Family Trip, Part 3

When Jeff, Griffin and I go to the mountains, we basically get on a nice four-lane highway and head west. My parents and my brother and his family (who live 5 minutes away from my parents) travel northwest, mostly on an interstate.

There's a town near the intersection of these two roads that has become our annual meeting place. There's a restaurant there that has something for everyone. The kids can stretch their legs, and it leaves us with just another half-hour drive to get to our destination.

There's always a sense of excitement when we leave the restaurant. We're in a three-car follow-the-leader for the last part of the trip, and that has become sort of the official beginning of our vacation together.

Once we get to the house, it's usually pretty chaotic. We figure out who's going to sleep where, then we start getting the stuff out of the cars.

On the first night, we make homemade pizzas at the house. It's easy to make, everybody loves it, and we don't have to get everybody piled back into the cars to go out.

Actually, we eat most of our meals at the house. We divvy up the grocery-buying and cooking responsibilities. We've got a pretty good rhythm down.

As far as keeping busy, we try not to. Some of us have a hard time not getting antsy (namely my brother and me), but we try to force ourselves to relax and not be on a schedule.

We found out that a community center in the closest town has free Friday evening concerts during the summer, so we decided to check it out this year. The band sets up on the front porch of a historic house, and audience members bring their own chairs and sit in the yard.

As we listened to the first band, we saw some storm clouds drifting by. We were a little concerned, but no rain came, so we stayed for the next band. After they had sung about three songs, my Mama leaned toward us and said, "We need to go."

We've always said that Mama has some witch-y tendencies. She often knows things before the rest of us. So we didn't question it when she said we needed to leave.

We were parked about three blocks from the community center, so we started walking. We got into the car and had time to buckle our seatbelts, and I kid you not, the heavens opened. It came a monsoon.

And what do I hear from the backseat of my car? "I told you we needed to leave," Mama said.

We decided to get some dinner, so we headed to a restaurant we enjoyed last year. We could barely see the road for the rain, then the hail started.

We got to the restaurant only to find that it had closed, and a chain restaurant had moved in. We pulled into a parking lot to check out our other food options on the GPS. Our restaurant rule is that we don't eat at chains while we're on vacation. But we couldn't see where we were going, and we didn't know anything about many of the other restaurants. So we settled on a chain buffet restaurant. I have to admit that it turned out to be really good.

A quick sidenote ... as we were leaving town Sunday, our plan was to stop somewhere and have lunch together before we headed to our respective homes. As we turned at an intersection, we saw a couple of people on the sidewalk holding signs advertising that restaurant that we liked last year. It hadn't closed after all; it just moved. So we went in and had a nice lunch together.

When we were at the house, we usually clustered into small groups. A couple of people would watch TV. A couple would sit on the deck. A couple would shoot pool on the pool table in the rec room.

One night, my 8-year-old nephew and I were sitting in the living room alone. We were talking about whatever topics came up. Then he asked me something about Biscuit. I answered him, and he just nodded his head and looked around like he was thinking.

In a quiet voice, he said, "Aunt Kim, I sure am glad you had him."

I just smiled at him. "I sure am glad I had him, too," I said.

We always have a good time together ... the 10 of us, but some of those little moments are just the icing on the cake.

Here are a few more pictures from the trip:

Jeff relaxing in the glider on the deck.

The view from the deck.

Our neighbor.

The view from the deck just before sunrise.

Biscuit standing on the bridge that did not offer river access like the website said it would.