Would you shut up already?

Well, I knew it had been awhile since I blogged but February??

My word. I've been a busy lady, I guess. 

I could review all that busyness, but this is not the time nor the place.

I'm talking about our family trip to Scotland.

It has become clear to me over the past couple years that when it comes to travel, I get a wild hair (from where, I don't know) and just run with it. 

I had never had any thought of going to the Galapagos, but when I heard about it from N's high school in October 2020 (for an April 2022 trip), I just thought, "Let's do it." 

So we did. And it was awesome. 

D and I had briefly talked about taking the kids to Boston because G had mentioned something about it from an interest in a video game (which inspired our trip with the kids to Las Vegas in 2021). With G being the most difficult to please (in all respects) out of the family, we sort of let his interests guide our plans. At one point, sometime in early 2022, I guess, I asked him, "Would you prefer to go to Boston or Scotland?"

Smart boy said "Scotland."

Why did Scotland pop into my head? It's cool there, generally, which has become the primary factor in where we go. G hates hot weather, and as an almost 50-year-old woman, I don't need any additional help being hot, so cooler is absolutely alright with me. 

But did I have a burning desire to visit Scotland? Not especially. 

Still, the words had come out of my mouth, so I proceeded to plan a trip last summer. 

Sometimes I think my unconscious brain is busy working while my conscious brain just dithers about because D and I did celebrate 25 years of marriage last fall. Why not make this trip the June after our anniversary a milestone holiday? And we took the kids because they are not quite old enough to be totally solo for 10 days, and our parents are just a little too old to be dealing with not quite old enough kids for 10 days. 

I worked with Tenon Tours to plan the trip and was very happy with how everything turned out. Could we have done it for less money? Certainly, but part of what we wanted was to spend a night in a castle, and that wasn't cheap. They selected a manor house for us to stay in for two nights, and that was an amazing experience. We got to do a falconry experience was that phenomenal. 

At the manor house, while playing pool, M said, "This place is really cool, but if I stayed in places like this all the time, it wouldn't be special." And I think that sums up this trip for us. 

We visited the following towns/villages/cities in Scotland: Edinburgh, Kingussie, Forres, Inverness, Findhorn, Portree, Glencoe, Ballachulish, Fort William, Mallaig, Stirling, and Falkirk. And we saw so many amazing things. 

It has been a complete drag to come back to real life. Real life is so dull. (I say or think this and then fight the shame/guilt that reminds me that I am so privileged to be able to go on such a trip and then come home and complain about my very easy existence.) I have been posting photos on social media (partly because it brings me joy and I do like sharing it with others; I try not to be too insufferable by posting only a few photos, not big photo dumps of 45 pics.) I feel certain at least several people I know are thinking, Would you can it?

Still, the most wonderful part of the trip was spending time with my family at a time when we spend less time together. In some ways, this may have been a last hurrah for us (I hope not, but life changes whether you want it to or not.)

Some highlights of small moments: 

Apparently, at one point I said, "Ice cream is calling my name," and my kids have now made that one of  the "mom" phrases they make fun of me about. 

They also made fun of me because every time D has a camera in his hands, I ask, "Are you taping me?" And he always gets me on tape asking that question. (After 25 years, you kind of know someone.)

The kids, while D and I were checking into our hotel in Glencoe, made several videos in which the boys spoke as their alter egos, Eugene and Theodore. Theodore (G) gave Eugene (M) a hug which made Eugene fart, causing uproarious laughter that was caught on video. 

N, in her excitement over being able to drink legally as a 19-year-old in Scotland, ordered the typical beverage that everyone orders at an Italian small plate restaurant: a margarita. 

G's socks stunk so badly that all their shared rooms smelled like corn chips until I could find a laundry on the Isle of Skye. 

The best thing I have discovered about getting away from real life is that it takes away all the distractions that keep me from noticing my kids---the laundry, the paperwork, the phone calls, the vacuuming. It makes me focus on the moment. And we're getting short time on moments when I have the opportunity to notice them. 

2022 like 2019

 In 2019, we went on a lot of small trips. 

Spring Break was spent in Atlanta visiting my cousins and exploring the city, which we had driven through a million times but never stayed in for anything more than a night while en route to or from Florida.

That summer, we visited Cape San Blas, a small peninsula in Florida.

That fall, we went to Michigan City, Indiana and took the train to Chicago.

This was all for the good because COVID made us very eager to go nowhere outside our state. We went to Land Between the Lakes, Cumberland Falls, and Red River Gorge until we had all been vaccinated when I felt it was probably a little more safe to go beyond the borders.

Since December 18, 2021, I've traveled quite a bit and failed to write about any of it. Until now.

The first trip was when the five of us went to Las Vegas, Nevada and Joshua, Tree, California. It was a pretty darn wonderful trip even though we were still having to mask inside (or should I say, we chose to mask inside even though lots of other people didn't). 

We spent a full day in Joshua Tree National Park and then stopped at Amboy Crater in the middle of the Mojave Desert on our way back to Las Vegas. In Vegas, we went to Meow Wolf and walked all over the strip and then drove to Hoover Dam. It was a trip that sort of wore us out but that I so enjoyed because I was seeing new terrain. It was some 1,856 miles there and back. 

The Mojave Desert at sunset as we were driving from Las Vegas to Joshua Tree.

Found a hole in a boulder where water had frozen overnight. 

Outdoor sculpture at Meow Wolf in Las Vegas. 

At the Hoover Dam

In early April, N and I went to Quito, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, a trip we had been planning and saving for since October 2020, when we thought innocently to ourselves, "This pandemic should be over by April 2022." 

The trip was amazing and exhausting and had I had the energy after puking some 12+ times on the ferry from San Cristobal to Santa Cruz, I would have thrown myself overboard and just drowned because motion sickness on the Pacific is no fucking joke. (I likely puked over 20 times in a 2-hour period but I decided suicide would be a good idea sometime after my 10th puke. I say this not to make suicide funny but to note that when people feel miserable, a wish to just die and get it over with is not irrational but a better option out of all bad options.)

When I finally staggered off the boat and could barely stand, the closest place to lie down was here. I spent the rest of that day in bed.

Pier at Santa Cruz, the Galapagos with another creature 

who may or may not have also been extremely seasick. One of the members of 

the tour took this pick which was only hilarious many days later. 

This was, however, the worst of my trip. Everything else was amazing and awesome, and I was so privileged to see it. It was my first but I hope not my last trip to South America and was some 3,000 miles one way. Plus, it was my girl's first international trip, and I love that she was able to do it. 

A view of Quito from Virgin of El Panecillo. 

A mural in Otavalo, Ecuador

The beach on San Cristobal, the Galapagos

The flight, somewhere over Nicaragua.

Since we've spent a lot of money on those two trips, we decided we needed to keep a summer trip short and therefore, cheaper. 

I'm not a fan of stuff but I value experience and time, and over the years, I've tried to combine both by inviting my parents and/or my MIL on our trips. Due to my dad's health problems in 2020, we asked mom and dad to come on a weekend trip with us to Tennessee in early May since it wasn't as long of a drive for them. I had learned about Pickett State Park and wanted to see it because it is a international dark sky park. It was around 170 miles away. 

As with the massive puke fest in the Galapagos, often you don't plan what happens, and we didn't plan for it to rain the entire weekend except for like 40 minutes on Friday and then another 40 minutes on Saturday of this extended weekend. We got out during those brief windows of time to explore. So much for seeing the dark sky when there was nothing but heavy rainclouds. 

Pickett State Park, Tennessee during one of those 40 minute non-rain windows. 

Big South Fork lookout trail during one of those 40 minute non-rain windows. 

The view from this lookout. 

The lovely cabin we stayed at. 

I also wanted to squeeze in another shortish trip (340 miles) and decided Kelleys Island would take us to water, which we like, and cooler temperatures, which we also like. After visiting Michigan several years ago, I sort of got it in my head to see all the Great Lakes. This took another off our list; only one left (Ontario). 

We spent 4 full days exploring Kelleys Island and seeing the African Safari zoo in Port Clinton, Ohio and Marblehead lighthouse. It felt like the beach without the heat or the salt or the jellyfish. 

Me on a ferry to Kelleys Island and not puking. It is possible. 

Herndon Gallery within walking distance of the house we rented.

Glacial grooves on Kelleys Island. 

African Safari drive where you can feed the animals who 

will stick their big heads in your car and slobber on the doors. 

We ate A LOT of ice cream at Papa T's on Kelleys Island. 

And so now, we are home and will stay home for a good long while to save up and hopefully plan for other adventures down the road to far off places. 

I know my love of travel is an addiction of sorts because I do feel this physical and mental urge to get out of my norm and get away from what I see all the time. I get a release of good-feeling hormones just looking up places I might like to go at some point, and that feeling is compounded by A LOT when I actually get to the someplace new I wanted to see. I tell myself that it is probably a better addiction than illegal drugs and sex with strangers. 

But there are costs to it. It costs time and money. It is tiring. And not everyone in our family loves travel the way I do so it forces me to not see everything I'd like to see and them to see more than what they care to see. 

These are very lowercase privilege problems. I'm thankful that I get to see as much as I've been able to see.

A successful trip to the Gorge (unlike the one when I was a kid)

Lots of people have visited Red River Gorge (RRG). 

My parents attempted to take me, my brother, my cousin, my grandma, and my aunt many years ago when my brother and I were kids. 

We never made it.

Well, I guess technically we did make it because we drove around in the rain and fog on winding roads in the area that is called the Red River Gorge Geological Area.  

But we never saw an arch, a trail, a cave, a waterfall, or a big giant hole in the ground because my brother puked in the car (from said winding roads), and we all practically sat on my grandma's lap to avoid the puddle of stomach bile on the floor. 

That trip sucked, but boy-howdy was it memorable. 

When I started planning for a summer trip this year, I knew I didn't have the mental bandwidth to plan an out-of-state trip. Our governor has been very cautious about COVID, and some other governors acted like there hasn't been a pandemic going on for over a year, so I just didn't feel comfortable heading into some of the more bat-shit states. Plus, with my dad's health issues over the last 10 months, I didn't know what would be going on with him. I didn't want to be 10 hours away from home. 

Plus, we had a good time last year checking out several places in Kentucky that had been on my to-be-visited list: Cumberland Falls and Land Between the Lakes. 

I tend to not like to revisit the same places repeatedly, and RRG was someplace the kids had never been. I think maybe D and I had gone there while dating but that is seriously ancient history. And my childhood trip was a non-event. 

So we rented a house and took my parents, my MIL, my niece, and our crew and drove down. 

I think every family has a story or tradition of something they do or something one member does that everyone pokes fun of.

In my family of origin, it is my dad's notorious frugality. Now, I'm all about frugality, but I learned from my dad that paying for a halfway decent hotel or rental home is a very good idea. I'm not at all a big spender, but when you pay cheap, you often get cheap. 

In 1998, when D and I went to Las Vegas with my parents after we married, we stayed at what looked like a bordello. We could see the Bellagio, which was brand new, out our window. We looked longingly at the bells and whistles and newness of that hotel. 

In 1999, my brother, future SIL, our parents, and D and I went to Virginia Beach. My parents got the hotel. The pool didn't work at all and the hotel rooms smelled like someone sat in them each day smoking 3 packs of cigarettes. My parents STILL have not lived that hotel down. 

After that, my SIL and I have never allowed my parents to select the hotel or rental. 

In the family D and I have created, their story about us is that we pick the most remote, out of the way places to stay. Nearly every human who visits the Rocky Mountains stays in Estes Park. This was enough reason for me to rent a home clear on the other side of the Rockies. That side was just perfect for people like us who hate crowds and traffic. 

When we arrived at our RRG cabin, N (who drove with my MIL) commented on how we had to turn around 3 times because the roads didn't have roads signs so we weren't sure where we were going. She said, "This is so typical of them, picking the most isolated spot in the world." 

The weather was rainy quite a bit while we were there, but we still managed to find some dry(ish) times for quick hikes. Our hiking motto with G (who hates to hike) is also a perfect hiking motto when a 78-year-old who has had 4 surgeries in the last year is going too: easy and not long. 

I knew my dad was a tough old bird before this trip. He's had his colon removed, open-heart surgery, and the many surgeries with his cancer diagnosis from the last year. But I guess this RRG trip really brought it home to me when he hiked up the original Natural Bridge trail. It took him awhile and he had to stop to rest many times, but he made it up and back. He is not invincible, but he is the epitome of "As long as I can try, that's what I'm going to do." 

Four days away is about all we can handle with the kids being eager to return to our house and their friends and their devices. And truly, four days is all I can handle of coercing and listening them ask when they can return home. 

But those four days were pretty darn good.

Sky lift going up to Natural Bridge

Getting ready to walk through Fat Man's Misery. 

             

Angel Windows at RRG

Natural Bridge in background

Big honking native umbrella magnolias

The whole gang at Miguel's Pizza

A delight (#9)

I'm not a "stuff" person, but I'm definitely a "spend money on travel" person. 

That travel has been far (Greece, Italy, Iceland) and close (Cumberland Falls and Land Between the Lakes). 

I keep several large scrapbooks of the places we have traveled since becoming a family of more than 2, and they bring me incomparable delight. 

Last night, I spent time scrapbooking our within-state trips in 2020. 

I didn't feel comfortable last year traveling outside the state, nor do I feel comfortable doing that now. Our small trip scheduled for this coming summer is to a spot two hours away from home. We have invited my parents, my MIL, and my niece (which, if all are able to come, will be the same makeup as our trip in June 2020). 

Looking back on these trips brings me the delight of seeing my loved ones spending time together without masks and concerns for our safety. 

(Empire Bluffs Trail, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan)

We have been supremely lucky to have traveled several times with my brother's family and our parents--to Michigan, to Colorado, to the Smokey Mountains. 

Upper Peninsula, Michigan

We have photos of the kids doing very simple things, including playing cards with their Nana. 

Hilton Head, SC

It is a joy to see the kids when they were little; when their hair was in different styles; when N still wore glassless glasses. 

 Grand Lake, Colorado 

These photos remind me of aggravation because G has never gone on a trip that he didn't do something that drove us freaking crazy. In the moment, it was supremely aggravating. In retrospect, funny and delightful. 

Forest Park, St Louis MO

These photos remind me of the locations we have taken our children to educate them both historically and empathetically. 

Martin Luther King National Site, Atlanta, GA

These photos remind me that even when we were within our house on our devices completely neglectful of each other we also had times when we are completely in the moment with each other. 

Cape San Blas, FL

The close-to-home vacation during COVID

We had originally, back in December, hoped to go to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons in 2020.
However, we had been hemorrhaging money in 2019 so decided a big trip was irresponsible.

In January of this year, I booked 4 nights at Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky at a private home for June.

When COVID came along, we didn't know what we were going to do.
Eventually, we decided that since it was in-state, we wouldn't be violating any executive orders.
We also determined that even if we sat inside that house doing exactly what we'd been doing inside our house, it was, at least, a change of scenery.

We had planned to take my MIL, my niece, and my parents, but in March, April, and even May, we didn't know if that would happen.
Heck, to be honest, we didn't know how things would shake out for certain until we were on the road.

Ultimately, we told them that the five of us were going, and we left it up to them whether they felt comfortable going with us.

Our trip was nice.
We took our own food and never ventured to a restaurant even for curbside pickup.
I stopped in a small corner store for Hershey chocolate bars (for s'mores) and wore a mask.
I used my gas-pumping gloves the one time we stopped for gas.
We wore masks when we went into LBL buildings/nature stations and kept our distance from others.
We spent most of our time at the house, swimming, fishing, kayaking, or eating.

Was it the most stellar, scenic, mind-blowing trip?
No.
Was it simple and relaxing and based on realistic expectations?
Yes.
And in a year like this one, that is downright delightful.

My thoughts on COVID have changed in some ways since March.
What hasn't changed is my feeling that it is serious, warrants life changes, and requires vigilance.
What has changed is my feeling that being careful cannot equate putting life entirely on hold.
If my parents, or kids, or I end up getting COVID, I will be glad to have had special memories of time spent together.

Fishing with Pa

 Masks were at the ready before we walked inside.