{"id":294,"date":"2022-03-16T20:10:52","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T20:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/?p=294"},"modified":"2024-06-09T11:11:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T11:11:56","slug":"road-trip-with-sammy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/16\/road-trip-with-sammy\/","title":{"rendered":"Road trip with Sammy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John and I buy houses in a seller\u2019s market. We sell in a buyer\u2019s market. And when the price of gas rises above $4\/gallon, we go on a cross-country road trip. In a truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 It\u2019s how we roll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, we left Beaufort, SC, in the 2003 Dodge Dakota we\u2019d bought from John\u2019s 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\u2019s parents, sister and a niece live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Candy<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s playing Tetris with our tent, cots, camp chairs, sleeping bags, clothes, coolers and Sammy\u2019s stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have taken the truck because we have a few things stored at John\u2019s sister\u2019s house, and we knew our stuff plus the things we stored would not fit in the CRV. But I\u2019m not convinced it all will fit in the truck, either. We will see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve been planning this trip since October, when I knew I\u2019d 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 \u2014 and the Creator. Walk\/run\/hike regularly. \u201cSee some cool things,\u201d as John put it. Come what may.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"John<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Also, John\u2019s mom, 90, has been asking to meet \u201cthe little dog\u201d 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we figured we\u2019d plan a trip to the Pacific Northwest by way of some of the national parks we haven\u2019t seen: Big Bend, White Sands, Joshua Tree, Crater Lake and three in Utah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, about a month into my retirement, I took a break from packing to say goodbye to The Island Packet building (it\u2019s been sold) and to celebrate the successes of the reporters who made it such an inspiring place to work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That day, The Packet had won the President\u2019s Cup \u2014 best in South Carolina among small daily newspapers for work in 2021 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also said goodbye to two reporters moving on to their next jobs. It\u2019s a new era for the newspaper, and I\u2019m happy we could say farewell to the old one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was Friday night. On Monday, we headed south before turning west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John put $50 worth of gas in the truck as we left Beaufort. So glad we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cBlue skies, shining on me.\u201d Further down the road, we passed a wreck and belted out the \u201cSomebody done somebody wrong song.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tent\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

With camp set up at Falling Waters State Park, we walked to the waterfall, Florida\u2019s tallest (it flows into a deep sinkhole) and appreciated the calls and cackles of the Panhandle\u2019s birds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"John<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an adventure. Come what may.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John and I buy houses in a seller\u2019s market. We sell in a buyer\u2019s market. And when the price of gas rises above $4\/gallon, we go on a cross-country road trip. In a truck.  It\u2019s how we roll. On Monday, we left Beaufort, SC, in the 2003 Dodge Dakota we\u2019d bought from John\u2019s dad two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candyhatcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}