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| Route 66 Eric Polk, Wikimedia Commons |
My parents divorced before I was old enough to care. Later, I did care. A lot. Then I got over it again.
That's the short version of that story.
So when I was a kid, summer meant getting to spend more than a weekend at a time with my dad. And almost every year, it meant a family vacation. Sure, I went on trips with my mom and grandparents sometimes, but without my dad I would not have experience The Family Vacation, the one where the parents and kids all pile in the minivan and drive for hours (and hours) and stay in hotels and swim and go to the beach and see very important American sites like The Alamo, and The Washington Monument, and Disneyworld.
Back then, traveling meant driving. I didn't get on a plane until I was in my twenties. Now I travel with my very own family that I get to see every day, not just on the weekends, and let me tell you: we fly to most of our destinations. But this summer, we have an infant, and I have now experienced enough plane rides to know that the vast majority of infants do not like plane rides.
Travel this summer will mean driving, and as I have a newfound interest in my home state, it will probably mean not driving very far.
So instead of writing, I spend my mornings looking at maps and browsing Illinois travel websites, something I do with great joy. Planning trips is one of my favorite things to do. "Armchair travel," I believe it's called. Planning a trip is just as fun as the actual traveling. (Possibly more fun, since planning never involves things like whining children or road construction.)
And if we do hit the road this summer, I will take my notebook and my laptop with very serious intentions to write along the way. So....yeah. We all know how that will work out, don't we?
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