Road Trip!!

I drove my car up to Washington State this past May for my usual summer job. The company would fly me up, but I like driving. Plus, it was planned that my friend Matt would fly up at the end of the season and road-trip back with me. We figured we’d hit some “bucket list” places on the way. We brainstormed a bit and finally came up with a rough idea of our route. We had a plan but left room for flexibility.

I’ve always wanted to visit Olympic National Park in the very northwest corner of the country. That, and the Going-To-The-Sun Road in Glacier National Park were two in my “must-see” category. Matt wanted to do Mt. Rainier and Crater Lake. And we both wanted to see Mt. Rushmore.

I picked Matt up in Seattle on Thursday night. We got an early start on Friday morning, and quickly realized that if we had any sort of schedule at all, it was going out the window. What with the requisite “photo-op” stops (and me needing to stop so frequently to pee), we weren’t making much time. Instead of cruising through Olympic National Park (first on our list), we ended up spending much more time than we’d planned. This kind of screwed up our whole timetable.

We discovered that we wanted to linger at places longer than we anticipated. Ultimately, we had to scratch a couple of things off our list. But we added a few others.

Road trips are cool. But sharing a car during the day and a hotel room at night with someone for a week can be awkward and stressful. You get to know a lot about the other person – maybe more than you ever wanted to know. It’s very easy to get on one another’s nerves. So it helps when your traveling companion is someone you get along and enjoy being with.

Matt and I have known each other for a long time now, and we get along great. Looking back, I don’t believe he and I have ever had an actual argument. Disagreement, yes; argument, no. I don’t know why that is, come to think of it.

Over the years, we’ve done more than a few road trips together. The first time was back in the late 1990’s when I delivered an airplane – a tiny, two-seat Cessna 150 - from Pensacola, Florida to Flint, Michigan. Since then we’ve been on many flying, camping, canoeing, hiking and road trips. He is an avid mountain biker, and is always suggesting that I buy a bike and ride with him – but I have to draw the line somewhere. With me on a bicycle, the vertical weight distribution would be all wrong.

Anyway, we left Seattle, Washington on Friday morning, and got back to his place in Atlanta on Thursday evening. It was an awesome, fun trip! I’ll describe some of it in the next few installments here – with pictures!