Big Road Trip with Big Pay Off

Road Trip to the South.

When we agreed to live on campus, it was with the understanding that we’d leave for the bulk of the summer. So, last summer, before we had even moved into our new home at Lehigh, we had put down a deposit to rent a beach house in the South Carolina Lowcountry for 5.5 weeks.

The house is in Harbor Island, South Carolina. About 20 minutes outside of Beaufort. Between Charleston and Savannah. Braydon and I love this part of the country. Over the years our kids have been learning to love it too.

Believe it or not, one of the things we love about this place is the road trip to it.

As the road stretches further and further away from home, we become more and more removed from our daily routines, our habitual concerns, our day-in-day-out grind. As we move further and further south, we are forced to slow down and lose — a bit — our “Northern” (fast-paced, hurry-hurry-hurry, maximize every-single-second) ways. It is good for us.

This time the road trip was long. As it turns out, the planning, preparing, and packing for a 5.5 week trip for a family of 5 is pretty huge (we’ve never done anything like this before; we hadn’t quite anticipated just how much would have to go into it). The boys had just finished two weeks of sports camps (basketball, then baseball). Meera was at her wits’ end with a steady string of babysitters and life on campus. We were already exhausted and “done” before we even started.

We set out Friday afternoon. Quickly to hit massive bumper-to-bumer traffic interspersed with torrential rain. It forced us — even quicker than usual — to slow down and part ways with our habitual behaviors.

We were rewarded with a beautiful rainbow along the highway at sunset on Friday night.

We drove for over 6 hours, and spent the night in a hotel in Virginia. There’s lots of yuck on a family road trip (as anyone whose ever done it knows). I try to focus on the sweet moments that speckle the whole experience–

We woke up to bright skies, highways clear of traffic, and three kids who love to travel more than anything else in the world. (iPods, iPads, DVDs, and — once we get deep into the mid-Atlantic — Krispy Kremes tend to help!)

Braydon and I savor the hours of being trapped in a car together. We listen to an audio book together. And we look for our classic roadside milestones. Of course, this one is the biggest of all — the sure sign we’re officially “in the south” ~

That day we saw another roadside rainbow!

And then, the big pay-off. The views from the car window that say one thing so loudly and so quietly at the same time: We are in the Lowcountry. Beauty.

The bambinos just had to see the beach right away. Who could blame them? We made it just in time to have a slice of light left of the day. We got straight out of the car, after many, many hours of driving, to this:

We arrived to beauty beyond measure. Out on the low-tide-beach, we were flanked on one side with our 3rd rainbow of the trip, and on the other side the sunset.

This was the middle:

Then there was this:

And then we called it a night.

*

We woke up on Sunday to this:

And this:

And then this:

We have lots of goals for our time here this summer. But none of those goals involve accomplishing anything or checking anything off a list. We’re here to slow it down. To slow it way, way down. I’ll be blogging from Harbor Island, South Carolina for the next few weeks. Happy Summer!