Jim and April's Roadtrips

I’ve checked in on Facebook from several Nowhere, (insert state name) places along the road this week.  Now it’s time to post photos of the places in between.  This is the first full day I’ve had for working on pictures.  I’m kind of frustrated because I’m having to learn to use a new software program while working in a strange environment.  We recently installed Lightroom on the laptop.  I’ve never used Lightroom at all and I don’t enjoy working on the laptop.  I’m longing for my desktop with the two nice 23 inch monitors and the wireless keyboard.

As a kind of fix for the laptop problem (my biggest complaint is the smallness of the screen, I’ve taken over Brad’s (my grandson) game console television in his “man cave.”  He had a cable to hook it up to my laptop so I’m using it like a monitor.  I am sitting in his “game playing” recliner with the keyboard on my lap and my writing pad on the right arm to serve as a mouse pad.  I might eventually get used to it but, at the moment, I’m staving off Alzheimer’s by learning to live outside my comfort zone.

Our trip went smoothly, but the schedule was more strenuous than anticipated.  We got started later than we planned which put us into our first night’s hotel after 10pm.  That meant we were late getting on the road the next morning which put us into our second night’s hotel the same way.  We elected not to sight-see in Casper, but we stopped along the way and still wound up not getting here until….wait for it….AFTER 10PM.

The road between here and home has lots of long empty stretches.  The last day, we told the GPS to use the “fastest route” instead of “most freeways.”   Unfortunately, we lost this round of the GPS game.  It might have been faster, but it sure didn’t seem like it.

I was pleased with it’s choice, at first, since it followed the roads I had chosen on Google.  I thought it would be nice to get away from the tourist trap places and see some local sites, plus it was a more direct route that the interstate.  That was before we hit the Road Construction. I’m not talking about squeezing everyone from two or three lanes into one that used to be the shoulder of the highway.  We handled that coming across Missouri and Nebraska.  It was frustrating, but doable.  This was a two lane blacktop road reduced to very rough gravel.  Then, after going thirty miles an hour for miles on end, there was a stop light with a sign saying “Wait for lead car.”  After sitting there, fourth in a line that was growing behind us like a snake, for an endless 15 minutes or so, the “lead car” came churning along through the dust with one truck behind it.  He did a U turn and we all followed him through the actual construction site.

On the other side of what seemed to be about a five mile stretch, the two lanes of gravel resumed.  Over the next several hours, we passed through small wide places in the road that had been named as though they were towns, but apparently had no need for gas.  There was a bar and grill at each one with a full parking lot.  Some of them also had schools and post offices, but it seemed they didn’t feel the need for a place to buy gasoline.  We started to really worry when we saw a sign that said “Road Closed Ahead.”  Luckily it ended at an intersection with the road where we were supposed to turn next.

There was a gas station there, attached to a Casino, in the middle of Nowhere.  This, my friends, is not Kentucky.  The new road, while still only two lanes, was paved.  As we started out, they threatened us with construction ahead again, but we didn’t see any.  Maybe they are just warning the locals.  Along here, we came across a cool windmill farm.  We had been wondering all across Nebraska and Wyoming why we hadn’t run across one.  The wide open spaces seemed like a perfect place to put them.  Maybe they were away from the highway, like this one.

Even though I had extended the Nowhere joke across the mostly empty countryside, it was beautiful and the cities where we spent the night were active and well maintained.  If they had areas of decline and boarded up structures, they weren’t visible from the roads we were on or the hotels where we stayed.

In fact, the main reason we got such a late start from Lincoln, Nebraska was their gorgeous public garden areas near their zoo.  While we love zoos, we decided we would not take the time.  We were just going to stroll through the attached rose garden to photograph the huge fountain on the other side, then check out the Sunken Garden across the street.  We expected to spend an hour at most.  Let’s just say we lost track of time.

Some trips need no more planning than putting gas in the car and choosing when to leave.  Others require coordination with other people and decisions about whose car to take, what route is best, where to eat along the way, and when to return.

Sometimes I take long (more than 250 miles each way) trips alone.  It’s nearly a four hour drive from my home to Richmond Ky, where I go about once a month or so to visit my granddaughter.  I usually go and come back the same day, which makes for about eight hours of driving. It’s a long day, but doable, just gas and go.  I don’t even need to pack a bag.

Less often, I go to Charlotte, NC to visit my daughter, Jamie and her family.  That’s eight hours each way.  I usually go alone and plan to stay over at least a couple of days.  Still, it requires only gas in the car, packing a bag, and choosing when to leave.  The route is always the same when I go alone. Straight along I-40 to I-77 into Charlotte. I’ve been that way so often over the years, it’s almost automatic.  Kind of like a regular commute that requires no thought, just attention to the traffic.

Planning is a little more complicated when others are involved in the trip, but not significantly so.  When one of my brothers joins me on the trip to Charlotte, we usually take their vehicle. Mine is small and they prefer more room.  They like to stop more frequently, like every couple of hours.  When alone, my only stop is between Knoxville and Ashville.  I feed myself and the car, then get back on the road.  Of course, when I pick my grandchildren up in Charlotte and bring them home with me, I stop more frequently on the way back.

These kinds of trips can be spur of the moment.  They aren’t usually, but it is possible and have been occasionally.  I can pack, including a cooler for drinks and fruit, in about 30 minutes.  The stop for gas on the way out of town takes about five more and I’m on my way. These trips are routine.  Sometimes enjoyable, but not really vacations.  Just visiting family, sort of like a long weekend at most.

The fun trips (days of driving, photo ops, hotel reservations, and at least two people), the ones that take me to new places or revisit old favorites, require more thought.  For these, I plan weeks, sometimes even months ahead.  I research points of interest along the way, look for interesting restaurants to eat lunch between overnight stops, pick places to spend the nights, and calculate driving times to allow for photo shoots.

Some people think I over-plan.  They claim to prefer the spur of the moment method, saying that the spontaneity is half the adventure.  I’ve suffered spontaneity.  I’ve spent hours searching for a hotel when there’s a big event going on that I didn’t know about ahead of time.  I’ve wound up eating fast food for days because I don’t know where else to go.  I’ve missed interesting photo opportunities because I didn’t know about them until I saw the sign on the interstate and I got there five minutes after they closed the gate.

Spontaneity is over-rated.  In small doses, it can be fun.  If it goes wrong it can be overcome.  It isn’t usually dangerous, but it can get uncomfortable very quickly.  There’s a reason the old Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times,” is considered a curse. I prefer planning.  It doesn’t eliminate adventure, it keeps it under control.  I want reservations, neat local restaurants, picturesque locations while the light is just right, predictable driving times, and relaxed evenings. Vacations should be about relieving stress, not creating it.  Besides, planning the trip is half the fun.  It builds the anticipation and allows for dreaming along the way.

Last weekend we took a road trip to just outside Louisville for a family reunion. The gathering was rather small, only nine of us, but we had a good time despite a lot of technical glitches where things kept trying to derail our event. Forgetting an adapter for hooking up the computer monitor, the wireless USB adapter for the computer didn’t have the driver installed and the disk was at home of course, but the biggest was that the hotel said we never confirmed the reservation for the meeting room and they had already given it out to someone else! Of course they told me this Saturday afternoon (we arrived on Friday) and so scrambling around to all the hotels around use we found not a single meeting room available for the next day.

When the assistant manager came to work on Sunday morning we finally worked it out where we could use their breakfast area  off the lobby for our gathering and of course we couldn’t use their projector because it was locked up in the manager’s office and he was out of the state and didn’t trust any of his staff to have a key I guess. We scrambled around again and finally found a large screen TV that had a VGA connection and hooked the computer up to that to show the video I prepared for the reunion. Despite all the problems we did have a great time and learned a bit more about the history of my dad’s side of the family.

One of the most interesting thing I learned was that the tommyhawk, used during frontier times and made from iron or steel, was invented by one of my ancestors, Thomas was his first name and the first part comes from it “Tommy” and the second part from the Indians because it flew like a Hawk. My cousin Rosasharon Harper, who has been doing a lot of research on the family discovered that in some of her research.

We picked the location of the reunion so people that wanted to could visit the Kentucky Renaissance Fair in Eminece, Ky during the weekend and we all enjoyed it a lot. I’ve posted a gallery below of some of the images I shot during the weekend for your viewing pleasure.

All things considered the trip turned out really well and a great time was had by all those who made it. We’ve already started planning next year’s reunion.