Our Great Adventure (R.C. & Moon Pi Fly by the Seat of Their Pants)

Due to various family and job obligations, we just haven't traveled very much since we got married in 2009.  In fact, we didn't even go on a honeymoon because we got married and immediately moved to the coast.  We joked that our new home was our honeymoon and that actually lasted for 4 years.  We made regular trips back to Winston-Salem to visit family and that was a 5 hour, one way trip, but it wasn't really anything that we could consider a vacation.

Randy retired in June of 2013 and we moved to Winston-Salem.  We took a couple of trips in the fall of 2013...a short trip to Atlanta for my birthday in September and then a longer trip to NYC for Randy's birthday in October.  But we were wanting something epic, something memorable.

In January Randy's son had a skiing accident that laid him up for several months.  In fact he is just now getting back to work on a limited basis.  Randy was busy staying with him during most of his recuperation and once he was able to make it on his own Randy said, "I'm giving you fair warning... get your bags packed because we are going on a road trip.  I don't know where we're going or when but just be ready."

We had been talking about various places in the United States that we had previously visited and places we would like to visit so he was formulating a list.  Randy is very methodical and once he tells you something, he usually has already worked out the plan in his mind so I knew that I needed to contact a pet sitter for Jhett and get that lined up as soon as possible.  Fortunately for me, the woman who fostered Jhett when she was awaiting adoption lives close by and does pet sitting.  She agreed to take care of Jhett and water the plants while we were gone.  I just had to be on standby for when the plan fell into place.

We started out planning the places that were "must see" on our trip and then worked from there.  We really wanted to see New Orleans but found that the weekend we planned to be there was one of 2 consecutive Jazz Festival Weekends.  We love Jazz but are such introverts that we avoid crowds whenever possible.  We also wanted to see the Mexican border at El Paso and the Grand Canyon.  We had decided to sort of make a big circle, returning home via I-40.  The Jazz Festival changed our game plan and we decided to make the circle in the opposite direction and would instead arrive in New Orleans after the Festival weekends.

We got our little old (14 yrs. old) road atlas and determined where we would stop for the night along the way to get to the Grand Canyon and made a tentative plan to drive no more than 6 hours per day, splitting up the driving, to New Mexico.  We would stay a couple of nights there just to get a little rest and then arrive at the Grand on a Sunday evening, hoping to avoid any weekend crowds.

We only booked hotels about 3 days ahead so that if we decided to stay an extra day or take an unplanned side trip, we were free to do so.  We were truly flying by the seat of our pants.  We scanned Trip Advisor, local resources, city pages, etc. to find various things to do and places worth stopping.  There was only one reservation along the way that was non-refundable if we had decided to change plans, but that didn't prove to be a problem.

Some stops were in places that we had studied about in school... famous places that just seemed to stick in our minds and when we saw them on the map we said, "Let's stop!  We may not get the chance again."  The the next several posts will chronicle our trip.  We truly did have a great trip and even though we felt that we had a close relationship before, I think in many ways the trip drew us even closer together.