Be It Ever So Humble, There’s No Place Like Home

Well, after two weeks on the road, we got home to Columbus this afternoon about 3:00. Rather than try to drive the nearly eleven hours straight through, we left yesterday and broke up the trip. My original plan was to spend last night in Charlottesville, which is really a beautiful town. However, yesterday was the University of Virginia’s graduation, and there were no rooms to be found anywhere remotely nearby. Instead, we decided to go on to another college town, Lexington, home of VMI and Washington & Lee University.

We found a hotel room and went in search of dinner and a theater to see The DaVinci Code. While driving around Lexington, we had a look at the two college campuses–they make a stark contrast–and then stumbled upon Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. I actually had no intention to doing so, and I definitely wasn’t looking for it. However, having stumbled upon it, I couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to go in. We visited Old Blue Light’s grave, and then went on. Unfortunately, it was too late to visit Robert E. Lee and Traveler, so I will have to save that for another trip.

The Outer Banks were just spectacular. We had a great time there–I could easily see spending the rest of my life there without much difficulty. We made some new friends, ate some great food, got a golden retriever puppy fix (thanks, Roy, Charlie and Brunson), flew a kite on the beach, visited all four light houses, climbed two of them, and ate some really terrific sea food. All things considered, it was an incredible trip, even if we did have to cram two weeks’ worth of stuff into Susan’s New Beetle convertible, which is, for all intents and purposes, a two-seat car with a TINY trunk. She’s a packing wizard, and we managed, but I’m still not sure how (I made my first trip to a coin laundromat since college, and remembered why I find them distasteful).

Saturday morning, the last thing we did before we left was to visit the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk, including climbing the Big Hill, as it’s known, to visit the gorgeous art deco monument atop the hill. Living just an hour from Dayton, I’ve been hearing about the Wright Brothers and their feat for as long as I’ve lived in Ohio, so it was a real treat finally seeing the site where they made their fame. I’d already seen one of their flyers at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, so I knew what to expect, but it was moving to see the reproduction of their flyer where it made history.

I’m not happy about being home, and I’m a lot less happy about the prospects of returning to work tomorrow after being gone for two weeks. However, the dogs were thrilled to see us, and we were even more thrilled to see them after two long weeks. Aurora has grown a great deal while we’ve been gone, and she’s no longer the tiny puppy she was when we left. She’s almost ready to start making the switch to adult food from her puppy food. It seems like just yesterday that we brought her home.

The only good thing about being home is that I will be getting back to work on Dahlgren in earnest this week for the first time since the first week of March. After fourteen days of sleeping in bad hotel beds, we’re REALLY looking forward to our Tempurpedic tonight. So, I guess that means being home is a mixed bag. 🙂