Julie and I for the past 46 years take a vacation every August. It started off with just the two of us, but the number of participants increased as the family grew from no children to five children.
Our annual practice was to load all of us into a minivan and head off in different directions every August without making reservations. That may seem crazy, but given how planned our lives are most of the year, it was great to keep things flexible during vacation and end up wherever we ended up.
For example, we flew to San Diego, rented a minivan, and our only reservation was a return flight from Seattle 12 days later. That way we could stop anywhere the children wanted to stop as long as we made it to Seattle in time.
Another example is when we flew to Paris, rented a minivan, and our only reservation 12 days later was a return flight from Rome to Chicago (yes, it did require a little flexibility to make sure we found hotel rooms every night).😂
While this worked for many years, now that two of our children are married and we have two small grandchildren, the logistics with 11 people become a little more complex. While I thought a road trip was still possible, one of my daughters decided it made more sense to rent an Airbnb in Door County, Wisconsin.
So far, it’s worked out very well. One of the highlights it turns out is that there is a 1960s-style drive-in movie theater about 2 miles from our condominium. Several of us went there a few nights ago, and it reminded me of “back to the future.” The cartoons tempting you to go to the refreshment stand for popcorn and candy are exactly the same cartoons I remember as a child in the 1960s!
Since we only saw the “minions” movie, I think some of us will be going back in the next night or two to see “Spider-Man.”
On another topic, I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that my friend Gary wanted to do “a really hard thing” since he had recently retired. Well, Gary definitely found something “really hard” by deciding he wanted to hike the entire 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine! He figured out if he hiked 15 miles a day, he could complete the trail in 5 1/2 months. He asked if Julie and I would join him and we signed up for five days (which seemed to me to be more than enough). The amazing thing — and I mean truly amazing — is Gary called me a few days ago and told me he had just reached the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine and completed the 2,200 mile hike!
Knowing what hiking just five days felt like, I can’t get my head around what it would be like to hike five months and five days! A sincere congratulations, Gary!
