Bus trips take woman from Pacific to Atlantic
By Joann Groff joann@theacorn.com

COAST-TO-COAST- Simi resident Fern Darling, 82, poses with her Simi Valley Acorn outside Royalston, Mass., and, below, overlooking San Francisco Bay during excursions this past year.

Fern Darling, a Simi Valley resident of more than 45 years, began traveling later in life, after raising her five children.

In the last six months alone, Darling has cruised through the passages of Alaska, taken a bus tour of San Francisco and admired the color-changing leaves on the East Coast. And at 82, she's showing no signs of slowing down.

Darling grew up in Massachusetts, where much of her family still lives. She moved to Southern California in the early '50s. Darling and her late husband raised four boys and a girl in Simi Valley. With a big family to look after, travel wasn't a luxury the Darlings could afford.

"When my husband passed away, I tried to fill those empty spots in my life," Darling said. "I did the things we couldn't afford to do. It's my turn now, more or less."

Most of her trips are organized through the Simi Valley Senior Center or another Simi senior group put together by Arle and Madalyn Alsky that boasts of more than 300 members.

The group meets twice a month and serves as a time to talk about other members' health status and other needs, as well as an opportunity to collect canned goods for a food drive or money for those in need. And there are always a few games of bingo on the program.

"I came into it in 1991," Madalyn Alsky said of the group. "We go to our meetings and find out what they like to do and where they like to go. Now we've got them going all over the place."

A couple of months after cruising through Alaska, Darling packed up for a September bus tour up the state of California with the Simi Valley Senior Center group.

"I'd never been to San Francisco to visit, just flying into the airport," Darling said. "To do it this way, on a bus, we saw everything. She took us through Chinatown, and we saw Carmel and Big Sur and Sausalito."

Darling took her Simi Valley Acorn with her on the journey, and said that bringing the newspaper along helped in searching out interesting places to be photographed.

"I took the Acorn with me wherever I went," Darling said. "It really was an incentive for us to find interesting pictures to take. We went to Alcatraz, to the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge. It was great."

After the fourday jaunt, Darling said she was home long enough to "unpack and repack" before heading back East for a family visit. First on the agenda was some "leaf teeping" with her niece Cora.

"Leaf teeping is an Eastern saying for watching or seeing the leaves changing colors in the fall," Darling said. "We went to a lot of places, small towns and back roads in the woods. For me it was a treat. I hadn't seen it for some time. The leaves are such vivid colors and they are like snowflakes, none of the leaves are the same."

Darling then traveled by train with a sister to New Jersey to attend the wedding of a great niece. The best part of the trip was seeing her family, Darling said, who has three of four siblings living in Massachusetts.

"My favorite part is going home, seeing family," Darling said. "Usually I try to make it out once a year. I know the way, so they expect me to make it up there.

"That's how it goes I guess," Darling said with a laugh.

Darling has a sister who is 93 and a brother who is 91. She and the rest of her siblings are in their 80s.

"My older brother says the secret to longevity is easy," Darling said. "Keep breathing."

Darling's children are now grown and scattered all over the country, mostly in the food business. Her eldest son owns a restaurant in New Orleans and another works for The Hershey Company in Pennsylvania.

"They are all gourmet chefs," Darling said. "My daughter is the only one who doesn't like to cook, but she's good too. . . . When they come here, they take over the kitchen. It's a lot of fun."

Next up Darling will join her senior group in a day trip to a casino in the Palm Springs area. But she'll skip the road trip to Mexico in December to prepare for holiday guests.

"There's a trip to Baja, but I won't go on that," Darling said. "I've been west to east, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic in the matter of weeks. I'm playing it cool for a little bit."

For more information about the senior travel group, call the Alsky's at (805) 526-9643. Meetings are the first and third Fridays of the month at Rancho Santa Susanna Community Park, 5005 Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley.

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