One is not always the loneliest number.

The first trip I took alone was when I was 20 years old. I had traveled around the United States with my family growing up, taking various Griswoldian road trips each summer, some in a Ford station wagon (complete with wood paneling), some in a Plymouth Horizon (gas crisis of the late 1970s), and some in a Chevy Citation (no idea). We saw numerous places, historical sites, and natural wonders across many states, but I had never taken a trip anywhere by myself.

When I was 20, and just completing my second year of college and my first year at Colorado State, I decided I was ready for an adventure. So I took a summer job at a camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. I was going to be a lifeguard and serve as a counselor in a bunk. I didn’t ask any friends to go. I didn’t ask my boyfriend to go. I didn’t have a clue as to what to expect – and that’s why I went.

To get to the Poconos, I first took a flight to Newark. From there I had to take a bus into New York City to catch another bus at Port Authority Bus Terminal. Let me add that this was my first real trip and my packing skills were even worse back then. I was using what now seems to me a ridiculously ginormous piece of luggage with wheels, although not the well-placed efficient wheels of today’s luggage. Oh no, this was before the brilliant engineering of wheelies – the wheeled upright pullman if you will – with lightweight styling, expandable compartments, retractable handles with ergonomic grips, and spinner wheels. My wheeled suitcase was a big rectangle (though soft-sided, which was pretty hip) with wheels on the bottom that were spaced in such a way that made the suitcase anything but upright. The handle with which to pull the ginormous suitcase was merely a strap. To make matters even worse, the minute I stepped out of the Newark airport, tugging my heavy suitcase behind me, the strap broke. So no strap. Giant suitcase. Heavy as a Plymouth Horizon. Awesome.

I got to Port Authority and I must admit I was very intimidated. This was New York City. I was a walking stereotype of a midwest girl coming to the big(est) city. I couldn’t get my suitcase up the escalator, that’s how heavy it was. (Who knew shorts and bathing suits weighed so much?) I had to ask some guy working in the bus station to help me carry my luggage to my gate. I was so happy to get the help that I think I gave him like $20. Then I found out I had eight hours until my bus for the Poconos left. Eight hours! So I waited, not leaving my spot on the floor at the gate for the bus. What was I going to do, go walk around Manhattan with the grey, soft-sided refrigerator? There was no locker big enough in the station to stow the behemoth. Plus, quite frankly, I was too scared to go out into that city by myself. I had no idea where anything was. For all I knew, Port Authority was in the worst part of town, far away from anything interesting. I knew nothing because I was just supposed to catch a bus. That’s it.

Waiting for this bus was the first time I learned that there are always interesting people you can meet when you are traveling alone. Take the strange, loquacious man who waited for the bus with me for a while. He started talking to me and eventually got around to the “So, what’s your sign” question. He wasn’t hitting on me; I think this guy was genuinely into astrology because when I told him “Sagittarius” he exuberantly exclaimed, “Really? My brother is a Sagittarius!” I think he might have been a little drunk.

On the bus ride, I met another person, this time a young woman around my age. We talked the whole way and were luckily getting off at the same small town stop. Her boyfriend was waiting for her there at the bus station that was closed because it was past midnight. There wasn’t anyone around except a group of people that seemed quite loud and rowdy. I had to use a payphone to call the camp for someone to come get me, and when I was done, my new friend and her boyfriend were still there. They said they wouldn’t leave until my ride got there. I was so grateful! I never saw her again, but I was glad I met her on my first solo adventure.

Once I was at camp, I met counselors from all over the U.S. and the world. I was immersed into the world of sleep-away camp for Jewish kids. I had only known one Jewish family my entire life, and here I was singing “Shabbat Shalom” at Friday night service, eating bagels and lox on Saturdays (okay, I didn’t really eat either of those), learning about bar and bat mitvahs, and keeping kosher. And it was so exciting and interesting to learn this stuff. Hebrew was cool!

The Poconos were rainy and humid and our letters from home were always soggy and limp, like wet potato chips. We drove on curvy roads, bordered by impenetrable woods, into town on our nights off to eat pizza and drink at the local watering hole. We developed crushes on the male counselors and listened to taunting camp songs the kids sang (loudly) when they saw us talking to boys. We protested the firing of two counselors who had mistakenly taken a couple of campers outside without rain gear, and stood in the rain chanting and yelling for their reinstatement while the owners of the camp told us to stop or we’d “give Uncle Bill a heart attack” (they rehired the counselors; Uncle Bill, the camp patriarch, did not have a heart attack).

We went to Philadelphia and New York City on our weekends off, exploring, getting lost, and eating BLTs to rebel against camp’s lack of pork. We teased and disciplined and counseled and stuck gum on the “gum tree” by the girls’ swimming pool. We ate more candy than Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop combined, with no Willy Wonka to stop us. We laughed and sang and swam and ran and rode bikes and played sports and took field trips and learned all the little girls’ clapping games. We spent two months with these kids who were away from home the entire summer, and some of them didn’t handle it well at first. But we got to be close to them and with each other. We bawled our eyes out on the last day, when the kids left on buses or with their parents, and waved good-bye.

And I met Laurel from Parma, Ohio. I met Laurel the second day at camp, before the kids arrived. We talked and laughed until late that night, and the next day found out we were assigned to the same bunk. We screamed and jumped up and down like we had won the Showcase Showdown on the “Price is Right.” And that was it. A friendship began – and so it continues. Laurel is still one of my very best friends. We have kept in touch all this time. We talk almost every week.

If I had gone to camp with one of my friends from home, or if Laurel had, I cannot imagine we would’ve become such good friends. When you travel with someone else, you usually rely on that other person for most everything. When you go alone, you have to reach out if you don’t want to stay alone. Everyone at camp was in the same boat, alone and in a new, strange place. It’s often like that when I am traveling and meet other travelers: we’re all in the same boat. There are so many exciting, new things to see and do and you just naturally connect with the new people you are sharing it with. That was the most important thing I learned on that first adventure back when I was 20: if you go it alone, you could meet someone you’ll never forget.

One adventure leads to another ... Here Laurel (right) and I (left) are resting with her cousin Kelly (middle) during a fun day at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio, the roller coaster capital of the world! We sounded like our 10-year-old campers when we went through the haunted house, screaming until we were hoarse (it was scary!). This photo was taken 19 years after our camp adventure in the Poconos.