The Road...

Title subject to change...often, once or not at all depending on my mood at any given time, which also changes frequently and without warning--and more so when I'm traveling.

Photo by Kent Goodman on Unsplash

We’ve been planning this trip for more than 6 years. We can’t decide on how long we’ve discussed it. But it’s been a long one. My wife Sue and I and my sister-in-law Laura, decided that when all three of us were something like retired, we would buy a travel van and begin taking trips, long and short, across the country and would eschew flying on such trips.

The travel van was a constant for most of these years in discussion and it was right up until this past winter when on a cold Monday morning that Sue had off from work, we three set out to go down to Olympia, WA about 20 miles from our home, and see a man about a van. We were getting close to the freeway on-ramp when Laurie (as we call her) pulled the plug. We’d looked at, analyzed and tested out travel vans. None of them were particularly comfortable and all of them had any number of bells and whistles none of which were important to us. We don’t camp. We don’t sleep in vehicles, nor do we use vehicle toilets if we can help it. And these seemed to be the selling points of travel vans.

So, plug pulled, we started looking into large SUV’s or the like and, long story short, Laurie, who was the primary funding source for this purchase, settled on a large and comfortable Nissan Armada. She found one, got a great deal, and bought it.

I’ll spare you any more details as I doubt I can make a story of those. All those years of planning have come down to this moment—me, in a darkened hotel room in Bozeman, Montana with Sue sleeping next to me. 700 miles today. Probably more than we should have. Tomorrow and Thursday, though, are similar. Just under 650 miles as we make our way to destination Louisville, KY. I’ll report as I’m able and maybe we’ll see and photograph cool stuff. Then again, maybe we won’t. Read along, won’t you? Let’s see where this takes us….