To The Lake

Morning On Interstate # 70 Near Kansas City

7:24 AM

I am sitting in the Hampton Inn lounge, just off of Interstate # 70, near Dayton, Ohio, for the last time in I hope quite a while, say next April or May when we decide to go on another road trip.  Right now, all we want to do is get home to our home, our lake, our living room, our bed.  I am the only one sitting here at 6:00, having gotten up early because we were in bed 9:30 and we are in a new time zone.

Monday was a busy morning for all of us; Evie and I were up at 5:30, as both of us were thinking about our long drive and wanted to get a head start.  By 6:00, Marlena, Mary and Tom were up as well, getting their morning started.  Nick was due to get up at 7:00 and drive back to Arkansas about 8:00.  We were on the road, heading towards the sunrise, over Interstate 70, which will be our main route until we hit Columbus and head north towards Cleveland.  It's Trucker Alley, hundreds and hundreds of trucks to pass, going east and west, probably carrying Amazon Prime packages.  We made good time, better than I thought and we had time to stop at a grocery store Meijers literally next to our Hampton.  We stopped because there are no easily accessible groceries stores on our way home and we wanted to get some staples for tonight's dinner at the lake.

Sunset In Ohio at 5:28

We checked into our Hampton by 4:30, relaxed until 6:30 then drove about a mile to a Mexican restaurant called El Toro Bar And Grill.  It was fairly quiet, we easily found a seat at the bar, Evie had a beer and I had a margarita. We ordered Mexican, what else, neither dish was worth mentioning and we were not that hungry.  It was good, however, to just sit down and relax for an hour and think back about the past few weeks.  We had done a lot, driven many miles but best of all, we were able to spend time Beth and Tom and their families.  We miss them already.

We have a six-hour drive today, should be home early afternoon, perhaps in time for Evie to fire up the lawn mower and mulch some leaves. Now that our road trip is almost over, it all seems as if it never happened, like it was just our imagination.  I feel that way, too, about our early lives in both Hawaii and Istanbul. Did we really live there? The past is gone, finito, bye bye.