I adore traveling. I think I have mentioned before that I grew up in a family that drove pretty much everywhere all the time, and that the hubs refuses to fly to this day if we can get there by auto. Part of this stems from self-confessed control issues; part of it stems from disliking security theater and having to shed his shoes; part of it stems from just wanting to see what’s out there.

I am less enamored of “seeing what’s out there,” but I do like not sharing an armrest with a stranger and having to pack for 2 weeks of snow in less than 10 lbs. I also adore driving, although I rarely do it on road trips (see my earlier reference to those self-confessed control issues).

So with all that history, I don’t know if I have a favorite road trip. But I do have one that stands out because I was married but it did not involve the hubs, and I drove the entire time. It was 2017, and the kid and I drove from Virginia to Tennessee in back in one day to see the eclipse.

It was fantastic. We left at 5 a.m. with a general idea of where the interstate crossed the path of totality and headed that direction. We discussed the possibility that we would be watching the eclipse from a gas station if worse came to worst. The kid was all in.  Then he slept, I listened to music; he woke up, we talked about Doctor Who. We drove west and southish until there was about an hour before the eclipse was supposed to happen (which IIRC was around 1 p.m., so about eight hours), and then I set him the task of using my phone to find a local park. He found a doozy in Louisville Point Park. It had a playground and a lake with swimming and boats, and a bunch of other party people. The kid stripped down to his shorts and swam. Then we threw down a blanket and sat in the grass and watched it get dark, listened to the birds stop singing, shivered as the temperature dropped 10 degrees, and then watched it all reverse itself. Then we got back in the car and sat in traffic for an hour along with all the other after-eclipsers, and drove the eight hours back home, mostly listening to the Ramones. We got home at 10:30 with nary an argument or snit.

That was a great trip.