty miles on the AT which isn't for me. I didn't care for the AT. And then I flew up to Pennsylvania or drove up actually and did another fifty miles of the Pennsylvania A T and just a lot of lotta local hikes. And then I got into kayaking with all the people. And these were all through meetups. All through meetup. Through meetup. Wow. And then so that's you know, now in my life I have like three groups of friends. One is my bus people. One is meetup. And then, you know, kayaking and and then I've got a backpacking group. So all my friends are, you know, you meet people who have similar interests. And they're we're still all friends and my still, you know, I'm still a member of the Meetup group. It's called we're called Slackers. And on Meetup, it's I think they're out of Lakeland, but it's simply laid back adventures, campers, and kayakers. Slack. That's what it stands for. nice. And so I'm still a member there and they do a lot now. they go to Iceland and they did probably Machu Picchu and they have they've done it all. But I don't do any of those trips because I'm a down and dirty traveler. I do the cheapest way you can possibly do and the the organized groups are not cheap because you're paying for the person who's organizing it. You're buying their tickets and their you know, they go for free. They do a wonderful job. But that's just not for me. Yeah, and I'm sure they'd frown upon you eating off of people's plates. I don't know. I think I think they want a little more than just a loaf of bread from the from the supermarket. Yeah, I don't even know. They probably when they see me on the sign up list, they're going, no. Here we go. Here we go again. we had a group of five backpacking people, three guys and two girls. And we do all the hypes together because we dropped it we dropped all the meetup people because I mean they're nice people, but when you find your core group like you do in Bus Life, when you find your group, you stick with this ends on the twenty-eighth, and on the thirtieth I fly to Ireland for three weeks. And the girl I'm going with, she has just seen my posts on Facebook. I've known her since let me see, our daughters were probably six, seven. So it's been ther over thirty years, but I haven't seen her probably in twenty-five. Wow. So you're going to Ireland. See I haven't seen her in twenty-five years, but she calls me up and she goes, I see you travel a lot. You know, I wanna go someplace. And I Well, where you wanna go? I'll plan it. So she said, Well, I'd like to go to Ireland. Done. So we're leaving on Wednesday. Anyway, so I'm going over to Ireland in a few days. I'm gonna spend three weeks We rented a car driving on the left side of the road. She wanted like a private bath. You know, she goes, Well, I don't really want to share a bath. And I'm going, honey, you're traveling with the wrong girl. I'm going to stay. I don't even use the bath too. I'm going to stay in a 16-bed mixed dorm because it's the cheapest. She goes, But men'll snore. And I go, Well, when you're in the female dorm, you're going to see women snore too. so what I was gonna get at is one of my five core hiking buddies. His name is Mark and he lives over on the East Coast over in Merritt Island in Florida. And the girl I'm traveling with now, haven't seen her in in years, but she posted a Facebook post and she said she just bought this old camper van and she's gonna just drive around Texas. She lived in Texas or Arizona at the time. And I said, man, that's what I wanna do. You know, I I I love backpacking. I love to I still miss my tent, but I want to do that. So I told Mark about it and he called me up and he said, you know, I was on Facebook Marketplace and there's this 2002 four-window school bus. It's a church bus and it's for sale for four thousand dollars up in Atlanta. So my sister was we lived in I think I had a house in Hudson, I still do, but she lived three doors down. So we got in our car and drove up to Atlanta. The school bus drove it, it was perfect. So I bought it and brought it to Mark's house. And what he wanted, he wanted to practice all his welding skills. So you see my bus now. I've got a two-foot deck on the back. I have this beautiful system of aluminum rectangular tubes that hold up twelve hundred watts of solar. He did a beautiful everybody still asked me, where did you get this work done? And it was all for free. I mean I bought the materials, but he practiced. He practiced. And so then I once I had the bus then it was all over. So needless to say, fear and being afraid, it was just not in your vocabulary. It's still not. Like it is not and it has hold held you back from nothing. No. Like Glo, the girl I'm traveling with, she goes, Well, you know, I would really like to have a private bath and she's sh doing all these scary things and And she goes, Well, have you have you researched like how to drive on the left hand side of the road? I'm like, hell no. You get in the car, you sit on the wrong side, you have to shift on the wrong side, and you have to drive on the wrong side. and it's not the wrong side, it's the other side. what can be hard about that? So she's kind of making me a little nervous just because she's very cautious. She wants me to figure out what maps to download so we don't get lost. And I'm like, you just put it in your Google, just like you do here. You know, who cares if you're in in Ireland. So and and you you probably will as you know, getting lost does not mean it's the wrong you get lost sometimes you find really magical stuff. I watched a a series quite a few years ago. It's called Army Wives and one of the girls it might have been before I got any of my fifty tattoos. I got my first tattoo at fifty seven. So if you're out there, don't start late because you don't have time to get all. And yeah, you know, you're starting now. I'm starting late, yeah. I've got a I've got a lot of tattoos. But she had a tattoo and it was some kind of a symbol, I think, and it said beautiful mistake. And I've always that's always stuck with me, so I've always wanted to get that tattoo. When I went to Africa, I'm talking to our African driver, I went on safari and I said, you know, how do you say beautiful mistake in Swahili? And I don't know what I did, I wrote it down. But first of all, he didn't understand beautiful mistake. You know, what is a beautiful mistake? It's either beautiful or it's a mistake. But no, it was a beautiful mistake and I've had a lot of those in my life. A lot of wrong turns. But you know my gosh, I have chills. That is fantastic. Beautiful mistake. Well if I'm still around at a hundred and three Well, I'll stretch my arm out and show ya what my tattoos say. Beautiful mistake. I love that. Isn't that nice? I love that. Okay, so being fearless, number one. What else could you possibly tell these women? Because you didn't make any mistakes. Well, I made a mistake. I was in a cameo which is a Spanish truck, this is when I was by myself over there for four months, and I hitchhiked and it took me we separated. I had to meet her in Madrid. So I left my boyfriend in Alicante and had to hitchhike to Madrid, which is probably, I don't know, a three hour drive. And it took me probably fifteen hours to get there because I got picked up by truck drivers the only really weird time I had was of all my travels was a truck driver. I'm in the front seat with him and he stood up and pulled out his unit and You know, and I'm like, whoa, and you're in this big truck and you're going, Okay, I need to get out but he did, he pulled over and I said, Pull over and let me out. You know, this isn't my thing. But that's the only like other than the Moroccan adventure. That was kind of spooky. and we were with a couple guys and they had some marijuana. So we got in their car sexy Sadie, that's a girl I traveled with. Two boys were in the front, we were in the back. They were speaking in Spanish. So we couldn't understand them. And we go out into the middle of nowhere and smoke this hash. And honestly, to this day, I want to go over there and get some more of that. It was beautiful. But we heard them. say things like dormir, which is to sleep. And so we knew it was getting iffy, but and we were super paranoid. Worked out fine, just said, you know, it's time to go, but it wasn't legal over there, so we were really in the trenches of wherever we were. And so they did bring us back to civilization. We I don't know how we got home because honestly, in seventy well, probably sixty years of smoking weed, That was memorable. That one was memorable. You can't buy that stuff in the United States, I'll tell you. So people might say to you, well, you have money, that's why you can travel, or, you're physically fit, that's why you can do all this hiking. But why don't you tell them how fit you are or are not? I yeah, I'm seventy three and I don't have any medical problems, but I have gained a little bit of weight. I'm like a hundred and forty five pounds and I'm five five and I've always maintained it a hundred and thirty. So but I just made plans to go to Machu Picchu you know, in March and people say, that's such a hard hike. And I'm like, I refuse to say I can't do it. If anybody can do it, I can, you know, so I'm doing it. you're saying if anybody can do it, I can. If I look at these people and I go, Well, he did it, why is everybody saying it so hard? I'm certainly in better shape than he is or or more enthusiastic about the hike. So I have no issues about that. And then in June I just made plans. I'm gonna hike the dolomites and that's my first hot to hot hike where I don't ha well Machu Picchu will be my won't be hot to hot, but I won't have to carry my tent, my sleeping bag, my cooking utensils. And so I've changed from backpacking and carrying everything on my back to bus life and now I'm flying places and backpacking but somebody else is gonna carry my gear because I did a hike last year. I did the Cotswolds in England. I flew over and it was a seven hundred mile hike and it was hard. lot of hills and that was the one with the sand, right? No, that was Portugal. I did that the year before. that was terrible. I was gonna meet my friend over in Portugal. She was gonna do the Camino from Porto, I think Lisbon. She was gonna go Lisbon up to Santiago de Compostela and do the hike. And I was gonna go south. I didn't want to do that hike because if I'm gonna do the Camino I want to do it like from the Pyrenees west over to Santiago across the top of Spain. So she paid like twelve hundred dollars for her flight into Lisbon. Well me, I figured out I can go to London for $400 round trip and then I can take a $37 flight down to Lisbon, because once you're over in Europe, flights are cheap. So I flew down to Lisbon and then I took off and I hiked south down to Lagos. And it was definitely the hardest hike of my life. It was flat, no mountains, but it was sugar sand the whole way. So if you've ever gone to a beach and you're at your car and you look a hundred yards to the water and it's all sugar sand and you go, this isn't fun. Well, I did it for days upon days upon days and it was terrible. every quarter of a mile you'd have to empty out your shoes. I came home, first thing I bought was gators, you know, the things to keep the sand out of my shoes. So that was yeah, that was the year before then I did last year I did the Cotswolds and this year I'm doing Machu Picchu. Well no this year have I hiked this year? No, I don't think so, because I've been stuck in Florida for two summers. I bought my sister a house and she decided to go back up to New York. So now I'm stuck with this house and that's why I turned it into an Airbnb. Now it's sitting vacant. I don't want that Airbnb money. Just let it sit there. Because you know you've done work and you want to travel. I don't even like doing my own sheets, much less doing laundry for somebody else. it's not in my wheelhouse. So let's talk about driving around the US in your bus. Yes. you did Canada two years ago. Did yes. We went up to Canada. And you know how that started? I said, as much as I love my bus and I love traveling, when I'm at home I have a great piece of property in Alatro County, Florida, and I love being there. You know, it's an acre and a half. My dog runs. I got cats, neighborhood cats, I got people living there in their buses. And so I said I, you know, sometimes I get where I don't wanna I don't I just don't wanna go. It's too much work. So There was a Les Nomad Fest in Montreal. You went up there. Uh-huh. And I bought tickets because I said, If I buy tickets to this, if I got money involved, I'm gonna go. So I went and on the way up I met an old friend that I'd known before, an acquaintance, and she said, What are you doing this summer? And I said, I'm going up to Canada. I'm gonna do Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, I'm gonna do all the Maritime Islands. And she goes, that sounds like fun. And she's in a bus. So she came with me. And we took off and we were gone six months and did Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island. We took the ferry or the ship over to Newfoundland and spent three weeks in Newfoundland driving around and it was fabulous because I'll tell you, if you ever want to go do this, go to Canada because it's all boondocking, it's all free camping. Yeah you don't go anyplace. We never paid for anything. One night we paid for a campsite because we bought a national park pass for Canadian parks and they gave you a free night included. So we did stay at a campground one night. the person you went with was Sandy. Sandy. And if you're listening to these podcasts, Sandy was featured. and it just so happens Jill also on the podcast. Said that's her dream is to go to Newfoundland. really? So I introduced Jill and Sandy and I think we're gonna go to Newfoundland and all of that next summer. Yeah. So we'll see. it's a great trip. it's so funny 'cause I realize I have tabs open for rentals on Newfoundland. Really? I can tell you on my computer. You're gonna fly up. And rent around. I no I don't know. I haven't just haven't gotten there yet. Yeah, yeah. One trip at a time. It is funny when you're on one trip and you're already planning like the third trip out. It's an addiction. It is absolutely like I'm here on this trip and I've got Machu Picchu planned. Well, I've got Ireland planned for next week. Machu Picchu is April twelfth and the Dolomites is mid June. So then and then you also have a steak somewhere up in Alaska. well More or less here that's a funny story. I drove my bus up to Alaska. I did eighteen thousand miles and I was gone six months. And it was during COVID. So, you know, through British Columbia and Yukon you had to fly through and they gave you like Yukon is five hundred and eighty miles, they gave you twenty four hours to get through it. And they gave you literally it's a hologram of your face and everything and if you don't turn that in at the border. They put out a warrant for you. Now they're not gonna come search you down, but if you get pulled over and there's a warrant for you, you're gonna be in trouble. So I went up to Alaska and loved it, went salmon fishing, was absolutely in love with it. So I said, This is gonna be in my future. I'm gonna salmon fish every year. So the next year I was gonna fly up, and it was the year after COVID, so there were no cars because nobody could get cars in or out of Alaska. They couldn't go through Canada. So I said my friend who lives up there, I said, okay, we gotta do something else. So she went on Facebook Marketplace and found this Oldsmobile silhouette and Danny DeVito and John Travolta in a movie, they walk outside and I don't know who says it, but there's his Oldsmobile silhouette sitting there and he goes, It's a Cadillac of minivans. So it was four hundred and fifty dollars. So I called up the guy who was selling it and I said, Listen, that time, I don't know, I'm I'm sixty seven years old and I'm gonna travel all around Alaska in this car. Would you let your mother do it? And he goes, Absolutely. So I bought this four hundred and fifty dollar car. We put new tires on it and I used it just to drive around the Kenai Peninsula and left it up there 'Cause I bought the car and it's up there. So anytime I go up, I could use this car. And they just said, Can we have that car? It's just sitting here. And I go, Absolutely. So I signed a piece of paper and texted it to them and I said, Here, copy this for the title. So it's now theirs, but it's still there. And her name is Apollo. The car. The car is Apollo. And it is, it is awesome. I mean, it looks like a rocket. And when you pull in someplace, my my friend Sarah, she lives up there, and when we pull into a parking lot, she'd unroll the window, which is crank, crank, crank, crank, crank, and she'd hang out and she'd just scream, We love her too, we love her too 'cause it's just that car that you look at and go, I love that car. That's a weird looking car. A car only a mother could love. And it had Alaska windshield, which means it's all cracked and broken. the passenger side door doesn't open from the outside. So I tied a rope around the handle on the inside. So when anybody wants to come in, I just pull the rope and they get in. the fifth door in the back, it doesn't stay open, so you have to travel with a broomstick to hold it open. my gosh. But it's still running. It is. So you do not have to be rich to travel. You do not just have to be fearless and willing to be you're not even uncomfortable. I always say If I could just learn to walk ten miles a day, or if I could sleep on the floor or learn to live off of a a loaf of bread, I could do what K C does. And it is true. People say traveling is so expensive, and I said it absolutely is not. The most expensive thing in travel is your transportation to get where you're going. But other than that, it is not expensive. I mean, now it is. now I'm looking for over in Ireland, we're looking for hostels and they're gonna be thirty dollars a night per person, which is cheap, but it's not the old three dollar a night. Well in Iceland they're a hundred dollars a night per person. A hundred dollars per person? Mm-hmm. my they're nice but still well, let's put it this way, when I looked that's all that was left was the hundred dollar per person once. Wow. Yeah, it's it's not cheap over there for sure. Yeah, I heard it wasn't. Yeah, Iceland isn't on my itinerary. That's not on my places to go. Where would I like to go? definitely Australia. you know, the thing that is scary, not scary, the thing that turns me off about that is just the number of hours on the airplane. So if I do it, I'll go to Los Angeles or San Francisco, hang out for a week, and then take the next flight. Because I want to do there's a hike in New Zealand and it's called the Milford Track. And it's only like 40 miles, but it's hot to hot. And I wanna do it forever. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful hikes in the world. So that's on my list. Wanna go? Yes. Okay. I will. I 'cause that's what I'm gonna plan. Yes. And there's a hundred places I wanna go. I've never been to Thailand. you know, Thailand and Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, those four countries I wanna go to. I got married when I was really young, like twenty years old. moved out to Colorado for a year of skiing and then said, this isn't for me. And after that, my husband called me. We had a little Dodge like a clamshell, those kind of things, campers. he says, Yeah, I saw you leaving town. There was a guy in the in our in our van. And I'm like, well He promised if I drove him to Florida, he'd give me a sleeping bag. It was a real I still have it. Really nice down sleeping bag. So I drove, I left my husband. We were only married like a year, two years. I left my husband in Colorado, drove down to Miami. my van broke down in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. So once again, get out of the van, left it there for him to fix, stuck out my thumb, got down to Miami. flew to Jamaica for a month and came back, hitchhiked back up to Tampa. my van wasn't ready yet. Got a job as a secretary. I can get a job any place. And then my boss who I was working for had an airplane he flew me up to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, picked up my van, drove it home and got rid of it because I didn't, you know, I didn't want another expense like that. I think I needed a new engine. It was nine hundred dollars. wow. Yeah, I know. Back in the day. Back in the day. my gosh. So that would have been nineteen seventy six. Any words you say to any woman sitting out there on the couch just watching these on YouTube? Boy, I tell you, do not think that you can't do it. Take a little trip at first. Just get in your car. And if you're a tent camper, absolutely just go to a state park or something. There's a lot of If you're old like I am, it's all half price. If you have the national park pass, it's half price. So the most you're gonna pay is like sixteen dollars a night for a secure campground. But just do it because when you travel, you will meet people who will guide you along the way, who will be your friends forever, who will give you good tips, who will feed you. Yes. Yeah. they're out there. Yes. They're out there. You just have to put fear aside and say, I'm gonna do it, even if it's just for a weekend at first. But just do it. 'Cause right now the most expensive thing is gonna be transportation and even if you're driving it's gonna be gas. Yeah. You know, five, six dollars a gallon. Fortunately my bus is gas, I still pay four dollars a gallon, which is ridiculous. You know, when I was young and got my first car, they had price wars. It was nineteen cents a gallon. Can you imagine? Nineteen cents a gallon. That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. Well, I can't thank you enough, Casey, for coming in and talking to me and to all of us about this. It was definitely entertaining to say the least. if you're looking for more tips and ways to get out on the road or to travel or ways to meet other people who travel. Head on over to she travels simple dot com. Over there I have got blogs and more her journey her ways. There's podcasts over there. You can find more people who've done crazy, probably not as crazy as Casey, but definitely some very entertaining stuff. So I thank you so much. Well you're very welcome. It was a joy, and it was a joy in this weather to be in your nice warm bus. You know. The first night here we slept in the tent. that and it's this big eighteen person tent and it rained. And I I woke up and I could feel water hitting my quilt and I was on a cot and I said, I better move away from the side, you know, because when you're in a tent that doesn't have a full double wall, y the water will come in. So I got up to move my cot out to the middle and I was in four inches of water. That whole tent was a river. I mean our quilts weighed sixty pounds. It was a mess. So now that's why my sister's sleeping on my bed and I'm sleeping on the floor with parkour the cat. my gosh, I love you so much, Casey. You're a hit. Well thank you very much for having me over here. I appreciate it. And now I'm gonna listen to some some podcasts.