The Day Before the Day Before
I have always been an impatient person. If I am supposed to be somewhere at nine o’clock, I am generally there by 8:45 at the latest. I always prefer a morning flight to an afternoon flight because I would rather relax after arriving someplace than try to relax before heading out. While I generally think that promptness and timeliness is a virtue, I will admit that I take it to an extreme and have been called out on it (usually jokingly) more than once. While sitting on my hilltop last month, waiting to depart on this trip East, I wrote of my waiting around fully prepared to leave on the day before we were to depart. I can now say that the only thing worse is sitting here the day before the penultimate day, once again waiting to depart on Sunday morning. There is nothing wrong with preparedness and I am nothing if not a good planner. I have taken care of everything I needed to take care of and that I promised myself would get done while I was to be here in Ithaca. The problem is that we use our car to traipse around with the kids (our car comfortably seats six and its easier than taking two vehicles. We have automatic fold-down seats in the second and third row and I need all three rows to transport the kids and yet I need at least the third row down in order to properly pack the back of the car. Kim and I have calculated exactly what we believe will fit in the car with the back seats up (that is the only way to insure that we have all the front leg room we want for the trip). We are comfortable that it will all fit with little room to spare, but we cannot fit the puzzle pieces together until we are ready to block those back row seats. That means we have done what we can do at the moment and can only start packing the car properly tomorrow. I do not want to leave that for Sunday morning since I don’t like the potential for last minute angst if things don’t fit as I expect.
This all leaves me on a sunny Friday morning in Ithaca sort of all dressed up with nowhere to go. The only things I have on my schedule for the day are to go watch Evelyn play soccer on the last day of her soccer camp and to go to dinner at Gola Osteria down in Six Mile Creek Gorge. The rest of the day is left for reading, writing and swimming. Since the day should get into the low 80s, the afternoon will likely be comprised of the latter activity. Relaxing is an acquired art. It’s important to know how to relax. I tend to relax best by writing something on my iPad like I am doing now. If not that, then perhaps watching a movie on the iPad. As much as I like audiobooks while I drive, I have never had the patience needed to just sit and relax while listening. It is perhaps something I need to learn how to do.
I know that tomorrow will be a busy day of properly preparing for departure. I will wash and fill the tank of the car. I will carefully pack everything I have set aside in the garage, being sure to leave the best access to those things that I will need to possibly reach somewhere along the way. This trip home will take us along the northern route. We will start by driving 523 miles on Sunday to Fremont, Indiana. Monday will take us up through Wisconsin through my old stomping grounds of Madison and Middleton on our way to Austin, Minnesota (547 miles). From there we cut across Minnesota and South Dakota to Custer, 573 miles away across the Black Hills and near the Crazy Horse Monument, which we will steal a glance at. We are not bothering again with the crowds at Mt. Rushmore and won’t really even properly stop at Crazy Horse so that we can move on quickly on Wednesday for the 483 mile drive to Jackson, Wyoming to visit and stay with Bruce and Sandi Tully. We have left ourselves a short driving day of 257 miles to Park City to see that old haunt, so that we can swing through Bear Lake to visit Deb and Melanie who are gathering with family there. After a breakfast with Joni and Basil in Salt Lake City, we will barrel across the salt flats of Utah for 375 miles to overnight in the vast Nevada desert in Winnemucca. From there it is a relatively short 361 mile jaunt to Sonoma to see and stay with Frank and Lydia, where we will spend our Saturday night. Sunday we will drive through Big Sur to stay in our favorite Moonstone Beach Fireside Inn and rally for a Monday return down the coast for lunch with Sharon and Woo in Camarillo and then a slide home. That will be about 3,800 miles versus the much shorter 2,800 miles we drove getting to Ithaca by driving a relatively straight diagonal across the heartland.
Such is the price for allowing time and routing to see things across the country that deserve to be seen and visit with people we want to visit. We are both looking forward to the trip as neither of us mind the driving and we certainly have the time to wander as we wish at this stage of life. On the map it doesn’t really look like it should be 36% longer, but in addition to the arc across the northern states, we are adding a long trip down the Pacific Coast because it is a pleasant drive that we are choosing to take again since it so beautiful and emblematic of the state we now call home.
That ride will consist of six hotel stays and two nights lodging with friends. the longest driving days will be the earliest days when there is less to see. No day calls for more than eight hours or so of driving, so it will be less onerous than the drive out. I don’t know how many more cross-country trips I am likely to take in my life, but I would not mind doing some form of this every summer from here on in (at least as long as my ass can stand it). I love this country and feel more inclined to spend my vacation days seeing more of it than spending too many of them overseas any more. The areas I have seen the least are the Deep South and the Northwest, so those should somehow factor into the driving program. the other place I would like to hit at least one more time will be New England, which I spent many years enjoying as a youngster and again as a young professional on the banking sales circuit. Strangely enough and mostly for motorcycle reasons, the Southwest has been thoroughly cross-crossed by me, as has the Midwest and California Coast. I might also like driving all the way down the Florida Keys just once, but that is somewhat optional.
For today, my focus is on this little patch of country in the rolling hills of Upstate New York that we call the Finger Lakes. It certainly is one of the beautiful spots in the country and deserves a visit from anyone who has not done so. I have spent many good days in the area and look forward to the next time it makes sense to come back this way. Maybe that will be tomorrow or the next day, or maybe it will have to be planned for the day before the day before I go somewhere else.