April 20 – “Coming your way”

Here’s a quick vacation planning update.  It’s how we spent our Sunday afternoon.  My job has been to map out a general route for us to take, main cities, nearest major roads, that sort of thing. Chris is in charge of what we do along the way.  We are essentially heading to the Louisville, Kentucky area, but whatever we hit before and after are still negotiable, and will be even as we drive.  That’s the greatest kind of vacation, you know.  It’s the only way to find three-headed cows and the largest rocking chair in the world.  Chris had a great idea for the before and after scenario.  We are going to make this, very loosely, a Civil War site trail.  Some of the places are set in stone.  Others depend on how interesting they look once we get there.  I would like to stop in on some of the fire stations along the way and maybe trade some patches or something.  If you recognize any of the places, let us know.  We might just drop in on you, if invited.

We know that we have to go through Alexandria, Louisiana.  That’s where we have a drop-off to one of Chris’s half-sisters.  Second leg puts us going through Vicksburg, Mississippi to the Corinth area, which is relatively near the Shiloh battleground.  From there we head to Huntsville, Alabama, and on over to Fort Oglethorpe and Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee.  From there we’ll head north and drive the Abraham Lincoln trail just south of Louisville, before heading into the city and the Louisville Slugger Museum, destined to be a major highlight of the journey. 

And that’s where everything gets murky.  My route has us on somewhat of an ultimately biblical trek.  We head north through Cincinnati, Ohio, and through Columbus.  From there we go through Wheeling, West Virginia, and with a slight detour to the north along the way we see the Little League World Series fields in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.  Then back on the road until we hit the biblical portion of our journey: Bethlehem (Pennsylvania).  Then, since we’ll be so close, we could head north and drive through Vermont, just to say we’ve been there (It’s one of three of the lower 48 that I haven’t been to.  The others are Minnesota and North Dakota … and I have a plan.  Chris has never been to Utah, but I’m not sure yet about that one.  I have to check alternate routes if she wants to check that one off her bucket list).  From Vermont we’ll drive west through Chicago and on into Minnesota.  Check off number two.  If I can talk Chris into it, we can then keep on a westerly heading and make our way through North Dakota before heading back south (with some adjustments, maybe through Utah, eh, Chris?), probably swinging through Waco when we get back into Texas. 

We have almost three weeks to fit in whatever comes up.  And as is our custom, if we see something that looks like fun, we’ll change the route.  And if we are having fun in one spot, we may just stick around there the whole time.  Gotta love an unplanned, semi-controlled-chaos vacation.  Oh, and I guess I never mentioned, the whole reason we are even taking a vacation … June 6^th is our 40^th wedding anniversary.  Gotta make it memorable. 

Matthew 25:14 says, “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them.”

Father, thank you for the excitement of planning a journey.  Thank you as well that we can know you will be traveling with us.  Amen.