Home Again

We got home two days ago. It was a trip with difficulties and with generous portions of good luck.

We were gone 24 days, traveling over 6,500 miles through 24 states. We visited friends in Laramie, Wyoming and my brother in Chapel Hill, NC. But we weren’t able to finish the trip as we’d planned it. We both came down with COVID in Chapel Hill and stayed there 6 days until we felt well enough to travel again. By then we just wanted to come home, so we cancelled visits with family and friends in Maryland, Iowa, and Minnesota. And we cancelled our plans to drive up to Maine and back through southern Ontario.

We were fortunate to recover from COVID where we were. It was a nice hotel with comfortable rooms. We got the connecting room, too, so one of us could sleep while the other read. Food was readily available in wide variety and was easily accessible. Neither of us got terribly sick. If we were going to catch COVID, we were fortunate to do it there.

It rained 12 of the first 15 days of the trip, sometimes coming down so hard that we couldn’t see to continue driving. But on the way home, it didn’t rain at all except a few nights while we slept. We hit road construction and difficult traffic in various areas. On the way home, once west of the Mississippi River, we had no problems. We saw traffic backups on the opposing lanes, either from road construction or, once, from an overturned truck that blocked all lanes, its load scattered in the median. The only time there was a bad tie-up on our side, our navigation system had us get off onto a little-used, quiet side road that skirted around it. On our way home, we somehow avoided the worst of the weather – we could see on the maps that it was somewhere else or came the day after we drove through an area.

On the way home, we talked a lot about how much traveling we will be willing to do in the future, how far we might be willing to go, for how long. One of the issues with getting older is the continually increasing limitations. How much do we resist? How much do we accept?

But it was a good trip, in that we are refreshed. It got us out of our at-home routine. On the leg toward home, we also talked a lot about how we want to live our lives going forward. We may, of course, fall back into the same ruts routines, but at least we talked about living a little more differently.

And so we are back, making the bed, preparing meals, washing the dishes, going to the dentist and doctor and hairdresser, tending to all those things we avoided while on the road. I’m glad we got away for a little while, despite the difficulties. And it is good to be home.