Home again, home again, jiggety j*thud*

[kickaha]

Back in NY after a rather bizarre week in NC. Yes, I know we didn't tell anyone we were coming... it was ginkgo's parents' 50th wedding anniversary on Friday, and we went down with the intent of me working, and she working her ass off with the party planning. And that's pretty much what happened. Managed to sneak in a coffee and a dinner, but otherwise it was pretty much a family-only week. It was great seeing the few folks we did, sorry to miss everyone else.

The party was... touching. It really was. It was pretty incredible to realize that they had people there who had attended their wedding, 50 years ago. Over a hundred people, less family than friends and adopted family over the decades - I can't think of a stronger testament to ginkgo's parents' kind hearts than that. I MC'd, and all I can say about that is, thank god it's over. Yikes.

9.5 hrs down, 9.25 hrs back, and some odd mileage notes along the way... measured from the in-laws' house in Raleigh, almost exactly (as in, the greatest variance was 2 miles):

VA state line: 100 miles
DC, middle of the beltline: 300 miles
Delaware Memorial Bridge: 400 miles
NJ Turnpike/Garden St Parkway: 500 miles
NY state line: 540 miles
Tappan Zee Bridge: 550 miles
Home: 560 miles

How very odd.

Folks in DC area, we waved when we went by at 11:30pm on the way down and 4:15 this morning, but we didn't think you *really* wanted a call at those hours...

And now, I go thud. Night all!

Comments

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

When we drove the Al-Can highway to Fairbanks and Anchorage and back (with the side trip to Skagway and the detour to the Top-of-the-World Highway) in '87 ('88?), it was 5500 miles to the tenth on the odometer from our front door to our front door.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Freaky. How was the trip? I'd like to make one like that up north some day. Done the NC->WA->NC jaunt, NC to Montreal and back, UT to CA a couple times, NC -> UT, UT -> WA, and soon maybe NY->ME, but nothing really above the Canuckian border.

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

It was pretty cool, actually, once you discount the fact that I was traveling with my family. Dad's road-vacation style for the first half-to-two-thirds is whenever anybody sees anything, we stop and check it out, whether it's a roadside historical marker "On this spot on August 23, 1805, Lewis bitch-slapped Clark for That Thing He Said About Certain People's Navigational Skills. The expedition had to encamp for three days while the swelling around Clark's eye went down and the blizzard passed over." or an A&W stand selling root beer in gallon milk jugs.

Eventually, he'll realize that we've covered maybe thirty percent of our route, but have consumed ten days of our two weeks, and suddenly we don't stop for nothing nohow no matter what. I'd been through Yellowstone three times before I went there with M., but always on the return leg, so three visits translated to about forty total minutes outside the car.

Anyway. There's lots of cool stuff on the way up, so it isn't just a 2,000-mile slog through nothing. The detour to Skagway is a must-do, as the launch point for the Yukon Gold Rush. The salvaged remains of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge were used to build one of the bridges along the Al-Can Highway, that was kind of neat to find out. (Dad's dad took pictures of the actual collapse; he was taking a photography class at Olympic College at the time.) Dawson is cool to see. The scenery along the Top-of-the-World Highway is pretty spectacular, if I remember correctly. And if you've never done Denali NP, what the hell are you waiting for? (Allow a couple of days in/around Denali; the mountain is hidden literally four out of five days, no matter the season.)