You may have noticed some observations from the road this week. That’s because we’re traveling for a family wedding while a good friend watches over things at home for us. And though we may have mapped out, planned out, researched everything beforehand, part of the joy of a good road trip, are those parts of the journey you didn’t expect. The detours.
Before I get too far into the blog, I will first apologize for this Saturday delivery of my usual Friday weekly post! Consider this a special weekend edition of it. I contemplated not doing my weekly blog at all, using our travels as an excuse. But the fact is life always has interruptions and detours and if we stopped operating as business as usual simply for that reason, well, hell, we’d probably never get anything done…and I’d never post at all!
On this week’s trip, we learned about detours firsthand. A trip that normally should take only 8 to 8 1/2 hours of driving instead took about 11. Other members of the family experienced even worse conditions. We had no idea when we were stopping at a welcome center in Georgia, that a posted detour map and directions would be posted just outside the bathrooms. (We should have known that we were in for something when we were greeted by a torpedo at the center, because nothing says “welcome” center better than a torpedo!)
So after we left the welcome center, we had one mission and one mission only: embark on this detour! It was a little exciting. After all, we had no idea what these new country roads would offer. And if it meant keeping us off of a now closed-down I-95 that authorities were attempting to clear after a horrific accident that apparently resulted in deaths, we were totally fine losing a little time taking the slow route off the major highway to travel safely and to see some smaller towns.
And you know what happened when we took the detour? We ended up going on this beautiful bridge… mmm. And saw some lovely areas we would not have otherwise seen had we not been just a tad ‘detoured.’
Did we lose time with the detour? Well, the one drawback we did forget was if you send EVERYBODY on the exact same suggested route, at some point, all of these people will end up in their own backup of traffic. And we did. In all, we probably lost a good 90 minutes to 2 hours just from this portion of the trip alone. (We had no idea that we had more delays to come in both Georgia and South Carolina for different congestion issues.)
But in the end, we made it. And overall, we had a good trip. Why? Because we were not only patient with our day’s detours but we also did our best to embrace the spirit of a good detour which is to accept it as a new adventure and then set out for a journey, not dragging our feet in dread. And how many times in our lives do we get “stuck on” a detour only to reflect later and realize that had we not gone on this detour, we would not have…fill in the blank. Met this person…gotten this job… whatever wonderful thing might have happened to us as a result of falling off our original path. Detours can lead us to the most fantastic discoveries.
As you set out on your day today, embrace every detour. You never know who you might meet along the trek or what may be waiting on the other side. Happy trails to you during your own weekend adventures! ~ Chris
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