How Teenage Lust Turned Into Wanderlust

Ocean and Palms — Photo by Lois Templin

At 16 years old, my parents took me on a cruise of the Virgin Islands. We always traveled as a family, but we usually camped and stayed within our own state of Minnesota and the neighboring states, with an occasional foray across the border into Canada.

I was the youngest of three kids, and by the time I was the lone child at home as a teenager, my parents were more financially stable, as…