A Road Trip Lesson

Twelve days from today I'm going on a road trip. I've already referred to it as "epic" and "awesome" and "of doom". A friend of mine has deemed it my "Green Tea Trip", because the hope is that it will be something of a spiritual cleanse and not just a way to get from point A to point B. There may be more Road Trip Lessons from the trip, though, none of them will probably relate to this blog in any way (and neither does this one, come to think of it.) So there's your fair warning.

Planning this road trip has given me cause to reflect on road trips I've taken in the past. When I was a kid, my parents would pack us in the car and drive us from Pleasant View, Utah to Dearborn, Michigan to visit my maternal grandparents. Despite the two to three days of driving each way in a car with three little brothers, I always looked forward to this trip because it was the only time during the year that I got to see that side of my family, and we got to leave Utah, and we usually got to see and do fun things on the way. (Can you say Corn Palace??)

One year, during our annual trek to Michigan, I learned a very valuable lesson. We had driven until late into the night and stopped to camp (because my parents are thrifty and camping is way more economical than finding a hotel that can accommodate a family of six). We were roused before the sun was up and put back into the car, where we all promptly fell back asleep (because my parents are clever and driving while the kids are asleep is way more peaceful than trying to referee Calvin Ball from the front seat). After about an hour of driving, the sun started to peek over the horizon, at which point my dad said to my mom something to the effect of, "Jan, doesn't the sun usually rise in the East?"

We'd been driving for over an hour in the wrong direction.

Here's the lesson: we still got to where we were going. Life is like that sometimes.