I love to travel. I love adventure. I would say that most people love to travel. They love the warm, sunny, sandy beaches, the cool little street cafes and the interesting museums. Those are all great reasons to love travel but not really mine. I love the adventure, seeing new places, remote places and places not many outsiders get to see. Places of mystery and connections to long lost peoples. I figure I’ve traveled a lot when compared to most. I just love it. But why? What caused this desire to go, to see, to experience?
Growing up my family attended a church with a very large heart for missions and missionaries. Every year we would have a week-long missions conference where several missionaries would attend. There would be tables set up in the rear of the church that held trinkets and oddities from these far off lands. These items were there to give the church a sense of life on the missions field. Items from India, Ecuador, Japan, Africa and many other countries that would spark the imagination of the young boy I was. Tales of people and customs so foreign they would leave me in wonder. I dreamed of adventure and traveling to these lands far away.
One dream that would repeat itself was about the world that was down the highway beyond our exit. I would dream of elephants and giraffes, of strange people and market places that existed down the highway. I dreamed that just past our exit the highway turned into a foreign land of animals, bazaars and adventure. This dreamed lived on for years but was forgotten with age.
I traveled and traveled a lot. I went to many of those far off lands. I lived the adventure and loved it all. I walked with lions in Zambia, rode elephants in India and explored the pyramids. I would continue to do more of the same, never realizing why I craved the travel.
Then, one morning, it hit me. I stopped for coffee at a place across from an older and somewhat past its prime amusement park. We would go there as kids; play the mini golf, ride the merry-go-round and take the race cars through the jungle animals. As I sat there that morning sipping my coffee and glancing into my rear view mirror, I noticed an aged figure; the figure of a concrete elephant. An innocent statue of an elephant that sparked the imagination of a small child. You see, the amusement park was the place down the highway just past our exit. My imaginary land far away and full of wonder and adventure. While sitting in my truck that morning sipping my drink, I realized the greatest adventure of all. The imaginary adventure of a small child.
This is the actual elephant and other animals from Bowcraft Amusement Park in central New Jersey i would dream of.