A few weeks ago Jim and I made a quick trip to Charlotte, NC to visit my daughter Jamie, to see her brand new house, and to meet my fifteenth great-grandchild, Sophia Madeline Stinson. This beautiful little girl was born on December 31st, just in time to be claimed on her parents 2018 income taxes. I wanted to go see her immediately, but Jim and I both were fighting an upper respiratory infection and didn’t want to endanger her with our hacking coughs which took several weeks to subside.

Although this used to be a trip we made several times a year, we hadn’t been to Charlotte for quite a while. These days, any out of town trip that can’t start after 5pm on Friday and end by a reasonable bedtime Saturday night requires a shuffling of schedules and duties. We are committed to providing shuttle service for five of our “littles” for school and afternoon activities during the week.

I take one or the other of the two youngest to preschool in the morning, Jim picks them up afterwards and takes them home. We alternate picking their older brother up from first grade at one school and two of their cousins from a different school. In addition, three of them have karate classes on Monday and Friday, two of them have ballet on Thursday, and the four oldest ones have choir practice at the church on Wednesdays.

On Sunday, we take six of them to church and also have responsibilities to fulfill there. We are both deacons and Jim is the videographer while I have other intermittent duties. Saturday is the only day we have free and, even then, we need to be home by 9pm or so because two of those littles usually spend the night to make Sunday mornings a little easier. This is our current retirement schedule and it limits our ability to travel most of the time.

The karate studio that the three oldest ones attend provides an afterschool program as well as martial arts training. They have a van that shuttles to most of the schools in the area and brings the afterschool kids to the dojo. We arranged for our three to ride the van to class on Friday and their parents to pick them up when they were finished so that we could get started in the morning. Tracy, the mother of our preschoolers, volunteered to take her daughter, Journey, to school so that we could leave earlier.

Due to a lack of advance preparation, we didn’t make our planned 8am deadline. We finally got on the road around 10am. Jim prefers to do all the driving so I spent the trip reading, dozing, and occasionally playing navigator. When I’ve made this drive alone in the past, I filled up before leaving town, stocked up on snacks and a cooler of drinks, then drove straight through to Knoxville. I stop there for gas and a meal from someone’s drive thru. Then go straight through to Charlotte. As long as traffic kept moving, my normal routine was to leave town around 8am and arrive in Charlotte by 6pm (5pm our time).

That’s not Jim’s way. He waited to get gas at a truck stop on the way to Nashville where gas is a few cents cheaper. Then, since we got a late start, we stopped to eat just on the other side of Nashville. Jim usually doesn’t care to eat while driving, so we went in at an iHop. Jim doesn’t usually carry a cooler, so we stopped every few hours for drinks and snacks. Since we were running so late, we stopped to eat again at a Cracker Barrel near Asheville around 6pm. We finally arrived at our destination around 9pm. We all have preferences for traveling. Sometimes, it’s about arriving as soon as possible. Other times it’s about the trip itself. Normally, when we travel together, it’s mostly about the trip.

We always have a destination and a schedule, but it’s usually more relaxed and allows for stops or side trips. When I travel alone, it’s mostly about the destination. At least, we made it into the Smokies before dark which is always my goal because I love the mountains. We always take I40 from Nashville to I 77 in Statesville, NC. I love the stretch of road between Knoxville and Asheville. it’s like the earth rises up to wrap its arms around you and welcome you home. If we had more time, we would have stopped along the way to take photos. I took my camera with that in mind but, since we were running late, it stayed in the bag.

I’ve done turn around trips before when my grandchildren were younger and I’d go pick them up to come home with me for summer vacations.  Drive for 8 hours, spend the night or may two, then drive home.  I’ve done it alone, and with others.  This was the first one in a long time.  It felt rushed and didn’t allow us to spend the time we’d have liked to with them.  I’d much rather have spent several days.  But my current “job”, while I love it, doesn’t have much room for extended vacations.