Junior Taylor Cockrell and his father, Photojournalism teacher Jim Cockrell, will visit historical sites, battlefields, museums and monuments during their three-week motorcycle tour. They will travel from Arkansas to Pennsylvania on just their motorcycles, and plan to camp out in sleeping bags rather than rent hotel rooms.
Volleys of gunfire and cries of men fill the atmosphere of a warm summer day. Taylor and his father are not scared, however, because they witness only the reenactment of a battle that took place over 150 years ago.
“It’s kind of a trip of a lifetime,” Mr. Cockrell said. “We’ve been talking doing this for years.”
The pair has been plotting their course for over five weeks, and gathering information since last fall.
“I promised him [Taylor] at some point, before he graduates high school, I’d get him to the Gettysburg battlefield ,” Mr. Cockrell.
Taylor and his dad share both a passion for history and motorcycles.
“My dad’s a history nut. Being around him a lot, it rubs off on me. Same thing with motorcycles, I just kind of picked that up also,” Taylor Cockrell said.
Throughout their trip, Mr. Cockrell and his son will avoid highways and interstates, taking back-roads that, according to Cockrell, will offer a truer glimpse of America.
“I have no idea what we’re going to encounter on all these back-roads. That’s part of the fun of it, not really knowing,” Mr. Cockrell said. “We’ll have to figure out how to fend for ourselves, and survive by making decisions along the way.”
Neither Taylor nor his father have been on a motorcycle trip as long as this one. This summer, Taylor will go out-of-state on his motorcycle for the first time.
“A lot of times when you take long rides, it’s pretty exhausting,” he said. “I want to be able to see if I can do it.”
Taylor will have to sacrifice participating in summer football workouts and youth group activities for his trip.
“I’m interested in experiencing being where they fought the major Civil War battles,” he said. “I want to do it because I know it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
After Taylor leaves for college, he will be away from home and separated from his family.
“When you go off to college, everything changes,” Mr. Cockrell said. “He’s going to enter a new chapter of his life, and he won’t have time to do these kinds of things anymore.”
Mr. Cockrell contemplated the possibility of having a cross-country trip annually, if enough students volunteered to go with him.
“The adventure is what we want to experience,” he said. “I wouldn’t be jumping into this if I didn’t think it was going to be an absolute great time.”
