S5, E24: What My 96-Year-Old Grandmother Taught Me About Travel

What would happen if you called your grandmother out of the blue and asked her to go camping that night? For Brad Ryan, that impulsive phone call sparked a seven-year journey across all 63 U.S. national parks.

Along the way, he and Grandma Joy, now 96, healed old wounds, faced down lifelong fears, and became unlikely internet stars. Brad’s new book, Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing One National Park at a Time, out June 16th, tells the whole story.

In this episode, Brad talks with host Aislyn Greene about what he witnessed in his grandmother over those years—the phenomenon he describes as reverse aging, the way movement and purpose and intergenerational connection seemed to make her healthier and more coordinated over time, not less.

He also reflects on the healing that happened in the car: the long stretches of road through South Dakota, the yellow line hypnosis, the conversations that finally surfaced after years of silence. And he shares what he learned writing the book: about his father, about his family’s Irish roots, and about what it means to find pride in an imperfect lineage.

Transcript

Aislyn Greene: I want you to imagine calling your 85-year-old grandmother out of the blue and saying, hey, do you want to go camping tonight? Brad Ryan actually made that phone call to his grandmother, Joy. And that one impulsive moment turned into a 7-year journey for the two of them, one that took them to 63 national parks, healed some generational wounds, and included a few viral moments along the way. He chronicled all of that in a new book out June 16 called Grandma Joy and Me. And today, Brad Ryan joins me to talk about what he and Grandma Joy discovered along their journey, how they navigate challenges on the road, and of course, where they are going next. That’s what we all want to know. That’s all after the break.

Well, Brad, welcome to Unpacked. It’s so nice to meet you.

Brad Ryan: It’s very nice to meet you too. Thank you very much for having me on.

Aislyn: Congratulations on the book. It’s coming out June 16th. Is that right?

Brad: Yeah, it’s Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing. One National Park at a Time. It’s been over 10 years in the making. Really?

Aislyn: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. Well, I want to get to the process of what writing that book was like. But for listeners who may not be familiar with your journey with Grandma Joy, can you tell us how that all started? This phone call that you made to her to take her to see her first mountain?

Brad: It was a seed that was planted in my mind when she was 80 years old. And because of my parents divorce and the divide that happened in my family, which I think a lot of people can relate to when there’s a contentious divorce. My father was in my life until I was 20 years old and I was in college. There was a fight that happened that I detail in the book that led to this 10-year estrangement with my grandmother in particular. And when we were reconnecting after I hiked the Appalachian Trail, we were walking around our little state park near our hometown, and we were just discussing some of the things that had happened in those 10 years. And you can’t just pick up where you left off after a decade.

So I was just trying to, you know, give her a sense of how I had changed. And one of the biggest things that I did that transformed my life was to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in 2009. And just in that conversation about the mountains, she just kind of casually revealed that she loved, you know, she loves the great outdoors, she loves nature, but had seen so little of it in her lifetime. And she just said I’d never saw a mountain. And that really affected me. Just this idea of a woman that had so much potential and so much love for life, but was limited in her lens on the world.

And so I thought, I can do that. I can take her to see one mountain. But I almost immediately got accepted into grad school, an MPH program in veterinary public health at The Ohio State University, and then rolled right into vet school. So it wasn’t until my fourth year of vet school nearly 5 years later, when I was at a low point mental health wise, that I called her and asked if she wanted to go on a camping trip with me. And had she said no, we wouldn’t be here. Um. But honestly, if we hadn’t had so much fun on that first adventure, we probably wouldn’t be here either, because it was just intended to be a one and done weekend camping trip. And obviously it evolved into something more grand than that.

Aislyn: Yeah. So this first trip was to the Great Smoky Mountains. It was, as you said, her first mountain. It was her first camping trip. It was your first real adventure together ever. And you write about it so well in the book. It’s just so full of these funny, very relatable moments, like in the middle of the night when the air mattress loses all of its air, her very loud snoring. But, you know, it didn’t seem comfortable all of the time. So what was it about this first trip that made you both want to keep going?

Brad: You know, I read a lot of self-help books. I listen to a lot of self-help podcasts, but nowhere on that list of things is ever you should take an 85-year-old on a camping trip. That’s going to turn things around for you. You know, that journey of healing is going to look different depending on who the person is, but everybody has an instinct or an intuition about what it is that fills your proverbial cup in life. And I knew that nature was that thing for me, but I had been disconnected from it for so long. I went from the Appalachian Trail, the freedom of that, to being stuck in a study room, sometimes up to 18 hours a day. And then I also knew that I had been missing that connection with my grandmother for even longer than vet school. Really. My heart just told me in that moment, nature and time spent with my grandmother and, and also to be able to sort of silence that looming concern that I had, that she might pass away and we wouldn’t get to see that mountain that she wanted to see that simple dream that she had. That’s why we ended up there. Why we kept going, you’ll see that in the first chapter, because it really reminded me that there was this huge world out there beyond the walls of the teaching hospital that I had been stuck in and the pressure cooker of that, that there still was freedom to be found and joy to be had.

Aislyn: Yeah. Well, and on that first trip, you also did your first hike together to the top of Alum Cave Bluffs in the Great Smoky Mountains, where Grandma Joy received a standing ovation from her fellow hikers. I think it really sets up what the book is going to be about, but I was wondering if on that first trip, you know, you were doing all of these things that were really new to her, did you see her change?

Brad: I think for sure, because once again, she really didn’t have the ability to experience even the simple pleasures that a 7-hour road trip offered. Seeing the elk that were in rut, we timed that very well. So that was a spectacle in itself. And then, like I said, it was just we went there to see a mountain. I didn’t think that we were going to climb a mountain. Just she was so nonchalant about it at the time. She was like, well, you know, what’s the worst that can happen? If we’re in over our heads, we’ll, we’ll turn around and come back down. It didn’t really strike her something to not attempt at age 85. And yet.

Aislyn: I love that.

Brad: Yeah.

Aislyn: What a cool attitude.

Brad: I think a lot of people just talk themselves out of things. And, and it’s not that they can’t do it. It’s an important talking point to include in the conversation about accessibility and traveling with an older person, because I also feel like, you know, you got to look at it both ways. We need to think about accommodation, but we also need to think about not being overly limiting because we have a preconceived notion about what 85 looks like or 90 looks like. It may look more adventurous than you think.

Aislyn: Yeah, it’s amazing how traveling with somebody with different needs can, you know, change your perception of travel. And not to skip towards the end of the book or our conversation since we’re still going to keep going, but in the epilogue, you take this very personal story and you zoom out to something that feels really urgent right now: the idea that America has a loneliness crisis, especially among older people and maybe national parks, could be part of the answer. So I wanted to ask you about what you witnessed firsthand with grandma Joy that made you think about aging and isolation so differently. For example, you talked about seeing in Grandma Joy a kind of reverse aging. So what do you think it was about travel that had that impact on her?

Brad: I think that mental health informs physical health in so many cases. Yes, there’s genetics. There’s circumstances that are outside of our control that sometimes keep us from being able to do all the things that we want to do, but the things that are in our direct control, which are to seek connection. And for an older person, that might mean kind of stacking it across the generational divide so that you’re not outliving everybody. Honestly, that happens to so many people. It sounds so terrible, but people do outlive the majority of their social base. And so one of, that’s one of the benefits of intergenerational connection from the older perspective, looking back towards younger generations for that resource of, um, of youthful vitality and connection and friendship and love, but also purpose. She had something to look forward to. So it’s connection. It was purpose and also, yes, moving because the way she navigated a trail at age 85, actually, she looked quite she looked quite unsteady at that time compared to how she got over time, because she was using parts of her brain and parts of her body that she wasn’t used to using, right? And making those neural pathways. It actually made her healthier and more balanced and coordinated. And certainly people say it all the time to me that she looks as young, if not younger now than she did when we began.

Aislyn: That is so inspiring, I love it. Well, when did you know you actually wanted to commit to all 63 parks? And who did you pitch it? Did she pitch it? Who came up with the idea?

Brad: I don’t think she even knew how many there were. And I, and honestly, I, I didn’t either. This was just a classic case of I worked my whole life hyper focused on this goal of becoming a veterinarian. Then suddenly I’m living in rural New Hampshire. I don’t know anyone, and I’m driving to work And after all of this time, I realize, oh, it’s a job. It’s not the be all, end all that I thought it was going to be in life, and I think that’s the experience that most of us have with our jobs. Hopefully we love our job, but it was not the entirety of what I needed to be a whole person to be a well-rounded, happy person, fulfilled person.

And so I wanted to take her on another camping trip because that was my reference point, was just how much fun I had hiking with her and watching her get a standing ovation at the top of that mountain from all these younger people who were just as inspired by what they were witnessing as I was. And this was long before our story went viral, but it brought people out of their trance, in a way, to see this 85 year old woman climbing the mountain as they were passing us or coming back down. And so I started looking at Yellowstone as the next national park because I always wanted to go. But then I found that there were all these other parks nearby. And so that’s when the dream sort of took root and I pitched it to her.

Aislyn: And what was her response? Do you remember? Was she like, yes?

Brad: Her response most of the time is, you know, I have nothing better to do. You know, what else am I going to, you know, sounds better than sitting on the couch. So she, she says, I’ll give it a whirl. I’ll give it a whirl. That’s her philosophy on most things. I’ve rarely asked if she wanted to do something, and she said, no food for sure. There are certain.

Aislyn: Really?

Brad: Oh, yeah. She’s. She’s the pickiest eater.

Aislyn: And that didn’t change over this.

Brad: No. I try to be adventurous in that way. And she doesn’t have that chip in her mind. But yes. Experiences. Yeah. She’ll zipline. She’ll Whitewater raft. She’ll she’ll hike and roll down sand dunes. But she won’t eat certain things.

Aislyn: Well hey, you know, to each their own. That’s a lot of whirling that she’s doing. So maybe food just needs to be a safe place.

Brad: And drinking to like. No. No alcohol for grandma Joy. She just. We just came back from Ireland and the whiskey tasting didn’t go well.

Aislyn: Oh, did she not taste or did she taste it and it.

Brad: Tasted it and then played it up like it was the most brutal thing I’d ever think she’d ever endured. Guinness was no better.

Aislyn: Well, will you highlight some of your favorite moments from these parks, or maybe your favorite parks where you learn something new about her or about yourself?

Brad: One of the early memories that really touched my heart was when we made our way to Fishercap Lake, which is in Glacier National Park, and we were there to see the moose. It was recommended to to me by a friend who was from Missoula, Montana, who had worked in the park. And so we went there just to watch the moose. And, um, as I’m watching the moose from the lakeshore and taking photographs, a little girl that doesn’t speak English walks over to my grandmother, and they’re both wearing very similar polka dotted fleece outfits, and she had a pair of binoculars in her hand. This little girl did. And she, she chose to sit down. Of all the people that were there, she chose to sit down next to Grandma Joy and pass her binoculars to her so that she could see the moose.

And they were communicating with each other through their eyes and their smile, and just by pointing. And the binoculars were going back and forth, and I’m documenting that. And I didn’t know at that point that our story was going to go viral the way it did. But, um, you know, it went viral because really, as a culture, that’s a rare thing to see someone that’s traveling with somebody 50 years their senior in these wild places. But from a child’s perspective, you know, that is not a non-starter for connection. In fact, most of us are very endeared to, to older people because there there’s a perceived softness, a gentility. And a lot of times, I think an experience within a family even is that sometimes the grandparent is a little more open and a less, less strict. And so it’s a simple moment. And of course, that scene gets ratcheted up because the moose charges us.

Aislyn: Oh yes, that’s right.

Brad: But but but I love those little moments of, of, of intergenerational connection that I saw along the way. And there was another beautiful moment that happened in American Samoa that I won’t spoil. But, um, you know, also just the fact that my grandmother was, was terrified of water, so much so that she didn’t want to go out on the still water in the Virgin Islands to see the sea turtles. And then when we were finally able to convince her that she was going to be safe, she didn’t even want to, she didn’t want to leave.

And then, you know, we get we move through this pandemic. And then on the other side, she ends up whitewater rafting in Alaska, class three rapids. She didn’t know how to swim then either. She just felt like, yeah, I’ve got a life jacket on. What do I have to lose? So watching her growth in that way, and to be able to have these experiences with her that I thought were impossible. It surprised me that she wouldn’t even think about it that way. But I saw this evolution through fear.

Aislyn: And it must have been so empowering for her, too, to know that she could face these maybe lifelong fears. Right? At 85, if you’ve never enjoyed water, like, wow.

Brad: Yeah, she nearly drowned as a girl, which I didn’t know until later. And then, you know, to see that. And then I applied it to my own life because I’m afraid of heights. And we had quite a few white knuckle drives in different parts of the country. The Western Loop of Maui was the worst. But going to the Sun Road, driving up to Mount Washington. And she likes to remind me that, you know, oh, we’re we’re right on the edge and all the all the people down there look like ants.

Aislyn: Thanks so much.

Brad: I don’t need to hear that. And then I watched her charge straight ahead on the bridge walk in New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. And and I just I was terrified, but I followed her. It’s amazing that, you know, she was able to be that that rock for me in that way and that. But it went both ways. We both pushed each other.

Aislyn: I love that, and it seemed like you also in the book, talk about your own evolution, like adapting to her pace a bit and that you used to be more of a peak bagger. And it seems like throughout this journey it was really more about connection than anything else. What would you say that you learned?

Brad: It’s a rare opportunity that I had to sort of walk side by side with a person that didn’t take life for granted the way that so many people do when you’ve got that perceived distance from death. And I think that was at the core of it. And once again, she’s not processing it that way, but she she is at a point in life at 96 now that that she’s not assuming that we’re going to be back to Ireland or Antarctica or some of these places that we’ve been. American Samoa, which was our final national park.

And so I think that I had to look at that part of myself that took the present for granted, assuming, oh, I can always come back and see this again. So now I try to I try to live in a moment with that perspective in mind that, you know, really take this in in case you’re not back. And there’s a big world to see. Maybe I don’t want to choose to come back here. Maybe if I can take all of this in right now, every sensory detail of this, then I don’t necessarily need to come back. I can just keep exploring this glorious world that we have. That was a big piece of it.

And the other part was just realizing that there is an advantage to not. It doesn’t always have to be burning calories and checking a bunch of stuff off your list. It can be just slowing down and actually hearing the birds that you might be missing. If all you can hear is the sound of your beating heart and noticing the details that are in the environment, like the colors of lichen and certain flowers, and the pattern on a bug carapace and whatever it may be. There’s a huge advantage to slowing down. I think we when you’re young, you feel like that’s so unsexy to slow down. And I’m grateful that she that she taught me that because I can start applying that now. I don’t have to have that realization 3 or 4 decades from now if I’m lucky enough to live that long.

Aislyn: Absolutely. Do you think she has always been like that, or is that something that she has learned over her lifetime?

Brad: I mean, I have to force her even now to, um, to not be in such a hurry. She wears herself out, you know, because she’s go, go, go. And so, but yes, relatively speaking, she still had a limit to how fast she could walk these trails and things like that. So I did have to slow down, but she was probably in her mind, she probably wasn’t moving slowly.

Aislyn: Well, of course, a large part of the book and your journey was this healing component and this reconnection. And I know that there were topics that you didn’t talk about for a long time. And I’m just curious how being out of your home base helped you have those conversations. Because I know like, for example, on a long road trip, it seems so much easier to talk about the big stuff. So what do you think kind of unlocked that piece for both of you?

Brad: Yeah, I think anyone who’s been on a long road trip can attest to the fact, especially if you’ve driven through a place like South Dakota until you get to the Black Hills, there’s not a lot to take in. And you can almost I mean, the way I describe it is almost like a hypnosis. This yellow line coming at you for that hour after hour after hour. And it’s the same kind of trance that I felt hiking the Appalachian Trail. You just get into this rhythm and then your mind wanders back in time. And so often we don’t have those conversations, but when she’s in the passenger seat and there’s nowhere else to go, especially if you’re just like, I’ve got to get this out of my system, I’m going to be sick if I don’t ask this question, or if I don’t stand up for myself in that way and let her know that, you know, when this thing happened and you stood by on the sidelines and didn’t intervene, it really hurt me, and it’s affected me more than I’ve ever really wanted to admit to myself and to you. But this is the truth. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t uncomfortable conversations, because this road trip had a lot of joy and laughter in it, but it also had anger and tears and frustration and resentment and all of them. I mean, that’s life, right?

Aislyn: Yeah. Throughout the book you talk a lot about reckoning with being gay, and there was a pivotal moment in your life and in the book when you were ten years old and a teammate punched you in the face at Grandma Joy’s house, and the way that your dad responded to that, and the way that your grandmother didn’t respond basically becomes something that you carried for decades. And then you were able to kind of address and let go of some of that on, on this trip with Grandma Joy throughout those 7 years. So do you have any advice for people who, you know, might be in a trip like this and maybe facing some similar familial issues?

Brad: Yeah, I mean, I’ve become a softer person because of this journey. And you have to reach a point in life where you understand that your experience, although it’s completely valid, is maybe not the same experience that another person had. And they are moving. Like for Grandma Joy, for example, let’s just use us as the example. You know, it could very well be that she didn’t remember this guy punching me in the nose in her backyard because she had three sons that got in fistfights all the time. Maybe so for her to see a boy with a bloody nose didn’t strike her as as traumatic in the way that it affected me. Because it did. I mean, it changed my life really at that moment. Not not just the punch in the nose, but the way my father chose to handle that, that moment, which I write about in the book. And I think the important thing is to understand that, that the other person may not remember things the way you do, and that doesn’t make them bad people. It’s just the way life is. Like we all have our own journey and we don’t remember things the same way. We don’t process things the same way. I’m a deeply sensitive, emotional person, but I can’t have the kind of conversation with Grandma Joy that I would ideally like to have. I have to find someone else who can meet me there. My friend Mingus says, you know, if you want to, if you need olive oil, squeeze an olive. Go find some olives. But don’t don’t keep squeezing a rock trying to get olive oil out of it because it’s never going to end well.

Aislyn: That’s such a good analogy. And I also think that there’s the generational differences, right? Like I think about my own grandparents and the things that they were taught and the era that they grew up in, and they just had a completely different life experience. They took in different messages. So figuring.

Brad: Silent generation.

Aislyn: Right? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Brad: And there aren’t a lot of people around from the silent generation. You know, I’m, I’m actually very lucky that I have a 96 year old grandmother that can pick up the phone when I call. But yes, that that comes with a set of cultural, deeply ingrained cultural norms and yes, that’s not that’s not a generation that was taught to speak openly and honestly about their, their feelings.

Aislyn: Yes. Yeah. My grandmother was like, don’t take it outside the family. That was her motto, you know, like it’s not safe to do. And you internalize that to some extent. But then also, you know, my generation, we do our therapy.

Brad: Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s an entirely different world. Like she, she grew up with little more than a little. Maybe some music on the radio. And we have I can I can listen to. Yeah. Any therapist I want to on Spotify at the, you know, at the snap of a finger. And so yeah, the conversations that our generation is having, it’s changed so quickly, even in the last decade, I think.

Aislyn: It’s almost dizzying how much change has come. And then we have the whole AI conversation. And what does grandma Joy think of technology in general? What’s her kind of approach?

Brad: Yeah, I think she marvels at it. Some of it is intimidating to her. I mean, I can’t even hand my iPhone to her to take a photograph, or I’ll end up with a selfie of her nostril or something. She’s very hands off, but she’s been able to experience the joy of a Zoom call with her grandchildren, who live in another state and that type of thing that she never could have imagined. I’m thinking about when we were in Antarctica on the cruise ship, and there was a couple from China sitting next to us, and they did not speak a word of English, but they had this amazing software program on their phone.

Aislyn: Yes. Yeah.

Brad: And we and we were just passing it back and forth having this conversation and we could laugh together. And, and it was just like, I thought, this is where we’re going. There’s so much of technology and AI that scares me. I think most of us. Right? Yes. But but but that that that but that’s an example. If it can foster connection, it’s a beautiful thing.

Aislyn: It’s such a beautiful thing. And it allows you to do things you would never be able to do otherwise. Like I had a similar experience in Japan. Well, I would love to talk about how you have now transitioned outside of the United States. What made you two decide to continue the journey? I know you’ve gone to amazing places. You just got back from Ireland, as you were saying. So what led to that decision and what is next for you?

Brad: Well, reaching 63 U.S. national parks was a that was a long haul. That was a very daunting prospect, especially considering how remote some of these parks were. And we we achieved it. And like I said, that gave us both a purpose in life. Having something to reach for is so important in life. I think having calendar dates that you circle, really stick to the plan and carry through with that. That’s a big part of for me, what having a rich life looks like, but then you accomplish the goal and there’s a bit of a sadness there.

So part of it was internal, like, yes, I wanted to do something more and that could have just been, okay, we’ll just travel where you want to go. She has a lot of or I guess we do have quite a few Instagram followers and a lot of them were speaking up saying, you know, where’s Grandma Joy going next? You have to take Grandma Joy somewhere else. Like we love watching her adventures too much for this to be finished. So they were grieving in a way as well. Yeah. So I thought, okay, well, I think 7 continents. That’s a big goal that a lot of us have. And she got a passport at 91, her first passport at age 91, because American Samoa has their own. It’s a US territory, but they have their own immigration system.

So we had that. So we went we flew across the international dateline from American Samoa to Western Samoa. That was our first country that we visited, and that’s Oceania, right? Which some would argue is not one of the continents. So it was just a fun idea. Like 7 seems like a more doable number than 63. And we’ve made amazing progress. We’ve been to 11 countries, 5 continents so far.

Aislyn: Was there one that she really wanted to see?

Brad: Yeah, Ireland was the was the big one. She’s a Gordon by by blood and a Ryan by marriage. But the Ryan family line originated out of the Tipperary region of Ireland and we were able to go there and she, she climbed up to the Rock of Cashel and we got to stare out over the landscape, which was so breathtaking and scenic and just stunning. It made me want to take her to Scotland and some of the other homelands that our family originated from. But that was the big one. And I dragged the poor woman to Antarctica first. She was like, I just want to go to a pub and and watch other people. She doesn’t drink, but she wanted to go to a pub and she wanted to see the castles and, and the sheep and all these things. So we did.

Aislyn: And you actually crossed the Drake Passage together.

Brad: Yeah. We were on a boat for 2 days from Ushuaia at the southern tip of Argentina.

Aislyn: How did you handle that with her fear of water?

Brad: I know I don’t I don’t think she even thought of it that way because the boat was so big.

Aislyn: Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Brad: But, um, they told us that we got about 5 percent of the chaos that one could experience on that, that passage across the Drake. Once again, I don’t know what’s in the universe, but the fates are very much on Grandma Joy’s side because we didn’t have too many problems on. And she doesn’t get seasick anyway, but I worry more about just her falling or something.

Aislyn: Absolutely. I know when we went, they were like, you were so lucky you got the Drake Lake and not the the Drake Shake. Yes. You watch those videos on YouTube of the huge swells and oh.

Brad: I can’t even imagine.

Aislyn: What was that like for her to get down there then and to suddenly, like, see icebergs and penguins?

Brad: Yeah, there aren’t good records of those things, but they’re pretty sure she may be the oldest person that ever stepped foot on the mainland of Antarctica because it was quite it was kind of a roll of the dice to even go there because we were so far from any type of medical help if we were, if we needed it. It was really special.

I mean, she, I just remember sitting with her on our balcony and just watching this landscape just unfold in front of us. You know, you think after you’ve been to Alaska that you you’ve seen like the most epic, untouched part of the world, but really, Antarctica is a different rhythm completely. We’re so grateful that we got to go. I mean, we woke up on the first morning and there were penguins swimming at the, you know, in the water just beneath our feet. And we’re like, we knew we were definitely not in Ohio anymore.

Aislyn: Amazing. What is next up for you? Do you know?

Brad: Well, we’re hoping to go somewhere in Asia later this year. We have a potential sponsor for that trip, which I can’t talk about right now. But that will be continent 6. If we make it all the way there, then we’re going to go to Australia and knock it out.

Aislyn: Nice, Oh yeah. You’re there.

Brad: Yeah. I mean, she’s she’s 96 and she’ll probably live to be 106. But at the same time, like I don’t believe in Russian roulette. I like to just strike while the iron’s hot and but then it’s going to open up the same deluge of emails from her ardent fans about, like, take her to the moon, take her to Mars.

Aislyn: Oh, the moon. I didn’t even think about that. Wow. Would you even entertain that notion?

Brad: I don’t think so. It would be hard to turn it down if, uh, Jeff Bezos said like, yeah, you can go, I don’t know.

Aislyn: Well, how would you describe your travel style? Like as travel buddies, you know, not just like grandmother-grandson, but two friends out in the world.

Brad: You know, she, she makes sure that we’re, we’re stocked with snacks. She’s the navigator. I’m the driver. And honestly, we’ve been to so many places where we didn’t have good Wi-Fi or a connection to be able to pull up GPS on my phone. And so that, that that old school atlas actually has, I would say, never try to do the national parks without a hard copy of an atlas.

Yeah, I think we have found our roles. And in this duo, like, she’ll put the tent together. I unload all the heavy stuff to put into the tent, you know, like we would just sort of divide and conquer. She was never one to sit back. She can’t stand to not have her hands on something being a part of something constructive. And I don’t want to tell her, oh, just sit down. You’re too old. That’s actually the most offensive thing that you could ever say to her.

Aislyn: For someone who wants to try this and hasn’t, what would you recommend?

Brad: Everybody has a dream that is unrealized or evolving, and I think that when you put limits on your on yourself, especially because of age, something that, you know, we’re all on that same conveyor belt of time, our knees are all getting more achy. We’re all getting a little more winded when we climb stairs. So I just say, you know, you adapt, but you don’t say no to the best of your ability. Try not to say no because when you do accomplish that first thing that you told yourself you weren’t so sure that you could do, then you start to have the light bulbs go off that, oh no, no, no, life is still happening. You know, I’m still in it, I’m still in it. And I don’t I don’t want to spend what precious time I have left, just sitting in the couch thinking that all the best days are behind me. And whatever it is that you want to do, I think, yeah, maybe start small, but you can also go big too.

Aislyn: Yeah, I love that. Well, I would love to close with what you learned writing this book. So you’re going back and you’re reliving all of these memories and you’re reviewing your relationship and how it progressed. Like what did you take away from that process?

Brad: There were a lot of things that I wrote about because, you know, we’re moving forward in time through the national parks, but we’re also going back in time through conversation and filling in the gaps of my childhood, her childhood. And, you know, I was able to learn that there’s so much of what makes me, me. That was not conscious. I think that it was how I was raised. I think that there’s a certain inherent traits that I was born with in my DNA that Grandma Joy certainly shares with me, that I found out that her mother shares with both of us. If I had the ability to go back in time even further, I would probably see that thread extending even further back in my my bloodline. And it’s a real gift to be able to lift up that rock and see what’s underneath when the silt clears. And sometimes, you know, what you learn in that inquiry is, is terrifying and really heartbreaking. And sometimes it’s a real source of, of pride and joy.

But no matter what, if you can gather as much information about where you come from while you have those people in your life that you can get that information from, I think it helps you become grounded in who you are, and hopefully be a little more proud of who you are. I mean, my father, who was my Grandma Joy’s oldest son, we had a very, Um, you know, heartbreaking story. It ends beautifully for Grandma Joy and me. Not so much for for me and my father. And there was a period in my life where I was so mad at him that I wanted to divorce myself of the Ryan surname altogether. And through the process of writing this book and really coming to a place of grace for my grandmother, for my father, and even for myself, when I could clear that anger and that grievance, when I could push that to the side and just be me and realize that I have a I have a claim on that name, too. It allowed me to feel a sense of pride that I didn’t have before about, you know, my imperfect family, basically. I think that’s, that’s what I learned is that I’ve been, I spent my whole life just feeling the, the pain that that was very real in my heart, but not widening that lens to understand that even my father was a human being, that that perhaps had his own reasons for not being the father I needed him to be.

Aislyn: Yeah, absolutely.

Brad: I think in the end, what I’ve written is, is a love story to an imperfect family, which most families are, and I hope that people read it with that in mind, that it’s not just our story. It’s a human story about the things that that connect all of us, which are getting older one day at a time. And, and just trying to, trying to get through life as unscathed as we can, given the fact that there’s so many circumstances that we have to navigate that are outside of our control, but we can we can heal.

Aislyn: And travel as a vehicle for that, both travel literally and travel as we go through life. Right? Our lifetime travels.

Brad: I’m glad you said that too, because and I make this point in the epilogue, but this book is also about not just healing yourself and healing your family. It’s also about a call to action for societal level healing. And I think that is such, such an unappreciated or underappreciated aspect of the national parks. We think about how beautiful Yosemite and Yellowstone and Zion and Glacier are. But we don’t think about the joy, the abundance of joy and and connection that can come from just camping next to a stranger who you may completely have nothing in common with outside of the fact that you’re in this beautiful place, in this moment in time, and that you can just sit around the campfire, talk about what a beautiful day you had, and just spend an evening acknowledging each other’s humanity for a minute.

And being able to just lay down your arms for a second and not be so hyper focused on the typical dividing lines. I think we all need that on a social level. Like we all need to be able to find our way back to each other and see the good in each other. And our national parks are one of the very last places in America where we can still walk on common ground together and do that. We all have a stake in that.

Aislyn: All right. Well, a big thank you to Brad and Joy for sharing their story. If you’re interested in hearing from the two of them, Brad and Grandma Joy are traveling around the US on a book tour this summer. Currently, stops include Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, and California. You can find all the details in the show notes, and there’s also a link to the book and their social media handles. We’ll see you next week.

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This has been Unpacked, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to its other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers podcast.