I almost always worry that we won’t have enough to do on our trips, a worry that Jim reminds me of when we arrive home after having crammed each day to the fullest. This trip was no different.
Somewhere I read a study on memory that asked, “Would you go on vacation if after it was all over your memories of the trip were erased from your mind?” Would all the money and effort be worth it if you had no memory of what you did? I honestly don’t know. It seems to me that there would be a happy “residue” left in your mind even if specific items were gone.
(At least, I hope the residue would be happy!) Jim and I have always put a high priority on taking trips, something that was never much of a part of my life before I married him. During my childhood, the only trips we ever took were to Delft, Minnesota, the little farming community where my dad grew up. We had no money to speak of, and I think Daddy had only one week of vacation a year during the time that he held various sales jobs–milkman, Fuller Brush man, Jewel Tea man.He couldn’t afford to give up his route for very long. And we certainly couldn’t afford a motel! So we always drove “straight through,” covering a trip of 800 miles in about 16 hours. My mom would pack food into a cooler so we wouldn’t have to spend money at restaurants. (She also had to put my brother’s eye drops in the cooler, drops that had to be administered two or three times a day to “keep the pressure down,” a reference to possible glaucoma in his left eye that had been injured when he was four.) While I did take a trip to Europe with friends when I was 25, most of the time I just stayed home when I reached adulthood. The money thing, again. No shame in that. It’s funny for me to realize that I took my first plane ride when I went off to college at age 18; Gideon took his first one at eight weeks.
Anyway, traveling has been a fairly big part of my life for the past 25 years. I’ve eventually learned how to pack fairly efficiently and to quit worrying so much. My mom used to go into a tailspin for weeks before our Minnesota trips, and I don’t think she enjoyed them much. I’ve determined not to follow her example in that, but I’ve had to consciously fight it. Once we finally get on the road I’m fine, but there have been times when I’ve fussed and fretted just like her. I’m sure she’s wanted at times to lean over the battlements of Heaven and give me a swift kick.
As General Dwight Eisenhower said before D-Day, “Plans are useless, but planning is everything.” I’ve written about that quotation before, and I’m still unclear about what he meant. I know how I interpret it, though: Nothing turns out quite like the plans you made, but it’s all-important that you make them. You probably won’t get everything in that you wanted to do. So we skipped the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum on the way, and we didn’t have time for the Biltmore on the way back. We thought it would be nice to at least show up at the beach, but it rained. Probably the most interesting and memorable place we visited was sort of spur-of-the-moment: the Calhoun Mansion. It’s owned by a man who actually lives there (up on the third floor, but he and the dogs and cat come down after the tours are over for the day and sit in the–where else?–the sitting room). Talk about a packrat! The house is crammed to the gills, not something I ordinarily like, but my word. You have to see it to believe it. There are so many rare and precious things in it that you could spend days just figuring out what everything is. Our guide obviously loved the place. And then, for something completely different, we visited the Drake Plantation, which has no furniture or decorative touches at all. They want you to see the house itself. And we had another fabulous guide. We managed to cram in two other plantations too, just to keep our collective hand in: Middleton Place and Magnolia Plantation. Both lovely. The boat ride on the river at Magnolia with this hilarious guide was really something; We all agreed that tour was a true highlight, but we knew nothing about it ahead of time, of course. We just figured we’d go ahead and do all we could during our visit and so bought the all-inclusive ticket. It said to show up at 2:30 for the boat trip, so that’s what we did, figuring that maybe the river would at least have some cool breezes. In fact, I think it’s a mistake sometimes to know too much beforehand. If you’ve gone on the website and looked at all the pictures and read all the history, then you’re going to experience some deja-vu, I would think. when you actually get there. Back in 2010 we took a trip to upstate New York and visited Watkin’s Glen. I knew absolutely nothing about the place, just remembering that my mother had said something about it being really beautiful. It made a nice stopping place for us to aim for. I had no idea what it was really like–we spent most of the day there. (Apparently they have some sort of car race? I don’t know where they do it with all those stairs. Obviously I’m missing something.)
One thing I would say about spending money on trips: try to save money where it doesn’t matter much and spend money where it does. Normally we stay in pretty basic hotels and try for fairly inexpensive restaurants. For this particular trip we didn’t have a choice about the hotel as it was chosen as the site by the organizer of the family reunion. Since it had a pool and a big meeting area downstairs it served our purpose well. In general, though, we aim for something a little less luxurious than the Marriott Residence Inn. (I have to say, though, that the staff was absolutely great–very gracious and helpful. I’m still not sure what strings the front desk pulled to get us in for the extra night we decided to stay.) When we did our big driving trip to L.A. in 2013 we stayed in what can only be described as a dump (not like the White House–a real dump), with sandpaper towels and rather erratic housekeeping. On the whole it was fine, though, and here’s the funny thing: it was right across the street from Disney World. We could go out on our balcony with its crumbling concrete and watch the fireworks from the park every night. It was great. Sitting right there were the huge high-rise hotels in Disney World proper, and I couldn’t help thinking that the people who were on the wrong side of the building couldn’t see the fireworks even though they’d paid through the nose to stay there.
Well, perhaps that’s enough of my priceless wisdom for now. Next big trip: Paris, to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.