V is for Vacation

Ithaca, New York
September 2001

Oh good, another post where I can foist off Vacation photos! When we lived in Massachusetts and were raising our son, many of our summer trips were to Cape Cod--Truro, Marconi Beach, Orleans, Barnstable, the National Seashore--we loved it so much, but eventually we couldn't think of any part of the Cape we hadn't been to at least twice. We'd spend an entire week, maybe two, with sand between our toes and fried clams or ice cream cones on our mind.

Jeff and his Grammy on Cape Cod, 1980

In time, my wife started talking about RV travel, and I balked. Please shoot me rather than put me in one of those things, I thought. I relented once, agreeing to rent an RV in the middle of winter to take to upstate New York. My hope was that we'd be so miserable, my wife would never suggest it again. That trip wasn't great, but it wasn't the disaster I wanted, either. Still, I resisted further RV talk enough so that after a while she gave up.

Fast forward a couple of decades to about 2008. My wife and I were driving in the Southwest, enjoying a gorgeous part of the country that has elbow room galore. And I turned to her and said something like, "You know, this would be a great place to have an RV." With that offhand comment, my fate was sealed. We and our cats now travel by RV on almost all of our vacations, and neither of us would have it any other way.

What summer is all about
Cape Cod, 1980

Half Dome, Yosemite, 1999

Not quite Lewis and Clark

By the way, regarding the Ithaca picture, we had planned to fly to Arizona in mid-September 2001. After the World Trade Center attacks, we canceled and decided to drive to upstate New York. We stayed at a lovely inn where the help at the desk looked middle Eastern, and I kept thinking blankety-blank Arabs. I was not in a rational state of mind at the time.