And, they’re off!
Linda and I, along with our friends, Denny and Joanie, will say a little prayer then all climb aboard the big red Lincoln and head for a two week journey to the deep South; Charleston, South Carolina to be exact..with a stop for a long weekend at my brother’s house by the lake near Seneca, South Carolina.
In researching this trip, I can see why people are always confusing South and North Dakota because I’ve been doing it constantly with the two Carolinas. Okay,quick,off the top of your head, in which Carolina is Charlotte located? How about Raleigh? How about Mayberry?
The four of us have been planning this for several years, but got together again on Sunday just to go over any last minute changes in the route we’re going to take and what attractions we plan to visit.
Instead, though, Denny and I wound up spending most of the afternoon trying to program the new Tom Tom GPS gadget that our Arizona and California kids sent me for Father’s Day. We’re going to keep the Atlas handy just in case.
The four of us have traveled together lots of times but this will the longest trip: two weeks and over four thousand miles in close confinement. We’ve been giving each other occasional pep talks about our determination to be as good a friends after the trip as we are prior to departure.
For inspiration, I think back to the many vacations by car my mom and dad took with their good friends, Lawrence and Ethel Borsvold. We have hours of home movies from those adventures but the one that stands out is their long trek that took them to Mexico, California and Washington state in one fell swoop. They were gone so long that my brothers and I each grew a couple inches before they got home.
The movies show them crossing the borders of Texas and Mexico in late June with temperatures well into the 90’s traveling in the Folk’s 1953 Mercury without air conditioning. Dad and Lawrence, riding together up front, of course, in their long sleeve shirts, Mom and Ethel in the back seat wearing nice Sunday dresses and nylons.
I don’t know how many miles they racked up and how many flea bag motels they stayed in but when they finally got home, they were still as close as ever (Dad and Lawrence called each other Senor for the rest of their lives) and anxious to get the films developed so they could relive the experience all over again and again.
So, off we go in air conditioned comfort hoping big red (my car) holds together, all the places we stay have comfortable beds, flat screen TVs and coffee in the room.
I won’t be taking any home movies..but I do have a digital camera and a blog..so I’ll let you know where we are and how we’re doing from time to time…unless we’re having a spat over where to stop, what to eat, temperature in the car, music on the radio…..etc etc etc.
I wonder if Denny and I will be calling each other Bubba when it’s over.
