Why it’s called Maroon Astro

Growing up, we didn’t have money for vacations. The trips I remember are the five of us in a maroon Chevy Astro, on a drive from Maryland to North Carolina or Georgia that felt like it took forever, to see my grandparents. No flights. No passport until I was an adult.

Drawing of a maroon Chevy Astro van rolling in, parking and blinking its headlight.

Years later I took a sunset boat ride on the Saigon River, alone. They handed out gelato, and the city went gold, then orange, then dark.

I’m here. In Saigon. On a boat. Eating gelato. And nobody in my family has ever done this.

Maroon Astro is a travel magazine named for that van. Stories and photographs from places I’ve been, and picks that say how long I stayed and when I last checked. A weekend two hours from home counts as a trip here.

From the back seat to the window seat.

Who’s writing

I’m Ethan Ward. I write and photograph everything in Maroon Astro, and you can learn more about me at iamethanward.com.

In 2020, I was afraid I might die without ever seeing Paris. It was a place I’d kept saving for later, and suddenly I wasn’t sure how much later I had. Americans couldn’t fly into France then, so I flew to London, quarantined for two weeks, and stayed almost two months before taking the Eurostar to Paris. From there, I kept going: a month in Nîmes, a month in Montpellier, then Portugal and back to the UK. Nine months after leaving, I flew to Los Angeles to get my vaccine. I went for Paris and came back wanting a different life.

ETHAN WARD

Home again, I got a job at a radio station. Everyone told me I’d made it, that people work their whole lives for a job like that. I was happy at first. By Christmas I wanted a long vacation, and I dreaded going back in the new year. People had vouched for me, so I stayed the full year and resigned that July, right before my 40th birthday. I couldn’t turn 40 in a job I hated. My reporting led me to a second master’s degree, and in 2023 I moved to Dublin for it. I haven’t lived in the US since. Wherever I go, whether it’s for 2 weeks or a year, I live there.

James Baldwin moved to Paris in 1948 and wrote that living abroad showed him how American he was. From far away, I understand those drives in the van better. He also wrote about being the stranger in a Swiss village. I’m often the stranger too.

Other people’s trip photos can make your own life look small. A photo shows where someone stood. It doesn’t show how long they stayed, what it cost, or who paid. So every pick here says how long I was there, and every new story ends with what it cost.