The Roadtrip

I’ve always wanted to go on a road trip. Nowhere to be, the wind ruffling your hair as you drive along old Route 66 or some other equally wonderful road. In my head, this fantasy always included a cute little convertible, probably red. But blue would be okay too. I dreamed that I would be accompanied by a boyfriend or a best friend on this cross-country tour. Not my mother. And not in a 12-year-old Honda Civic with a stick shift. My car would be red, not two shades of green. And it would also not make a screeching noise every time someone tried to turn on the AC. It just wouldn’t.

However, the fates had something different planned out for me. My mom and I departed on Friday, the 19^th of August at six o’clock in the morning. Destination? Panama City Beach, Florida. And now you’re asking, Florida in August? Who in their right mind would brave those temperatures? Well. We did. Think of the hottest Rhode Island has ever been. Then, add about 20 degrees and enough humidity to feel like you're swimming. That, ladies and gentleman, was Florida in August. We were here to pick up my new car, my Grandpa's old car. My little green mutant.  And so we did. Despite the weather, we managed to do SOME fun things, like visiting the beach and riding in a helicopter for the first time.

Not to mention me learning how to drive a stick shift. That was embarrassing, but I got the hang of it after about a million stall-outs in the hotel parking lot. I still buck a little when I change gears, and I can ABSOLUTLEY not go from first gear on a hill, but that’ll come with time.

After two days, it was time to depart to our next stop on this crosscountry haul.  South Carolina. So we peeled out of Panama City Beach, car squealing. We drove
through Alabama and visited the giant peanut (see the picture!) and arrived in Spartanburg, South Carolina for one night. This was the town I was born in, I’m even named for the state, my middle name is Carolina. We visited some old friends and set off again, this time to Asheville, North Carolina.

Now, I was driving on the highway, through these long, twisting mountains. At night. The roads were so steep that the truckers had to travel in the right-hand lane with their hazards on. Thankfully, that only lasted for an hour or so, before ending with a Chinese fire drill in front of a semi because the stop light was on a very steep hill. We’ll just chalk that up to good experience. 

Anyway, we stayed with my aunt and our German friends for a few days and began the 18-or-20-we’re-not-really-sure-hour-long drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was beautiful. After one week of driving, we finally arrived home three nights ago at six o’clock. And I have to say, this cross-country jaunt has made me love my new car, despite the squeaking and the two different colors and the stick shift. 

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”

                                                                                   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Until next week,

Rach