We finally decided that we will fly home on April 30, and then fly back on May 26 for my niece Brooke’s wedding. After the wedding, we will drive the car home. It didn’t really make a lot of difference whether we drove the car home at the end of April or after the wedding. I think I’m just putting off the road trip home.

Road trips used to be so much fun. Well, maybe my age is making me forgetful. I am recalling one road trip that Bill and I took many years ago that was fun. I think it was sometime around 2003. We were still young and carefree.

We stayed on two-lane highways as we drove through Colorado and Kansas and Missouri and Arkansas and Tennessee making our way to Bill’s brother’s house in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And when I say we, I mean Bill, because he drove the entire time. We then slipped through South Carolina and Georgia on our way to Bill’s other brother who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. We ate many kinds of barbecue, including Kansas City’s sweet sauce and Carolina’s mustardy sauce. We also ate some of the best banana puddin’ I’ve ever had at a little cafe in North Carolina. We went back the next day for more, but sadly, they only made banana puddin’ on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I’ll bet I could have choked down the pecan pie had I not been so pouty.

We drove through small towns and shopped in family-owned stores….

Despite the SALE, I don’t think we purchased anything at that junk store. I wasn’t in the market for a metal gas station sign at the time. But we did go to the junk store discovered by Bill’s brother in Winston-Salem. The store had an arrangement with UPS to take and sell the items that were undeliverable. Over the years, Bruce picked up some beautiful things at a fraction of the actual cost.

During our trip, we purchased a beautiful wooden lamp at a second-hand furniture store in NC. It remains one of my favorite pieces of furniture that we still own. That very lamp was in our back seat as we made our way home. Unfortunately, it was blocking Bill’s vision as he parallel parked our car in a small town in Kansas. He proceeded to back into it. As I recall, it required a cash payment to a police officer who I’M SURE turned that money into his office as soon as his shift ended.

I believe our days of road trips are over, unless we come into enough of a fortune to hire a chauffeur. Both Bill and I walk like Chester of Gunsmoke fame after a couple of hours in a car.

I think our grandkids are missing one of life’s biggest pleasures: the family road trip.