Get-away

Yesterday my husband blessed me by telling me it was my turn to get away.

Woot! Woot!

I don't get away on my own (sans Brad or any number of children) often .....in fact the only time I can think of being away on my own in recent years was a couple weeks ago when I had to return to St. Joe Island for a family funeral.....not exactly the sort of get away one looks forward to. When you work for yourself, there are no paid vacations. You pay for the vacation before you go and then you pay for it again when you return in time.

Big family + self-employment = fewer vacations. I'm not complaining, it's the choice we've made.

But I'm excited....I've invited a friend along and we don't know where we're going yet but the anticipation and planning is half the fun.

When Brad worked for the Federal Justice Department and we lived in Yellowknife we had 3 great family vacations well, I missed the 1st one 'cause I started working for the Mounties and whey wouldn't give me the time. Brad drove back to Ontario with 5 kids.....that's a great story, but I digress. We took the entire month of January (Yellowknife = very cold + very dark) and hit the road.....it was awesome (and I don't use that word often). There wasn't "a" destination, but several: the one I most enjoyed was a circuitous route that included stops in Calgary, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Disney Land....well, you get the idea. We had no end of trouble on that particular trip with the vehicle we drove. It was a big white suburban with polar bear license plates.....we looked like a moving snow bank. The rear heater stopped working as we were driving out of the territories (in - 30 degree weather); the radiator went when we were driving through the desert; a belt broke in one of the front tires as we were driving through the red woods of BC and we lost power driving through the rockies. Add to that a problem that no garage seemed able to fix (even a chev specialist in Vegas); the burb would keep going slower and slower until Brad would just pull over, shut off the vehicle and wait......10 minutes, 20 minutes......whatever; eventually it would start fine and off we'd go again. But ya' know, it didn't ruin the journey but added to the flavour of what was already a great journey and provided us with some great memories and stories to tell!

A good trip reminds me our spiritual journey....it isn't just about the destination (though it's gonna be fabulous) but about enjoying the ride, "the journey" and even those hard things add to the flavour of our lives and leave us better off than we were.

So cool......

Where to go, where to go... Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Boston (love Boston), New York City.....I've always wanted to go to New York City but Brad has no desire to go there......I don't know but I don't care. It's gonna be fun 'cause I'm bringing a friend along for the ride.

Oh yeah.....the big old white suburban ran like a top for the final 2 hours of our month long trek. In fact, Brad's ankle got sore from holding his foot off the gas!

Go figure.

I'm stealing an idea I got from Tracy's blog (thanks Trace).....what great get-aways have you enjoyed? Did you encounter any problems along the way and, if so, did the problems add to your enjoyment or take away from it?

Anybody got an idea as to where we should go??