Road Trip USA: When bad things happen on good trips
Under the pale lights of our one-room cabin at Pocahontas State Park, I stare at the ceiling fan. I watch a moth drunkenly search for an exit, trapped between the window and the screen. I watch a small beetle scuttle its way up my pant leg. My mind is numb. My face and hands are covered in grease. I lay still as a corpse, supine on the top bunk, fully clothed in filthy jeans and dirt-caked hikers. My fiancée curls up below me, choking back tears. We’ve been stranded now three days, the trailer jacked up and one wheel short in a campsite around the bend. I know what she’s thinking, and I am, too. What I wouldn’t give to be home ...
That we should end up here — floating belly-up in a tailing pond of shame and self-pity outside Richmond, Va., one of our favorite cities in America — is, though unfortunate, probably fair. We are five months into our year-long journey through the lower 48 states, and until now, the trip has been relatively conflict-free. Of course, two adults with a penchant for autonomy are bound to argue, cooped up as we almost always are in a 16-foot travel trailer. We’ve argued about everything — probably twice. We’ve fought wars over who should sleep closest to the windows, over where one should stand when helping the other back into a campsite. But we’ve also watched the wind whip up clouds of fine white gypsum over White Sands National Monument. We’ve sipped tequila with Pulitzer Prize-winning authors in Podunk border towns, eaten exquisite regional cuisine, shared a midnight kiss under a flaming fleur-de-lis in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve. All told, we land firmly in the “blessed” column, well aware of the fact that travel is — first and foremost — a luxury.
