Beit Emmett: Chad Emmett Travels

I have my parents to thank for piquing my interest in travel. Some of my earliest memories are of our annual summer vacation, usually a road trip in the family station wagon.

First photo of me out and about exploring--a family day trip to Cub River Canyon just north across the border in Idaho. 1960 at age 4.

In 1962 we caravanned with my three living grandparents in one car (thanks grandpa Fife for introducing us to Dr. Pepper on the trip) and mom and dad plus the four oldest boys in our station wagon. Mom made us each a travel scrap book in which we tallied state license plates, wrote down Burma Shave silly signs, glued in post cards and drew pictures of what we visited. Our main destination was the Seattle World's fair with its amazing Space Needle, but we also visited the huge Grand Coulee dam and took the ferry (which sounded a loud foghorn as we tried out a lifeboat)) to Victoria Canada where we visited Buchart Gardens. (From left to right, in age order--Bill, Bob, Chad and Jake)

In 1964 we took a week off from school (not typical for our family) for our first trip to Disneyland.

We stopped at Hoover Dam on the way where we straddled the boundary between Nevada and Arizona.

1965 we did a loop of national parks including Mesa Verde

And Bryce Canyon

At four corners we four boys all stood in a different state. No wonder I became a geographer.

1966 our family along with several other families whooped it up at the Ponderosa Resort in Burley Idaho. The main activities were swimming and playing golf on the resort nine-hole course.

One of the most memorable vacations was a 1967 trip to Newport Beach. We stayed in a rental home right on the beach. Such fun. We also visited Disneyland again, Marine Land, San Diego Zoo and a day in Tijuana (making Mexico country number 3)

Stopped at Byrce Canyon along the way.

In 1968 we visited Yellowstone, where I fished for one of the few times in my life.

On our way home from Yellowstone, where we had been very careful not to feed the bears, we drove through Thermopolis Wyoming. We saw signs advertising a herd of buffalo that you could drive in and see. We were caravaning with our grandparents. The herd seemed very docile so my grandpa Fife who once worked trucking cattle, climbed out of the car telling us he was going to go get us some buffalo burgers. I followed along. We didn't know that one of the bulls was new to the herd and not used to visitors and that motorcyclists had recently tormented the herd by riding rings around them. Grandpa got too close and the new bull started to charge. I was further away and started to run first. Grandpa was about 10 yards behind me. I remember looking over my shoulder and seeing the bull gore grandpa in the lower back, nearly puncturing his kidney. The bull then stopped and flipped grandpa off his horn and onto the ground breaking his arm in the process. Having made his point, the bull then backed away. My doctor dad and oldest brother Bill then hustled out and scooped up grandpa, put him in the back of the station wagon and drove him to a nearby hospital where Buffalo Bill Fife convalesced for a week before being flown back to Brigham City. Moral of the story in both Yellowstone and Thermopolis--stay clear of the wild animals.

It was perhaps the summer of 1969 that cemented my love of travel. All eight of use loaded up in a rented motor home and spent a month visiting historic American and Mormon sites "Back East". Read all about it here: https://beitemmett.blogspot.com/202the-great-back-east-mortorhome-trip. I ended up being the navigator much of the time using our Rand McNally Road Atlas and a thick guide to RV parks.

Outside the White House

Empire State Building.

There were other family trips too: A visit to San Franciso and the northern California coast. A trip to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada (1972). Another motor home trip (1973) to Kentucky and Tennesse where missionary Bill had started his mission and then on to his last assignment where he gave us a guided tour of Nauvoo.

And a trip to the Spokane World's Fair of 1974

Followed by the Oregon Coast.

It was inevitable that eventually family trips would not be enough to satisfy my travel bug. In the spring of 1972, my sophomore year at Logan High, I was hit by a car while riding my bike to school and broke an arm and a leg. While recuperating my friend Chad Godfrey proposed that that summer we go on a month long "back east" bus trip with a tour led by an LDS Seminary teacher he knew in Salt Lake City. I loved the idea. There was even some extra insurance money from my accident that could pay for it. So off we went, sleeping in campgrounds, back yards, church cultural halls and occasional hotels.

The crew.

Camping

In New York I got to see my first Broadway show: A Funny Thing Happen on the Way to the Forum

Changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider

Cypress Gardens. We also spent a day at newly opened Disney World.

Walking down Burbon Street in New Orleans was quiet an eye-opening experience for a 15-year-old from Logan Utah.

Our drive through the south added quite a few new states to my list. I have now visited all 50.

Two years later another travel opportunity came my way. Our excellent Logan High Orchestra was planning a summer trip to Europe. Many of my friends were in the orchestra. I was a drop out of band after my sophomore year. I really wanted to go to Europe with them so with the encouragement of friends and the promised financial backing from my parents I went and talked to Ray Haslam, the orchestra teacher. I told him I played the cornet in band up through my sophomore year and was wondering if they needed another trumpet player for the orchestra. They did! I was invited to go! I went to Saturday practices and learned the third trumpet part for Mendelsohn's Italian symphony, Beethoven's Overture to the Marriage of Figaro and Grieg's piano concerto. We had a blast. It was a great graduation trip. We started in Vienna then by bus visited Salzburg, Bavaria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Paris, and Amsterdam and then via ferry and train ended in London (adding eight new countries to my North American three). We played concerts as we went. And my friend Ade Lundgren took lots of great photos (I mainly took scenic slides) which she recently shared with me--photos of photos from her wonderful scrap book.

Gardens at Schonberg Palace, Vienna

Boat ride on Lake Lucerne (?)

Mt Pilatus, Switzerland

Students and Larry Haslam (center), an outstanding social studies teacher who joined with his brother Ray to help lead the trip.

My normal approach to bus travel is that if you are bussing through magnificent scenery like Switzerland or Austria, sleeping is verboten, but sometimes travel tiredness can get the best of even the most attentive and interested of travelers.

Canal ride in Amsterdam. Sadly, I missed a day of touring in Amsterdam after being hit by food poisoning from an Indonesian rijsttafel meal.

Flood season in Jakarta 1977

Who knew that a year after the ill-fated meal in Amsterdam that I would be assigned to serve my two-year Mormon mission in Indonesia. While not an official trip or tour, this journey to the other side of the world opened my eyes, mind and heart to so many wonderful things. And it compelled me to study geography because when I returned and told people I had served in Indonesia, no one knew where it was. Ask any of my students and they will certainly know where Indonesia is and more importantly, they will know that it is the largest Muslim country in the world, that its language has been influenced by the incoming languages of traders over the centuries, and that it is seismically challenged with earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. Going we spent a week in Singapore and coming home two days in Hong Kong.

Sadly, while studying at USU I never was aware of study abroad opportunities. Not sure if they even existed at the time. I now always recommend going on a study abroad to students.

During my senior year at USU after a fireside about Israel, a group of us stood around talking about how cool it would be to go to Israel. Then one of us stated: "we should go!" Four of us committed to see if we could make it work. Three of us ended up going on a TWA (Trans World Airlines) two week tour the summer after I graduated from USU. We hen stayed on for more exploring in Israel followed by stops in Greece and Rome (now up to 17 countries/territories).

We were a diverse eclectic group--including an evangelical family with three kids (who I later visited in the Bay area), three Mormons, one Christian Scientist (who is still my friend) and Larry the Jew from New York.

Our wonderful guide Luba and driver Moshe were both Israelis. Luba was an immigrant from Russia. Only later is life did I realize that our tour made little mention of the Palestinians.

Larry the Jew (left) and me (center) floating in the Dead Sea. While floating in the stinging, sticky salt water, Larry wryly joked: "This has got to be the low point of the trip." This geographer certainly laughed at the double meaning.

Running to the bus from our hotel in Tiberius. I'm usually not late.

After the formal trip the tree of us caught an Egged bus that dropped us near to a kibbutz in southern Israel where my US friend Ann Miller Hansen (yellow shorts) from River Heights was a volunteer on a Kibbutz. Opportunities like this to get off the beaten path and to interact with locals makes travel all the more meaningful.

At Delphi. We caught a public bus and found our way there.

With my high school and college friend Lauri Hlavaty. We both later ended up at the University of Chicago working on PhDs focused on the ancient (her) and modern (me) Holy Land. Here we are at the Acropolis checking a guidebook and map.

Doing what tourists do in Rome.

We saw the Pope.

One semester at BYU I participated in the Washington Seminar, interning with the National Association of Arab Americans. To get to DC I drove my Toyota Tercel with college friend Richard Sopp via Ontario, Quebec, Maine and Massachusetts. Driving back to Utah was Via I-70. With fellow interns, often on free days in my car, we visited Shenandoah National Park, Monticello, Gettysburg, NYC and every single Smithsonian Museum.

Ottawa, the compromise capital of Canda on the border between Ontario and Quebec.

As part of my MA thesis research at BYU I participated in the Fall 1982 Jerusalem Study Abroad. During our four months there we explored all of Israel/Palestine plus Jordan and Egypt. In addition to all of the program site visits, we were given a list of several dozen other places worth seeing. I set out with a few other to see everything on that list. I think we succeeded and then some. Some of the more memorable extra stie visits included me talking the Waqf officials into letting us go down into Solomon Stables under the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), arranging a group hike through Wadi Qelt, getting permission from the priests to exit out a back door of the Monastery of the Temptation, so we could explore adjacent caves where Jesus is said to have fasted and then climb to the top of the mount, arranging a visit to the University of Jordan with its student body officers that we befriended on the flight over, and taking a few other students with me to explore the City of the Dead in Cairo.

Becoming friends with the studentbody officers from the University of Jordan on our flight from Athens to Amman.

We spent two weeks living at Kibbutz Degania. Our morning task included cleaning the chicken coops of chicken poop.

Walking where Jesus walked on 2,000-year-old Roman Steps.

In the Judean wilderness among the goats--while the sheep leave us in the dust.

At the Aswan Dam. Who knew that the photos I took here that day would later be used in my geography classes when talking about the politics of water in the Middle East.

After I graduated from BYU with my MA and before taking a job as an Indonesian linguist for the National Security Agency. I back packed through Indonesia with my friend Phil Groesbeck. We rode trains and busses and ferries as we explored Java and Bali. I then went on my own to North Sumatra and then Malaysia starting in Penang in the north and ending in Singapore in the south. By the time I got to Kuala Lumpur I was out of traveler checks and cash. Luckily, I met a young man from Bountiful Utah at church who gave me a loan of $100 to get me to Singapore to catch my flight home. Once home I mailed his father a check in repayment.

Ferry ride from Java (photo) to Bali.

The amazing linguistic, religious and ethnic diversity of Malaysia. A delicious variety of foods too.

During my two years living in Laurel Maryland for my NSA job followed by me three years living in Chicago for my PhD coursework. I drove cross country multiple times to and from on I-70 and I-80 and then from DC to LA to Logan via I-40 and I-20. I would often get off the interstate and take more scenic blue roads. I took weekend trips to NYC to see Broadway shows and to watch BYU football play in the national championship. I road tripped to Niagra Falls with friends. From Chicago I attended my first professional meeting in Minneapolis. I took a road trip from Chicago to Detroit, Toronto, Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie, and Green Bay. And I spent a summer in Charlottsville Virgina studying Arabic when an intensive Arabic Program in Jordan was cancelled last minute.

Chinatown in Toronto

I the fall of 1988 I travelled to Israel for a year. I lived in the Arab city of Nazareth for one year doing dissertation research. I travelled back and forth to Jerusalem many times trying new routes--including an Egged bus ride through the West Bank at the height of the Intifada. My Uncle Martin Hickam was the director of the BYU Jerusalem Center so often he and my aunt JoAnn would come north with visitors (including my parents and cousins one time) and I would help guide them to sites in the Galilee. I was also hired for a day in Jerusalem to give a wealthy tourist and his wife a private tour of sacred sites. I also took time off from my research to travel to the Sinai with the first BYU intensive Arabic program. Got to climb Mt. Sinai for my second time. One of my favorite outings was a hike along the wild flower and olive covered hills between Turan and Nazareth.

May Day parade sponsored by the local communist party in Nazareth with Church of The Annunciation in distance.

Rode an Arab bus to Hebron with a friend during the height of the Intifada. Wearing my t-shirt with University of Chicago written in Arabic on it resulted in an invitation to lunch with these three nice Palestinians.

Side-by-side church and mosque atop Mt. Sinai.

Springtime in the Galilee

Getting hired as a geography professor at BYU really upped my travel game. With generous travel support for research, attendance at professional meetings and even course prep (in the first few years) I was able to travel to Israel several times and Indonesia many times for research.

Rain Forest of Borneo, 2001

Manado Indonesia, 2007

My first year at BYU I was tasked with teaching the geography of Latin America, never having travelled south of Tijuana, I felt a bit of an imposter especially since many of my students had serve LDS missions in Latin America and thus thought they knew everything. I told my department chair that if I was expected to continue teaching the class then I would need to up my cred and visit the region. He agreed to finance a visit, so in the summer of 1993 I travelled first to Ecuador (with Southwind Adventures in a small adventure travel group) where we explored the rain forest of the Amazon basin, the highland villages, and the hot coastal plain. After the regular trip, two of us opted for an extension so we could climb Mt. Cotopaxi. Then on to Mexico where I visited (on my own with a guide book) Mexico City, Tenochtitlan, Puebla and Veracruz.

Wading through the flooded rain forest in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Preserve.

Atop Mt Cotopaxi (19,347 feet)

Fruits of the tierra caliente (not zone) in the state of Veracruz. My favorite was the liquado mango con leche (mango milk shake)

Every year I would attend the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Often my geography colleagues and I would take a day off from the meetings to explore in and around cities like Miami, (the Everglades), New Orleans (Whitney Plantation), Boston (covered bridges of Vermont), Seattle (Olympic National Park), Honolulu (Polynesian Cultural Center), New York City (9-11 Memorial), San Antonia (The Alamo), Washington DC (new memorials) etc.

9/11 Memorial, 2012. https://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2012/03/geographer-in-new-york-city.html

I went on many other trips over the years (sometimes with department funding, sometimes with teaching award funding, sometimes with my own funding) always with the intent to improving my teaching of World Geography, Political Geography, Middle East Geography, Geography of Latin America and the Geography of SE Asia. Slides from these travels were always utilized to illustrate my lectures.

1993 I travelled to Europe. I started in Berlin then visited Warsaw and Krakow, Prague and then ended up in Heidelburg to see by brother Bill and his family. My parents and several of the oldest grandkids joined us there (the beginning of a tradition where Grandma and Grandpa took a cohort of grandkids on an adventure) for a fun week of travel in Bavaria and Switzerland. I then continued on to Cologne, Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam.

In Berlin I had a fun time buying Russian trinkets from Kurds from Turkey. I spoke no German or Kurdish and they spoke no English, but we both spoke some Arabic which we then used to communicate.

In Krakow I was surprised to hear a trumpeter trumpeting from this church steeple. As a child I had read about the origin of this tradition in the Newberry Award winning book The Trumpeter of Krakow. Reading about other places always makes travel more interesting.

Bosporus Strait as part of a 1995 trip through Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. It was my first time in Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria. Bulgaria was still fresh out of communism. There had been little contact with the west, so it was a challenge to navigate given I didn't read Cyrillic or speak Bulgarian, and few spoke English. Syria was a delight. So peaceful and open at that point in its history. I'm glad I got to visit before so much was destroyed. https://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2015/11/in-syria.html

Palmyra before ISIS destroyed much of it.

In 1996 I met my friend Curtis Tompson in Thailand. He is a geographer who specializes in Thailand, so I had a grand tour. We explored Bangkok and then headed south to the beaches then on to Malaysia where we rode the jungle train From Kota Baru to Kuala Lumpur.

Standing Buddha Shrine in Bangkok.

In 1996, 1997 and 2000 I help lead three CHOICE humanitarian trips to the Indonesian island of Flores. The first two years we helped install water catchment areas and laid pipes to bring spring water into two isolated village. The third year we helped build a three-room school. All three years we also took medical professionals to treat malaria, scabies, tooth aches and many other things. I often served as interpreter for the doctors, dentists and nurse practitioners. We camped in the villages for a week then we enjoyed a week in beautiful Bali.

Medical clinic set up in the elementary school. I'm interpreting.

Sacrificing a chicken to the water goddess before pouring the first bucket of cement to make a small water reservoir.

1997 also included a trip to the Holy Land and Jordan followed by a last-minute trip to Lebanon with friend and former student Shahram Paksima. Lebanon had just opened up to Americans following the long years of Hezbollah hostage taking. We started in Beirut and head north to Tripoli then on to Bisharah.

From the Maronite town of Bisharah with its grove of cedars we hitch-hiked on top of a produce truck up and over the Lebanon Mts down into the Bekaa valley with the beautiful Roman of Baalbek. Then back to Beirut. It was quite the adventure.

In 2001, I joined with fellow geographer Curtis Tompson for a three-week plane, train and bus trip through much of India. What a country. Every one of the five senses is assaulted on a daily basis with loud noises, bright colors, disgusting smells, delicious food and sweaty weather.

Dipping my toes in the Ganges

A colorful Hindu Temple in the Kerela in the south.

2002 trip to Morocco with GAP Adventures (now G Adventures). It was a small adventure travel group using a minibus. We had a great time exploring cities, hiking in the High Atlas, and camping in the Sahara.

Self-portrait--me with my hand raised as we caravanned out into the desert for a night of camping.

In 2004 I went on another Gap Adventure to Southeast Asia. I was gearing up to start teaching the geography of SE Asia. We started in Bangkok, went overland to Siem Riep and amazing Angkor Wat, flew to Phnom Penh then boated down the Mekong to Vietnam ending in fascinating Saigon. I then flew to Hanoi for some exploring on my own.

Part of the G Adventures travel approach is to give back to the local community. One evening in Siem Reip we visited an English academy where we helped teach and practice. I worked with these young men in the advanced class. Having worked with many Cambodian refugees in Washington DC, the visit to the country and to the killing fields was very impactful. When I teach about the Cambodian genocide, I have my students read Survival in the Killing Fields.

In Saigon for our final group dinner, we went to a restaurant that served all kinds of "delicacies". Yes, I did try the fried scorpion.

That year I also accompanying a graduate student of mine to Chiapas Mexico (drove down and back in a Jeep Cherokee) for his research on deforestation and land disputes.

Enterprising Mayan women made Zapatista dolls to sell in the textile market.

https://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-day-i-met-zapatistas.html

I took a side trip to Guatemala where I was able to visit amazing Tikal.

In 2008, Professor Jim Davis and I visited the UAE and Oman. With enough oil money you can build a fun indoor ski area.

In Muscat Oman with two former students working there.

In Salalah Oman tracking down some frankincense.

After many years of hoping, preparing and waiting, I was able to teach at the BYU Jerusalem Center for the 2009-2010 academic year. I taught Old and New Testament classes for three semesters and then lead weekly field trips to historical sites in the Holy Land as well as a four-day excursion to Joran and a week long visit to Egypt. It was a fantastic year.

Teaching on the Mt of Olives. photo by Becky Dayton DeFigueiredo

Teaching at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Palm Sunday in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

Celebrating Succoth as the Western Wall.

With the students at the Mohammad Ali Mosque in Cairo

Hustling to get on the bus in Cairo.

Floating in the Dead Sea with my kids.

Petra

The year I taught at the Jerusalem Center is the year I started blogging. Here is a link to one of dozens of blogs I posted that year: http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2010/07/galilee-summer.html

The year we were in Jerusalem we took a weeklong Christmas break trip to London and then in the Spring my daughter and I went to the Netherlands for a four-day research and explore trip.

In 2014 our family enjoyed an American/Mormon historic sites road trip--similar to what I had done as a child.

Wahington Monument. When I visited as a child, they let us walk the whole way down. Now you have to order tickets days in advance for the elevator ride up and down.

Stopped in at the University of Chicago to visit Professor Marvin Mikesell, my dissertation advisor.

For my sabbatical in 2015, I was accepted to teach on Semester at Sea. We embarked in San Diego and disembarked in Southampton England. In between we had one day to one week long stops in Hawaii, Japan, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Myanmar, India, Mauritius, South Africa, Namibia, and Morocco. I taught three geography classes each day we were on the ship. Taught a one-day long class in one of the ports for each of my classes. The rest of the time in port we were free to explore as we wanted.

My political geography class.

Learning Tai Chi in Shanghai

Out on the deck sailing up the Saigon River showing students and family where we are going.

Riding the crowded Circle Line Train in Yangon.

Hiking down from table Mt. in Cape Town.

Once in England we rented a car for a two-week road trip through England, Scotland, North Ireland, Ireland and Wales.

The impetus for this road trip was so the boys could see at Manchester United game in Old Trafford.

On the street in Glasgow where my great grandmother Agnes and her mother Margaret Caldwell emigrated from in 1856.

At Trinity college in Dublin trying to decide where to go next.

My BYU office. Notice the two piles of travel guidebooks (mostly blue Lonely Planet) in the upper right top shelf. Most of my traveling has been self-guided. I had a Lonely Planet guide for each of our Semester at Sea port countries. Occasionally we would join in a ship excursion, but usually it was just our family exploring on our own.

In the years since Semester at Sea my travels have stayed closer to home with road trips to many amazing places.

Lanscape Arch, Arches National Park, 2016. http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2016/05/utah-rocks-arches.html

Saguaro National Park, 2017

http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2017/06/southwest-parks-and-recreation.html

Canoeing in Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park, Canadian Rockies, 2018

http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2018/06/kootenay-to-jasper.html

New ride at Disneyland. 2019

Sun Tunnels, Great Salt Lake Desert, 2020

http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2020/05/man-made-wonders-of-great-salt-lake.html

Sequoia National Park, 2021 http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2021/08/california-adventure-iii.html

Druid Arch, Canyonlands National Park, 2022 http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2022/04/druid-arch-corona-arch-shafer-trail.html

My most recent organized traveling has come in the form of study abroad travel to Indonesia. In 2016 and 2017 I joined with faculty and students from BYU, UVU and Indonesia to undertake tsunami mitigation research and training in four islands of Indonesia. It was so fun for me to travel to two new islands (Lombok and Sumbawa) and to new places on other well-travelled islands (Bali and Java).

Since I had done it once before on my own, I was in charge of getting our research team to Anak Krakatoa (the 100 year old re-birth of the original Krakatoa)

http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2016/07/back-to-krakatoa.html

With two local administrators in Pacitan Java who were showing me the evacuation paths and stairs leading to high ground that their village had built. http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2016/08/pacitan.html

Leading a tsunami evacuation drill to high ground with middle school students on the island of Sumba.

Spring Term 2022 in my last term teaching at BYU before retirement I lead a geography study abroad to Indonesia (originally the plan was to visit five countries in Asia from Indonesia to Japan but COVID altered our plans).

Highlights for me included:

Climbing Mt Tambora on the island of Sumbawa. The 1815 massive eruption of Tambora that created this massive crater that caused the famed year without summer in 1816.

http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2022/05/tambora-mount-of-restoration.html

Snorkeling with manta rays off the island of Nusa Penida near Bali.

Participating in a ritual cleansing bath at the Tirta Empul Holy Water Temple in Bali.

http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2022/05/study-abroad-bali.html

Buying a bag of mangosteens (manggis), my favorite fruit, in a Jakarta market to share with my students. Photo by Dallin Hutchison.

Hiking and camping in Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra where we were able to see dozens of Orangutans in the wild. http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2022/06/study-abroad-orangutans.html

Traditional church is Brestagi North Sumatra. Traveling with this fun group for five weeks across four islands of Indonesia was an amazing experience. I loved planning the itinerary and getting to see and experience so many amazing places.
http://beitemmett.blogspot.com/2022/06/study-abroad-north-sumatra-and-singapore.html