Monday, March 10, 2008

Road Trip

Just got back from a short trip…..well, short in terms of time (five days) but not distance (1400 miles).

We started off early Wednesday morning en route to Fort Wayne, IN, where we spent the night. The next morning we drove through Amish country to a small town where my dh’s family is from. We had a wonderful time visiting with relatives from both sides of his family. When we arrived, we found out that if we’d come a day earlier, we would have found ourselves driving in a terrible ice storm.

On Friday we headed to St. Louis. It started to snow right when we left, but the roads weren’t bad, and by the time we left Indianapolis, the snow had stopped. The area we drove through would get between 12 and 20 inches of snow over the next 24 hours. Once again, great timing. I can’t take credit for these instances of missing hazardous weather except for the fact that I did pray for good travel before we left, more than once. :)

It took most of the day to get to St. Louis, where we visited our son at work, met some of his very nice coworkers, and saw his place of business. He loves his job, and we’re very happy to see that.

Dinner was prepared by our son and his bride; it was delicious. We visited them again the next day, and went to church with them and her family. Since we haven’t found a church home yet, we really enjoyed being there. Then we all went back to the newlyweds’ apartment, where we dined on frozen pizza and birthday cake, because it was dsds15’s birthday. That’s right, my youngest is 15. This makes me feel somewhat old. But it’s always a celebration, because we weren’t sure he would make it through his first week of life because of the problems he developed soon after birth.

We left for home very early the next morning (ugh, time change Sunday made it even harder to get up early) and arrived home in time for dinner last night.

Some observations about the trip back:

1) Gas prices are ridiculously high. We even saw diesel at over $4 a gallon.
2) I finally tried using the cruise control on our car and liked it. I’d always avoided it because I thought I would be less alert if I didn’t have to concentrate on staying near the speed limit (not one of my strengths). But it didn’t work out that way. I stayed awake the whole time I drove…always a good thing.
3) In addition to all the great home-cooked food shared with us by family members, we also ate at restaurants and fast food places while on the road. I find that as I get older, I like fast food less and appreciate home cooking much more.
4) You can get really tired of the same six CDs when you drive 1400 miles in five days. Not that they weren’t great CDs (Carly Simon, WOW’s Best of Gospel, Paul McCartney, Chicago, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Count Basie), but we heard them too many times.

So that’s where I’ve been lately. And if you hung on all the way through to the end of this post, you must be avoiding the dinner dishes or something because it’s not a very exciting post. ;)

7 comments:

Amy said...

Welcome home! Travel is always interesting this time of year - glad you're safe and had a wonderful time.


Happy belated birthday wishes for your son!!!!

sarah said...

1. You should get an ipod... then you would have more choices. Or, just let M. hook hers up to the stereo :) She'll agree with me on that.

2. Fast food is disgusting. Always.

3. I am not a fan of cruise control, but N. insists (like you do) that I am constantly stepping on and off the gas to adjust my speed... so maybe the cruise would be a good idea.

The end.

Melissa Markham said...

Sounds like a wonderful trip:) Gas is high, but we have to remember that compared to other places in the world it is cheap.

Core said...

Welcome back.

This stood out for me in your commentary,

Gas prices are ridiculously high. We even saw diesel at over $4 a gallon.

Sadly, I believe we will look back on these days and wonder at how gas could ever be so inexpensive.

At $100/bbl oil, that's 0.15 per cup. Even refined gasoline at $4/gal is only 0.25 per cup.

I work in oil, and a good study unit these days for homeschooling is the history and future of oil. It ain't pretty. American production peaked in the 70s, and we have not replaced the big worldwide (read: Middle East) discoveries made in the 1980s. Brace yourself.

Barbara Frank said...

Thanks, Amy :)

Sarah, we won't be hooking M.'s iPod up anytime soon. I hear they're catching fire, and your dad won't want to risk his car ;)

Melissa, you make a good point.

VC, I should have chosen a different word than ridiculously. I guess it's just shocking to see it climbing, even though I understand that oil is no longer easy to access, plus Chindia is using more and more of it.

I also think inflation has something to do with oil prices going up. The US is printing dollars as fast as it can; that's why gas isn't the only thing going up in price.

Thanks, all, for commenting.

kat said...

Is that why you see so many old folks at Cracker Barrel??

Another idea for those long drives are books on tape. I ordered History of the English Language from The Teaching Company and am now up to Chaucer, never dull!

Barbara Frank said...

Kat, you might be on to something there. We may be getting older, but we're too cheap to eat there very often :)

We brought two Rex Stout novels on tape but just couldn't get into them, preferring music instead. Weird, because dh, dd16 and I love reading Nero Wolfe novels. Go figure.