John and I buy houses in a seller’s market. We sell in a buyer’s market. And when the price of gas rises above $4/gallon, we go on a cross-country road trip. In a truck.
It’s how we roll.
On Monday, we left Beaufort, SC, in the 2003 Dodge Dakota we’d bought from John’s dad two years ago for $2. The odometer said 75,000 miles, and we plan to be on the road for six weeks. Destination: Wenatchee, Washington, where John’s parents, sister and a niece live.
Sammy rides in the platform bed John built for the jump seat; I am the navigator and planner, riding shotgun. John, the driver and an engineer in a previous life, has packed the canopied truck bed tight, like he’s playing Tetris with our tent, cots, camp chairs, sleeping bags, clothes, coolers and Sammy’s stuff.
We have taken the truck because we have a few things stored at John’s sister’s house, and we knew our stuff plus the things we stored would not fit in the CRV. But I’m not convinced it all will fit in the truck, either. We will see.
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We’ve been planning this trip since October, when I knew I’d be retiring soon and would need some sort of reset to my frenetic life. My goals: let go of stress, control, anxiety. Appreciate the wonders of Creation — and the Creator. Walk/run/hike regularly. “See some cool things,” as John put it. Come what may.
Also, John’s mom, 90, has been asking to meet “the little dog” for more than a year, ever since I sent her a photo calendar of Sammy as a puppy. Sammy is close to 2 now. He is sweet, quirky, outgoing and oh so energetic. But at 75+ pounds, he is not little.
So we figured we’d plan a trip to the Pacific Northwest by way of some of the national parks we haven’t seen: Big Bend, White Sands, Joshua Tree, Crater Lake and three in Utah.
In December, while John was building cabinets for our kitchen, I was stressing over employee evaluations, editing stories and negotiating a contract with the union. I was also booking campsites and posting sticky notes on a map of the U.S. as I plotted our route.
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Last week, about a month into my retirement, I took a break from packing to say goodbye to The Island Packet building (it’s been sold) and to celebrate the successes of the reporters who made it such an inspiring place to work.
That day, The Packet had won the President’s Cup — best in South Carolina among small daily newspapers for work in 2021 — and the staff had brought home 39 SCPA awards. Among them: Best of the Best, for a series on how charges of driving while license suspended/revoked kept people in poverty, unable to hold a job and pay bills. The staff gathered to toast the building, the work done there, the fun had and lessons learned.
I also said goodbye to two reporters moving on to their next jobs. It’s a new era for the newspaper, and I’m happy we could say farewell to the old one.
That was Friday night. On Monday, we headed south before turning west.
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John put $50 worth of gas in the truck as we left Beaufort. So glad we’re camping, I thought, because who could afford hotels on this trip? We went south on I-95 and then west on I-10 to Chipley, Florida.
On road trips, we tend to sing, loudly and off key. We used to torment our exchange student with our antics. Thankful for good weather at the start of the trip, we broke into “Blue skies, shining on me.” Further down the road, we passed a wreck and belted out the “Somebody done somebody wrong song.”
With camp set up at Falling Waters State Park, we walked to the waterfall, Florida’s tallest (it flows into a deep sinkhole) and appreciated the calls and cackles of the Panhandle’s birds.
Sammy killed a lizard. The rains set in on our first full day. We forgot to bring books so went in search of a bookstore, only to have Siri direct us to a storage building down a dirt road a half-hour away (not our favorite moment). But we are waking early, walking, talking, appreciating birds and flowers and Sammy being Sammy.
It’s an adventure. Come what may.