It’s funny that I’ve written my dad a letter given the fact that I just spent two weeks vacationing with him in Iceland. We spent every day together, chatting over meals, talking in the car, exploring the country from end to end.

This isn’t the first time we’ve traveled together. In fact, my dad is the person I can tie my love of travel back to. When I was a wee little tot, he used to take me on his business trips. Rumor has it I swung from his briefcase as he walked through the terminals, and then I rode on his lap to wherever his final destination was. As I grew older, our summers consisted of long road trips that hit states from Wyoming to Maine to Kentucky. He introduced me to the importance of our natural parks, and I learned to love campfire smoke and sleeping on blown-up mattresses from an early age. The world has always been my playground thanks to my dad.

In recent years, my dad and I have started to explore the opportunities available through international travel. We traveled in Costa Rica last year, and this year we tackled Iceland. We’re already starting to throw around a few ideas for 2013.

I know I am fortunate to share one of my greatest interests with someone who has known me my whole life. I’m also fortunate to have a father who supports the seemingly outlandish decisions I’ve made to pursue personal passions that go against societal wisdom. Growing up, my dad and I had a good relationship, but I think it’s grown and become even stronger in recent years. We talk on the phone a few times a week, and we send random text messages on an even more frequent basis. I love to hear about the seemingly mundane things going on in his life, and I love that he asks about those kinds of things in my life as well.

I write my dad letters on occasion, and he just had a birthday, so I decided to send him some snail mail even though we got back from Iceland just over a week ago. I made him a collage birthday card of an Iceland landscape (at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be), and I enclosed a letter as well. My dad used to write to me every week when I was in college, and I still have all of those letters. He always laments his bad handwriting, but I don’t care if what he writes is hard to read. The point is that mail from my dad is mail from my dad, and that’s the most important thing to me.

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