Road Trip!
road trips
It doesn’t take much to convince college students to pile in and head for the highway, leading to miles of memories. The Classic asked Northwestern alumni and students to share stories of their best road trips.
Under Funded
The idea for our junior-year trip to Glacier National Park started with a conversation at the caf’ and nearly ended when we emptied our pockets for a total of 12 bucks. Undeterred, we came up with the idea to raise funds by selling NWC-themed undies. Christine Geertsema ’07 designed panties imprinted with “Uniting Ladies Across Campus,” and the four of us sold around 250, earning enough for a week of camping in the Montana mountains. We saw bears and elk and went whitewater rafting. The thing we still talk about, though, is all the bottoms that supported us!
Kelsey (Carroll ’08) Irwin
LOUISVILLE, KY.
Runnin’ Around
Last fall some runners borrowed a van to road trip to Kenosha, Wis., to watch cross country teammate Charity Miles compete at nationals. We arrived, parked near the train yard, and spent the evening around a bonfire. It was cold, but the four of us sleeping side-by-side in the van never noticed. The next day we watched Charity run and then drove eight hours home.
Lee Stover ’09
ADRIAN, MINN.
Slick Trip
Our sophomore year, Dawn (Van Berkum ’90) Crane’s dad paid hotel expenses for four of us to spend the weekend in Minneapolis shopping and acting like grownups. As “responsible adults,” none of us thought to check the forecast, and we drove into snow on the way back to Orange City. I was taking a turn driving when I hit a patch of ice. I overcompensated and sent us spinning across both lanes of the interstate, waking up my passengers and landing us in the ditch. With no cell phones or automotive know-how, we relied on some Good Samaritans who drove us to a nearby truck stop. A trucker helped us recover our car and locate a motel where we could weather the storm. That memorable trip was our first girls’ weekend—and they continue to this day!
Laura (Ver Mulm ’90) De Boer
AMES, IOWA
Towed Off
Seven seniors realized we’d be graduating soon and decided to road trip west. No one had a car big enough, so we wrote a persuasive letter to Prof. Carl Vandermeulen, convincing him to loan us his van. Rather than pay Seattle parking rates, I left the van at Tower Records, and we returned after visiting the Space Needle and Pike Place Market to find the van had vanished—towed, not stolen. We tracked it down only to be told vehicles must be retrieved by their owners—even if they are in Iowa, asleep in bed. We woke Carl, and he faxed his vehicle registration to the tow owner, who finally let us leave. We drove straight back to campus.
Trygve Johnson ’96
HOLLAND, MICH.
On a Mission
Five West Hall guys made our own spring service trip sophomore year, traveling 4,000 miles to serve with ministries in four cities. We wanted to think about mission and our call to care for the poor. Our life-changing journey took us to a shelter in St. Louis; an athletic ministry in Memphis; a church in New Jersey; and a Christian commune in Chicago.
Jason Blaha ’09
SWISHER, IOWA
Back Track
Our spring break 2007 trip to the Grand Canyon started with the winter’s worst blizzard. Driving south, we passed more than 70 stranded vehicles. We survived the ice and were near our destination when we stopped for snacks and a paper near the New Mexico-Arizona border. We agreed to take a mountain pass shortcut—a road that eventually became gravel, then dirt. The needle on our gas gauge was dropping almost as fast as the sun behind the mountains, and no lines on our map looked similar to the path we were on. The five of us were getting scared and cranky when one, who’d been reading the local news, turned the page to a detailed map of the Gila National Forest. So that’s where we were! We coasted back on fumes, arriving at a closed gas station whose employees had stayed late to re-tile the store floor. We got gas and directions and were back on track, better friends than before and in awe of God’s protection.
Katie Gard ’08
FERGUS FALLS, MINN.
Rained Out
Junior year a bunch of us decided to drive to a doubleheader: the Chicago Cubs in the afternoon and Milwaukee Brewers at night. We drove through a stormy night and got to our seats in Wrigley Field just in time for the game to be called for rain! The guys were devastated; the girls were soaked and secretly relieved. On to Milwaukee, where we caught nine innings, then drove all night again to get home.
Ashley (Adams ’06) Stanislav
ORANGE CITY, IOWA
Sea Escape
Freshman year, four friends and I drove to the West Coast for a music festival. We ate nothing but Mike ‘n’ Ike candy and snuck into campgrounds and church parking lots to sleep (police chased us off). When we got to the ocean—which some of us had never seen—we stripped to our underwear and went for a swim. Freezing, we returned to find our clothes, which we’d left on the hood of the car, gone! Thankfully, some local pranksters had only hidden our stuff—saving it from really being stolen, they said.
Mark Alsum ’09
ALTON, IOWA
Wild West
With a CD of more than a dozen songs about Santa Fe, I headed for New Mexico with a friend who also loves cowboys to explore the trail of Billy the Kid. (I’d written a research paper about him for Dr. Anderson’s American West class.) We toured the Lincoln County Courthouse—from which Billy the Kid made his famous escape—and Fort Sumner, where he was shot and killed. The trip was history major heaven!
Brittany Lassen ’09
REMSEN, IOWA
Civic Lessons
Although I took several memorable road trips while at Northwestern, the most significant one happened a few years after graduation. Craig Dalen ’03, Scott Schnyders ’04 and I resurrected my ’89 Honda Civic and spent a summer driving through six countries, from Orange City to San Jose, Costa Rica. We had no plan—just a map and one backpack each. We simply improvised along the way and eventually abandoned the car with a Costa Rican dentist before flying home. The trip reminded us of the ways our years at Northwestern had united us as friends and given us the desire to see, understand and love more of the world.
Andrew Bensen ’03
MASKELL, NEB.
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