Trip the same, but the journey has changed
- Brett Hiner: A Work in Progress
- July 6, 2023
- 538
For the better part of almost 25 years, every summer my family and I head south for a week or two.
Anxiously awaiting the end of school-year duties to clear, and before graduate classes and summer sports seasons kick into high gear, the car gets loaded, the gas tank topped off, and the hope that we do not end up like Clark Griswold and his family “truckster” floats through the back of my mind. I wish I could say we have not had our Griswold-like moments, but in hindsight they do make for some terrific stories.
A wrong turn or two to avoid the insane traffic, a flat tire, the inevitable donut replacement followed by a six-hour wait in a North Carolina Walmart Tire and Lube “express,” a broken wheel casing leading to a rental van ride home and a 16-hour drive, there and back, two days later to retrieve our van. And, my goodness, the hours and hours spent in insanely long and congested Chik-fil-A drive-thru lines scattered along I-77 South, all for those delectable waffle fries.
For the most part, preparation for the journey has not changed much. Packing has gotten much easier; strollers and pack 'n plays, portable DVD players and sand castle building necessities have been replaced with Spikeball, Kan-Jam, ball gloves and cell phones. Baby bottles and formula have been replaced with bottled water and Crystal Light flavored drink mixes. And much to my delight, Gerber Puffs Cereal Snacks, of which I did not partake, has been replaced with Jack Links Beef Jerky, of which I do partake.
And Jack Links is a little adventure all on its own because you might chomp into a piece that is super soft, full of flavored, smokey goodness, while your next piece will literally be so tough that a hyena would have difficulty ripping through it.
On our most recent trip, as my four passengers either drifted off to sleep, got wrapped up in a book or streamed all five seasons of "Cobra-Kai" for the 78th time, I was struck by, or maybe just paid more attention to, both the man-made and natural wonders of our journey.
Route 250 to Strasburg is still, well, 250 to Strasburg. Dodging the Amish community and hopeful of not getting stuck behind a truck often makes for the worst part of the drive. It certainly is on the way home when that 40-minute stretch to the driveway off of I-77 can often turn into a solid hour or more.
The past several years, we have seen the construction and completion of a massive power station in Guernsey County. Looking like something straight off some kind of futuristic movie set, it is a 1,875 megawatt natural gas fired energy-generation facility that produces electricity roughly equivalent to serve the power needs of approximately 1.4 million homes. Research tells me it is a cost-efficient, fuel-efficient plant that protects air quality and conserves water.
This structure and numerous bridges and tunnels are a testament to human ingenuity and perseverance. The flip side to that, of course, is all the drivel one finds himself reading on West Virginia bumper stickers and billboards — one of which equates a former president to Jesus, followed by an exit to Adult Mart. One of these days, maybe, I will make an effort to see the West Virginia John Denver sang about.
Traditional trip sightings like Biscuitville advertisements, not to be confused with Biscuit World, have become synonymous landmarks for the trip. Who needs the Waze App when you have a bread crumb trail of Biscuitvilles from Virginia to the Atlantic Ocean to lead the way?
Two of our three children grew up reading Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson” series, so when we drive past Metropol’s Statuary in North Carolina, there is always a conversation about how great those books are but also a sense of excitement because the location has become an annual telling to the proximity of our destination — that and all the signs offering a free hermit crab with the purchase of, well, anything.
No longer needing to break the trip up with an overnight stay, thus taking the fastest route possible, we now drive by Pilot Mountain outside of Mt. Airy, North Carolina (Andy Griffith’s hometown that served as the inspiration for Mayberry) and have a terrific view of The Knob — the pinnacle piece of the mountain with a rising peak of 2,241 feet above sea level. It reminds me a bit of Devil’s Tower, the mountain made famous in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” but with hair.
Just under two years ago, 1,050 acres surrounding The Knob caught on fire, but you would be pretty hard-pressed to notice the damage; nature often has a way of healing itself from the miscues of man.
Ultimately, our destination was reached, and the ocean provided, as it often does, some of the necessary fulfillment and peace needed to traverse the coming year.
As we were packing the car to head home, my wife and I rode down in an elevator with a mom and dad from Georgia; that is my guess based on their head-to-toe Bulldog attire. Dad was weighed down with enough bags to fill a semi truck while Mom was doing her best to keep her two kids, clearly exhausted and “ocean-ed” out, from breaking the sound barrier in an elevator.
The couple was clearly not happy with each other — last night of vacation packing is about as stressful as it gets for young parents — so we looked at each other and smiled, a quiet acknowledgement of years and vacations past. It is a bittersweet reminder of how the evolution of what gets packed for a trip, and the journey it takes to get there, provides the snapshots for that period in our lives — snapshots that, this year, included Spikeball, beef jerky and blessed memories.
Brett Hiner is an English/language arts teacher at Wooster High School, where he also serves as the yearbook advisor and Drama Club advisor/director. If he’s not at work or doing something work related, he is typically annoying his children and/or wife. He can be emailed at workinprogressWWN@gmail.com.