When I was a young teenager, my dad took my brother and me to New Orleans’ Ponchartrain Beach to revisit his childhood fun place.

He bought us tickets to ride The Zephyr, a huge roller coaster, because it was his favorite.

I’d never ridden a roller coaster but if Dad liked it, the ride must be okay.

At the end, my brother was laughing but I shook for over an hour.

That fear jumped up again on a trip down the Pacific Coast Highway a few years ago.

This road has a mountain on one side and a cliff, with no rail or shoulder, on the other.

After a couple of hairpin turns, I spent the rest of the ride on the back-seat floor board with my eyes shut.

Whenever we choose a vacation spot, making sure there aren’t any mountains is always in the back of my mind, hence the reason we go to the beach so often.

When my niece raved about a visit to Sedona, Ariz., I figured the desert is flat and warm, so this spot should be perfect for a spring vacation.

However, I didn’t realize Sedona was up in the mountains, and the only way to get there was over switch-back roads and hair-pin turns.

The road was terrifying.

At one point, I was looking over the edge and there was nothing between us and the rocky ground 4,000 feet down.

I closed my eyes and started praying.

As bad as the road was going up the mountain, it was worse coming down.

Seeing signs about runaway ramps for 18-wheelers, warnings about a 6-percent grade the next five miles – which I found out means the road drops so much truckers have to worry about their brakes catching on fire – did not make the trip any easier.

When we finally returned to the somewhat flatter grounds of Phoenix, I relaxed a bit. Until we decided to take in some of the trails.

I went up the first one and my knees and nerves cooperated. But when we started up a pretty steep trail, I stopped half way and told my husband he could go on and I’d wait for him there.

I relaxed on a rock and took in the view. After about 15 minutes, two mountain bikers stopped in front of me.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” one asked me. I assured him I was.

“Well the rangers are down there watching you, and they asked us to stop and check on you,” the second one said.

I was mortified. Sure enough, there were two white trucks in the parking lot and a man with binoculars was looking my way.

I waved and signaled a thumbs up.

Another man came after the bikers left and asked if I was okay. He said the rangers were getting ready to come up there and take me down the mountain as I could be in distress.

There was no way I was going to face the humiliation of having two park rangers with rescue gear come up there and get my scared self off that trail.

I had to get down to the parking lot and tell them I was okay. However, that meant I had to walk the trail by myself.

The longer I sat there, the greater the chance those rangers would come after me and cart me down there like a bag of potatoes, so I started down the slippery gravel trail.

Luckily there were kind people along the way who let me hold on to their backpacks on the steep sections and the narrow parts with a steep drop off.

Once down, I thanked the rangers for their concern and for not making me feel like a big crybaby.

They assured me people get in trouble because of dehydration or the altitude, and they’re always on the lookout for folks needing a helping hand.

Rationalizations are so comforting.

For our next vacation, the sea-level beaches of Texas and the flatlands of Florida are looking pretty good.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.