Grand Tour Friday Five

Songbird writes:One of our original ring members, jo(e), wrote yesterday about a trip she and her sisters are taking overseas with their parents, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Many other RevGals are headed for the Festival of Homiletics in the coming week (click here for information on a RevGals meetup!!). In honor of these upcoming trips, herewith your Grand Tour Friday Five.Name five places that fall into the following categories:

1) Favorite Destination -- someplace you've visited once or often and would gladly go again: The Badlands of South Dakota. The first time I saw them it was unplanned. We were on our way to the Black Hills, our "real" vacation destination, and we decided to take the side trip and do the loop that takes you down through the Badlands and back again to the main highway as it only takes a few hours and we weren't really on any kind of schedule. The minute we crested that first rise and I saw those eerie primordial shapes rising out of the prairie, I was in love! There was something about the colors, the energy, the age, the sheer "thereness" of them that captivated and enchanted me. Our three-hour tour lasted the rest of the day as I kept begging for stops to see them closer, to touch them. We did finally get to the Black Hills, which for some reason were not nearly so enchanting to me, and we cut our time there short and made arrangements to come back and stay at a campground right in the midst of the Badlands. I was in heaven. I have been back twice since. I have hiked them and ridden them on a trail ride ending at sunset. Each time they have called me and soothed me. They are a thin place for me, a place where God is very close, where my soul quiets. I think I feel a road trip coming on....maybe this summer will be a Badlands summer!

2) Unfavorite Destination -- someplace you wish you had never been (and why): I think I must be the kind of person who "makes the best of it" because I am having a hard time thinking of anything here....I guess the one that does come to mind would be the middle of Chesapeake Bay without a life vest after the sailboat went over. Since I can't swim, and I thought that I was really going to meet my Maker, I don't think that one bears repeating. What did save me was, of course, God and grace. In that wild moment as we went over, I grabbed the floatation cushion I'd been sitting on and held on for dear life as I bobbed helplessly along, feeling for all the world like I was going out to sea. The so-called sailor of the boat was a whole lot more interested in rescuing his little sailboat than he was his sputtering passenger. I was rescued by another boater (as was he, when his masculine pride would finally let him). His comment was that I had been "a good sport." I'm just sayin' I don't have any need for that adventure destination again in this lifetime.

3) Fantasy Destination -- someplace to visit if cost and/or time did not matter: IrelandEnglandScotlandWales for long enough to see them all and soak in them and spend a lovely liturgical season or two with a sweet Anglican vicar!

4) Fictional Destination -- someplace from a book or movie or other art or media form you would love to visit, although it exists only in imagination: Avalon and all its mists.

5) Funny Destination -- the funniest place name you've ever visited or want to visit: I have been to Hell and I have the postcard to prove it!