Go!

We're off!!

Get Set

So close, so close and yet so far...

The lyrics to Frankie Valli's My Eyes Adored You have been drifting through my head all day.  The trip is soooo close.  I can feel myself settling down in the passenger seat, pulling out of the driveway.

But not just yet.

We leave tomorrow afternoon.  The car is clean. (Thanks to Ron. You're the best!) Snacks are packed. The cooler has been muscled from the storage room.  The mail has been stopped.  Pet instructions have been given.  The remnants of food in our refrigerator are being eaten.  (Last night we had leftover baked potatoes shredded into hash browns with eggs.)  The to-do list is basically done.

But there is still another night to go.  And tomorrow during the day.  It's excruciating, the waiting.  I don't want to start any new projects (although there is plenty to do around here).  I was thinking about taking the boys to our local beach, but I also don't want to have to deal with sandy feet when the car is oh-so-clean.

Tomorrow will be all about last-minute details.   The boys desperately need haircuts.  Clean out the litter boxes and the rabbit hutch one last time.   Pack the car.  Don't forget toothbrushes!

I wish we could just get up and leave tomorrow morning, but Ron's working. (The poor guy!)  We decided rather than to wait until Saturday, we'd head out Friday and get a couple hours head start.  It's a good plan, but, oh, the waiting!

Now I've got Tom Petty stuck in my head.

The waaaaaiting is the hardest parrrrt...

Get Ready

For me, the fun of travel is in the planning. And boy, do I plan.  Just ask my husband, Ron.  He has witnessed my tunnel vision as I research a destination from every conceivable angle.

He has put up with the piles of travel books I take to bed with me to read.  The hours of Google searches.  Visiting travel blogs. Lurking message boards.  Not to mention the research that goes into finding the absolute best travel deals out there.  (I am a librarian, after all!)

This may sound as if we are a jet-setting kind of family.  Believe me, we're not.  In fact, we've only been on two big trips in the past eight years or so.  One to Disney and one to the Caribbean on a Disney Cruise.  But I milk these opportunities for all they're worth.  Have you seen what one of those Disney Cruises costs?  Yeesh! I was determined to get every last drop of enjoyment out of the whole experience even before we set sail.

This cross-country trip has been more than six months in the making.  On January 1, I called Yellowstone to make the arrangements to stay in the park.  Since then, there were so many details to be figured out.  What route should we take?   How long would we drive each day?  What stops should we make along the way?  Should we make hotel reservations in advance for our nights en route.  (We did.)

So I've had a half-year of anticipation building for this trip, my serotonin levels getting a boost every time I look at a Google map or make a hotel reservation.  (There is a study about how vacationers feel happier planning a trip than the actual traveling.  You can read a New York Times article about it here.)

 Ron has put me on notice - this will be it for a while.   We've got a home to take care of.  Repairs that have been put off to fund this trip.   Clapboards to replace and paint, a driveway to resurface, and numerous water leaks to fix.

And while we're doing all that, I'll be secretly planning for the next adventure.

Why roadtrip?

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” 
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I can't tell you how many times I heard, "Oh, did you fly out there?" when I told people we visited Yellowstone.  Frankly, it never even occurred to me to fly.  The park is ginormous and in the middle of nowhere.  At some point you have to drive because the closest airport is an hour away and the only way around the park is by car (or tour bus, which we'll get to another day).

While flying was certainly an option, it doesn't have the allure of the road.  We would have missed something if we had just hopped on a plane in Boston then landed in Cody or Jackson.  By air, it's hard to fathom how large our country is.  Living in New Hampshire where we can be at the ocean in less than sixty minutes, to Boston in an hour, or the mountains in two, taking the better part of the day to drive across a single state is pretty wild.

On the road, you catch the nuances and eccentricities of each state, such as:


The tiny white churches which pop out of green expanses of prairie in the Great Plains.

Wall Drug signs on I-90 in South Dakota.  We counted 49.

And who doesn't dream of driving through the valley of the Jolly Green Giant?

We wanted the boys to experience some of the places they have learned about in school.  As we all know, it's one thing to read about how huge the Great Lakes are in a text book.  It's entirely another to actually dip your toes in.

I intended to write this blog while traveling, hunkering down with my laptop in the hotel room each night to recap each days events.  Since that didn't happen, what you're getting is part travelogue, part memoir, and part how-to, written while sitting at my kitchen island or maybe at the dining room table, wherever I can get a few minutes of quiet in our house during the remaining summer break.

Enjoy the ride.