Getting Away

By the time you read this we will be on the road. A vacation getaway. Something we haven’t done for quite a few years. Health and finances limited us. Still do. But the lure of the open road has caused us to save a few pennies to buy gas for our hybrid car and plan an escape for a few days.

Bottom line: this blog may be on and off a bit for the next week!

Oh, I’ll put up this blog and arrange to post the ‘Thought for the Day’ item for tomorrow. But come Monday there may or may not be a blog posting. We shall see. I’ll take the laptop with me and if we get a wi fi signal I’ll post something about the trip. How’s that?

Lately I’ve scanned the internet articles on “The 10 Road Trips That Are A Must in America”, the “Top 10 Natural Wonders To Visit”, and “Out of the way places you should visit before you die”. There are still articles on “seeing America on $10 a day”. Really?  I sincerely doubt it. I can’t live at home on $10 a day!

There are several places I want to revisit before I kick the bucket. There are several places I have yet to see for the first time. I’d like to check them off my bucket list, too.

Mostly, though, all I want is the freedom to drive down the road at a reasonable pace, smell the fresh air, smell the aromas of regional flora, and experience what life is like in this place and that. Nowhere specific. No need to be specific at all. Just be somewhere other than home and drink in what it is like there.

That is the essence of travel to me. Seeing a mountain, a lake, or a national monument if dandy, but not the end-all of the trip. I’d like to see the “Going to the Sun Road” in Glacier National Park, Montana. That’s a special place I’ve read about and seen in documentaries, but never visited. It sounds terrific. But it is 1500 miles from Chicago and that means about 3500 miles round trip. That’s a lot of road meals and motel stops. And all of that costs too much for us to digest at this point of our lives. But just imagine being on that road! High up in the Rockies, aiming for the sun and the Canadian border. Snow capped peaks in the distance, maybe close by, too! Fresh air, pines and thin-air scrub. The smells beckon, don’t they. Can’t you just feel the dry air, cool but stingy from the sun?

Well, let’s come back to earth.

Coming home from supper last night with a family member, we drove through a horrendous rainstorm complete with competing tornado sirens from several communities. The din was terrific. We thought the tornado was on top of us and expected trees to topple over the road and a giant scoop of air to pull us skyward! Puddles were small lakes and we created wakes for 10 miles until we found safety in our concrete bunker apartment building! In the garage we found people sitting on lawn chairs waiting for the storm to pass! They thought for sure the storm was about to get us.

Well it didn’t. It passed over us dropping 3 inches or more of rain on its route. But we were chastened and reminded that there’s plenty to see, hear, feel and smell right here at home.

Well, we shall see from our own road trip anyway. I’ll keep you posted on what we see, hear,…..

August 21, 2015