There’s only one other thing in the world that comes close to my love for traveling. And that is my love for planning the next trip, the next journey, the next travel adventure to go on. There’s nothing quite as much fun (except going on the trip itself, duh!) than sitting in front of the computer, google-ing away dream destinations from your wish list, watching all the available options unfold in front of you on the computer screen and making the trip happen.For months endlessly, I had talked about the wild ponies that live on Assateague Island on Maryland’s eastern coastline and how much I really, really wanted to see them. I changed the wallpaper on my laptop to match photos of the beautiful coast line found on the internet. I stalked blogs that barely mentioned the words Assateague and ponies together in a sentence. I fantasized collecting shells along the beach. Heck, I even joined the virtual tourist forum to find out all I could about the place. The plan was to camp by the seashore in December because there would be few other people as stupid as us to camp in the dead middle of winter, and it would be the perfect, un-populated, blissful nature retreat. I made camping arrangements. I called the national park service and made sure there would be ponies around when we visited. I checked and re-checked the weather. I made sure I packed in just the right clothes in preparation for the bitter cold weather along the shoreline. And then I rechecked the weather one more time the day before we were set to leave, and that’s when it happened. A sudden storm and a flood watch warning along Maryland’s east coast literally washed our plans away.
We (Joe and I) had just four days of vacation time between us to make the trip happen in. It had to be at a reasonable driving distance from Indiana because buying air tickets and doing car rentals just wasn’t an affordable last minute option. And so we did what any other panicky, desperate-to-travel, I-will-sell-my-soul-to-get-out-of-here-to-go-somewhere person does – we brought out the big road map of the United States, looked for Indiana and searched for nearest big patch of green on the map within a seven hour drive of northern Indiana. For those of you that have never looked into a road map of the USA, green patches represent forests and trees, a welcome break from the concrete jungle that is the rest of America. An ice storm that swept through the Midwest the night before the grand trip closed off roads going up north and to the east, and with Lake Michigan to the west, the only way left to go was down south. I placed a finger on the map and trailed it down south, finally resting at a spot on the map where three states converged to meet as one. I picked up my highlighter and circled the area “Right here. This is where we’re going. The tri-state area of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee.” I concluded.
Coming up next: DAY 1 - CUMBERLAND GAP NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK (KENTUCKY-VIRGINIA-TENNESSEE)
~vagabond~ © 2008
