Jim and April's Roadtrips

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.

I’m not sure why some people get so caught up in the re-enactment lifestyle.  I mean, I like historical books and movies, but I can’t picture spending my summers traipsing from one primitive campground to another.  Washing out of a bucket and using porta-johns.

I used to go camping when my kids were small and I enjoyed it, but we went to campgrounds with shower facilities and we usually took a butane stove with us to do our cooking.  Plus it was only for a weekend here and there, but I guess there are some people on the Battleground circuit who only go once or twice a season.  But, it seems like an awfully expensive hobby if that’s the most you intend to practice it.

As I wandered the camping area on Saturday, many people were more intent on napping than anything else.  The heat had taught them the “siesta” mode of operation.  I noticed that some campers were more intent on staying true to the era than others.  There were quite a few cleverly concealed ice chests scattered around and several of the “beds” looked more like air mattresses with quilts over them than feather beds.  Most tent flaps were shut and I speculate that it was mostly to conceal modern conveniences. …

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The last thing I remember, I was checking email. I opened my Writer’s Market newsletter. They had a link to regional magazines and I went to the site to check some of them out. I was pleased with the list and started a new section in my One Note to hold the information of the most interesting ones.

Somehow, something, led me from there to the Roadtrips we have planned for the summer and fall. Somehow I began looking at our September trip. I think I was checking dates. Something to do with a writing workshop in September. I went to the Combat Camera site and got lost in the forests of Vacationland.

I became engrossed with things to do in Charleston. I did resist the impulse to actually buy Charleston city bus passes, but I’ve got a new folder in my bookmarks with the page for doing it and links to likely hotels along the proposed route from there to Washington and back home. Plus several points of interest in Charleston. I made a folder on my desktop as well, with bus schedules and a trolley route map. I do love planning Roadtrips.

As I moved on to Mapquest and laying out the route, they’ve added some cool new features to their website. I had to set up a new profile, then I got sidetracked again when I realized the map I had saved there for the July trip to Montana wasn’t right. I deleted the whole thing and re-entered it. Then went to our Roadtrip website to embed the new one and hit a computer glitch.

The map is there on Mapquest in all its glory. They give me the code to put on the page, just a simple copy paste. I did it exactly like always, and got a blank page. In the editor, it shows the code, but the page doesn’t display the map. I wrestled with it for more than an hour and finally gave up when I looked at the clock and realized I’d thrown away a whole day without accomplishing anything on my goals list.

Now, I must get back to work because tomorrow will not be my usual Saturday catch up day. Tomorrow’s event was supposed to be my post for today.  I guess it will be next week instead.  We have plans for a photo club outing. We’re off to the the civil war “Battle of Sacramento” re-enactment. Lots of photo ops and a mini-roadtrip. Yay!  See some examples from our 2007 expedition below.  Re-enactors  love having their photo taken.  Come join us. Two days of fun, this Saturday and Sunday.