Well Hurricane Isais made our decision simple: we could leave a day early and drive through the outer bands of the storm on our way home, or ride out the tropical storm in a beachfront motel room and have a lovely drive home on Wednesday as we had planned. No contest!
The 7 hour drive home was going to be boring already so having it be boring and wet was no major sacrifice. But having to entertain ourselves in a beach town in the rain with high seas and heavy winds didn’t make sense. So we packed up and hit the road home. We took the direct route this time instead of the scenic one: I-95 South to 495 then the Mass Pike to the NY Thruway. Yawn. We hit some traffic around Haverhill MA so we hopped off the freeway and headed to my childhood home town of Billerica. I didn’t recognize a thing – including my old house! Granted it was a quick drive through and I shouldn’t expect anything to look the same after 37 years but I was hoping there would be one thing I could take a picture of that would be meaningful. Nope. Other than the Market Basket at the mall where I worked in high school, nothing was familiar. I did subject Frank to the litinay of “used to” tidbits: that’s where Jane used to live, that’s where O’Conner Hardware used to be, that’s where Tiki Hut used to be, etc.
Then back to the road. We were dry but cloudy until we just before we hit the NY state line. We had kept the top up to be safe and this was the longest span of covered convertible we had for the entire trip. Luckily we had good cell coverage the whole way so we went through every Pandora and Google Play list that we could think of. We drove through an active manhunt on the thruway outside Waterloo NY that we saw on the news when we go home. We stopped at Wegmans to pick up a rotisserie chicken and microwave fixings. And then it was home.
It’s quiet now since Buddy is still in the kennel and I’m still officially on vacation for one more day. So I’m off to tend to my veggies and sit in the hammock and read a book. I’ll be back to work tomorrow. Who knows when the next entry here will happen or where we’ll be. Stay safe and stay sane. We hope to “see” you soon!
Numbers for the trip:
- Total days away: 10
- Days without any rain: 1
- Miles driven: 2320
- Miles driven with the top down: ~1800
- Total steps recorded: 104K (avg 10K per day)
- Total steps taken: Way more than 104K
- Moose sightings: 2ish?
- Moose themed tchotchkes acquired: 6
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