Traveler's wanderlust takes her to far-flung places

Whitefish resident K.C. Voermans said growing up in a military family often on the move might have spurred her love of travel and adventure and her desire to experience the world's different cultures and landscapes.

But her day job probably hasn't hurt, either.

A 27-year employee of Flathead Valley Community College, Voermans has worked in the Continuing Education Center and as director of the college's Road Scholar program, formerly the Elderhostel program.

The international nonprofit conducts educational tours around the world.

And as part of that job, Voermans has helped traveling seniors explore this corner of the world.

"I got to show off Northwest Montana and Glacier National Park to people from all over the country ... I got paid to play in Glacier for 27 years," she said.

Voermans' adventures go back farther than that.

While in college in Salt Lake City she ventured out to lead backpacking trips on the Appalachian Trail.

She's canoed, hiked, skied and backpacked in about 30 national parks and wilderness areas in the U.S. and Canada. She's biked on Washington's San Juan Islands and backpacked in the Bob Marshall Wilderness with her friends in Whitefish.

Born in Oakland and a former resident of Monterey, she's also biked along the Pacific Coast Highway in California.

She took the train from Whitefish to San Francisco in 1986 and rode her bike south to Santa Cruz - fighting heavy traffic, a pulled back muscle and a hard, cold rain to start the trip.

Voermans moved to the Flathead Valley from Missoula in 1980. She said she was drawn by the prospect of a job and a chance to be closer to Glacier National Park, an outdoor attraction she was already quite familiar with by that time.

VOERMANS' JOB and her involvement with the Elderhostel and Road Scholar programs helped spur some of her first international travels in the mid-1990s.

"I kind of did the opposite of most of my friends who grew up in the '60s and '70s. I got married young and had my child young. When she went off to college, that's when I really started traveling," she said.

Familiar with the Elderhostel program, and having talked to many other people about some of its best trips around the world, Voermans volunteered to work for a program in the Bahamas. A lover of snorkeling and of water in general, Voermans got the volunteer spot for two winters in a row.

"We were on San Salvador, the island that Columbus bumped into first," she said. "Every morning we would go diving and come back and have lunch and then go back out and snorkel and dive with the group in the afternoons."

A few years later, Voermans made a solo trip to Fiji and New Zealand.

She spent two weeks living in a grass hut on a remote island in Fiji, diving and snorkeling and eating ocean catches with the natives.

She spent another six weeks exploring the South Island of New Zealand, which looked "a lot like Montana did 50 years ago except with oceans."

Voermans later traveled to the Sea of Cortez with Bobbie Gilmore, who owned Glacier Sea Kayaking, and about 10 other Flathead Valley residents.

After a couple days on donkeys - don't ask about that, Voermans said - the group spent a week kayaking Magdalena Bay with the whales and dolphins and pelicans. "I wanted to see and hear a whale. I'd never seen a whale before," she said.

Voermans also traveled to Costa Rica with her neighbor in Whitefish, "a good friend and a travel agent."

The two spent their time birding, snorkeling and trying to see as much of the country as possible in eight days. Voermans still remembers seeing flocks of parrots for the first time. "These beautiful, colorful birds flying through the air was like magic," she said.

The owner of Montana Coffee Traders put the two travelers in touch with a coffee plantation owner in Monteverde who sells the company beans. They got a personal tour of the Cloud Forest farm up on the continental divide of Central America.

"He had us come over and have dinner at his house with his wife and his little kids, so we got to see where it all starts and how it all ends up here," Voermans said.

A YEAR AGO on Saturday, Voermans left for her latest international trip to South Africa.

"I have two cats at home and wanted to see the big cats," she said.

Voermans saw lions and cheetahs in Kruger National Park, as well as giraffes, rhinoceros, elephants and hippopotamus. The first time she saw a giraffe it reminded her of a scene in the movie Jurassic Park, when visitors to a remote island first see the dinosaurs.

"We looked across this little valley and there are these two little heads over the trees. The whole van was just in awe. Nobody could say anything," Voermans recalled. "Every time we saw a new animal for the first time it was like that ... The first time we saw an elephant it looked as big as a house. It was amazing."

Voermans spent about a week out in the bush and another week visiting an ostrich farm, the beautiful beaches of the Indian Ocean, the giant cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town and the penguins that live at the tip of South Africa, well-known for their distinctive, jackass-like braying.

WITH RETIREMENT on the horizon, Voermans is planning a trip to Alaska. But first, on Saturday she hopped back on the train and headed out to Port Townsend, Wash.

"It must be a special day for my sense of adventure," she said of the one-year anniversary of her safari departure.

Voermans is going to spend a week building herself a wooden sea kayak. "I've been looking at it for two years, but things just haven't come together. All of a sudden they came together for [this] week," she said.

Since she lives just a few blocks from City Beach, the 14-foot kayak should come in handy both locally and in her future travels.

"It's a water thing for me," said Voermans, a former canoe instructor. "I've done everything from day-trips to month-long trips. I've paddled a lot of water."

Voermans said she thinks its important to try to get out and see the world and its many different people, places and things. That's especially true for young people, she said.

"Some kids in this valley never get out, they've never even been to Glacier," she said. "It's a big world out there."

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.