“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets”- Arthur Miller
After Bullhead, or maybe after San Diego, my trip (and what little planning I’d planned) took on a life of it’s own and changed completely. I was fifteen days into my thirty day trip and I’d originally planned to spend the final fifteen slowly meandering eastward towards home. Instead, the final leg of my trip became one of had-to-go-to’s and needed-to-be’s and this is how it went-
-after getting my 100 some odd mile taste of Route 66 I got onto US40 and stopped for the day in Holbrook AZ. I needed to get the oil changed in my truck and the Holbrook exit promised both a garage and a KOA in Navajo country. The next morning I stopped for coffee at the Mavericks a mile from the KOA and a half mile from US40, and when I tried to pay for my coffee refill, the woman at the register started winking at me and saying that she couldn’t charge me for water. I winked back and thanked her.
-in Albuquerque I found the Apple store in the sprawling horizontal mall that is Uptown and spent an hour or so talking to the Apple Genius about my trip while he got my laptop working again. Back on US40 I made it to Santa Rosa and the Santa Rosa Lake State Park where “primitive” camping was $10 a night and where I opted to pay an additional $10 for a campsite with a grill and picnic table and access to showers and bathrooms. For a few hours I considered staying in Santa Rosa for a couple of days before finding out that the window for my visit with friends in Oklahoma had shrunk to the following day.
-crossing the top part of Texas I was reminded of the saying that “in Texas, you can watch your dog run away for days”. Kansas and parts of Nevada are flat but Texas says- hold my beer, I’ll show you flat. I’d like to go back someday and maybe I will but I needed to get to Oklahoma and my next overnight visit (which was really fun) before my friends had to leave for Oklahoma City and their grandkids.
-next up was Little Rock Arkansas and an overnight with an old family friend and his soon-to-be bride. I got a tour of Little Rock and a catfish dinner at one of those little places that have been doing something for a long time and have perfected it. After that was some bar hopping and then home. It was in Little Rock that I decided to head home. I don’t know why.
-after driving through Memphis and Nashville TN I stayed in the Hampton Inn in Mount Juliet because the campgrounds were full of NASCAR fans and because I needed a shower.
-in Wytheville VA I stayed at another beautiful KOA. KOA’s are kinda pricey compared to other campgrounds, but each of the KOA’s I stayed in on this trip were amazing and, once again, I thought about staying a couple of days. But I was back in Virginia and within the gravitational pull of home.
So, the next day, home I went.
Do I have regrets? Of course. I don’t think you could take a trip like this and not have regrets. Do I wish I’d kept to my original and blown off my friends and father and spent a couple of weeks exploring the Southwest and Texas? Maybe. But then I’d probably have regretted not stopping and visiting with friends and family.
There were, and always will be, places I’d like to have gone to, things I’d like to have seen. But America is a big place and I only had thirty days so I did the best I could.
And liked what I saw.
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