Our Day Trip

I woke this morning in a fog. I have had several days in a row that were physically and emotionally exhausting. It was a good week...good exhaustion...but I truly felt my brain was in a fog this morning and I just couldn't get my act together. So Dan and I decided to take one of our day trips just scouting out new territory. He got a GPS this week and since the weather was glorious we thought this would be a good day to try it out. So he stuck the thing in his old Trooper and we headed south...armed with camera and an atlas in case we couldn't figure out this new technology.

We decided to go to Lynchburg. Neither of us had been there before but we have heard a lot about Miss Mary Bobo's restaurant and the Jack Daniel's Distillery. We don't like to drink the stuff but the place sounded interesting and it was a destination we could program into the GPS and have fun viewing the Fall foliage along the way.

It turned out to be an incredible adventure. First off, you sure don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the GPS. It was awesome! We figured we could probably have added at least two years to our lives if we had gotten one of these ages ago instead of wandering around looking for places we couldn't find! Just a few weeks ago, Jared and I got off four different exits looking for a Starbucks while traveling home from Hilton Head. Never did find one! But with this little baby, we can now program in Starbucks and VOILA! We not only have the directions but a voice tells us when to turn and how much farther it is.

Speaking of the voice...we were tooling down the road shortly after leaving the house and this loud female voice shouts out "TURN LEFT IN TWO-TENTHS OF A MILE". I about threw the directions booklet up in the air. Scared me to death. Pretty soon I was playing with the languages and had our girl speaking with a pretty British accent. We have decided to name her "Elora", a name that seemed to fit her and is a favorite of mine from an old movie. I also learned how to turn her voice down a bit so it didn't blast us out each time.

Now Dan had fun all day playing head games with Elora. I expected any minute for her to scream "Make up your bloody mind!" because he did yet another U-turn or we saw something interesting we had to turn around to check out... You see that is what our day trips are for...exploring, relaxing, seeing beautiful scenery, watching for wildlife, hitting the garage sales and flea markets, talking about ideas and laughing together. No worries, no phones, no messages, no one pulling at us......just relaxing. I needed that today and I must have thanked Dan a dozen times for realizing it!

Now this was not an expensive day. It wasn't luxurious. It cost us a cheap lunch at an out-of-the-way diner and a Sonic chocolate malt and a few bucks at a gift store where I bought a small Christmas present. But it was as wonderful a getaway as if we had planned a cruise for a day. The trees are getting more and more colorful and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. We took beautiful country roads with twists and turns and deer and cattle and horses and hawks and lots of wildlife everywhere. So calming to the spirit and balm to the soul.

Lynchburg was fun but in reality it was just a destination. It's the adventures along the way that make a day like today glorious. We walked through historic Lynchburg, in and out of a few little shops. We sat on a bench in the square and drank icy cold apple cider. We talked uninterrupted. We laughed at each other. We had fun oohing and ahhing over the new GPS (That thing is AMAZING!) and we got some ideas from looking at homes and landscaping that we want to incorporate at our place.

It doesn't take a lot of money or blocking out a week of work and responsibilities to get refreshed and rejuvenated. And taking a leisurely ride through the country to see the beauty around us does wonders to help one be reminded of the many blessings we have right under our nose if we just open our eyes to see. God gave us an incredible landscape in Tennessee and I am sure each person reading this can say the same about their own neck of the woods. When was the last time you drank it all in? I promise it will be as refreshing as a cool glass of apple cider in Autumn!