We left home last Sunday with a destination.
Well, technically, we had several destinations, a cabin named Ellie’s Escape, four dogs, enough stuff packed to suggest we might never return and Mabel, a brand-new Jeep neither one of us had completely figured out yet. 😂
We were headed to the mountains for our anniversary trip, and I had plans. There were places I wanted to see, things I wanted to do, pictures I knew I’d take, and experiences we’d probably talk about when we got home.
And we did all of those things.
But now that we’re home, I’m realizing some of my favorite parts weren’t on the itinerary at all.
Somewhere Between Here and There
It started before we even got where we were going.
There was Bubba discovering buttons behind Mabel’s steering wheel and announcing he’d be able to fly a spaceship by the next week. There was Alabama, where apparently our furry children decided the welcome center grass was precisely where they’d been waiting all morning to poop.
There was Slygo.
There was New England.
There was me realizing I could apparently visit both on the way to Tennessee without a passport. 😂
Then the mountains started showing up, cell service started disappearing, and suddenly our fancy technology wasn’t nearly as useful as Bubba my “deer-hog tracker” partner.
We hadn’t even reached the cabin yet, and some of the stories I’d remember most were already happening.
That’s pretty much how the rest of the week went.
We went places worth seeing. We stood in places where the view really could make you quiet for a minute. We walked through history. We saw things neither one of us had seen before.
And then I’d turn around and Bubba would do something.
😂
At Cable Mill, for instance, I genuinely asked why it was called Cable Mill when I couldn’t see any cables.
Turns out Cable was somebody’s last name.
Well.
That cleared that up.
We also happened to meet folks there from Greenwell Springs, Louisiana. Of all the people we could have crossed paths with in the Smoky Mountains, we found people from practically our own backyard.
Nobody scheduled that.
Nobody put it on the brochure.
But I remember it.
The Things You Can’t Put on an Itinerary
One evening we went to Dolly’s Stampede.
That one was planned.
But it felt different because Dolly had passed away just the week before. I had already decided that if her people said no videos, I wasn’t taking videos. I wasn’t about to come into somebody else’s house and ignore the rules.
So I took my pictures, put my phone away when I was supposed to, and enjoyed what was happening in front of me.
And somewhere in there, I found myself thinking about hospitality.
Not the fancy kind.
The kind that makes you feel like somebody thought about what it would be like for you to walk through the door.
That stayed with me.
So did the stranger who stopped long enough to take a picture for us.
So did Bubba repeatedly wanting to get into every body of water he saw.
So did hearing songs in Mabel that somehow seemed perfectly matched to whatever stretch of road we were traveling.
None of those things were why we went.
But they’re part of what came home.
And Then There Was Supper
Even our meals became part of it.
One night Bubba handled supper.
Then Bubba handled supper again.
At some point I began to wonder whether I had accidentally booked the Bubba Meal Plan with our cabin. 😂
But Georgia night was mine.
Mama had sent tortillas. I had shredded cheese tucked into a silicone bag and sour cream in a snack cup from home. Dollar General contributed two packs of Steak-umms and some shredded lettuce. The cabin pantry supplied seasoning and Worcestershire sauce.
And because apparently I cannot travel anywhere without Tony’s, I had some in a little Tupperware shaker.
I put the Steak-umms in a skillet on the right burner of that flat-surface stove and warmed tortillas right there on the left burner, flipping them over as I went.
No measuring.
No recipe card.
No carefully planned vacation meal.
We had burritos.
And they were supper.
That’s it.
Except now that I’m home, that ridiculous little cabin supper belongs in the story just as much as some of the places we paid admission to see.
The Ride Home
By Friday, Mabel was pointed toward Louisiana.
The closer we got, the more familiar everything became. Bubba eventually knew exactly where we were even when I didn’t. I was watching for deer. Music was playing. The miles kept disappearing.
And finally there was home.
Our driveway.
Our stuff.
Our bed.
Our regular life waiting for us.
We came home just in time for our anniversary on Saturday, although Louisiana apparently decided an eleventh anniversary needed a little extra excitement and gave us a busted water main nearby.
No water for hours.
Because of course. 😂
But we still had our anniversary. Bubba cooked. We had our margarita. We went to the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon light show. And when they said no pictures or videos once the show started, this coonass listened to her elders.
Again. 😂
Eleven years after saying “I do,” we were still going places together, still laughing, still finding ourselves in situations we couldn’t have planned.
And I think that’s what finally caught up with me.
Maybe That’s What Comes Home
We can plan the destination.
We can make reservations, buy tickets, pack bags, study maps and tell the GPS where we’d like to end up.
But we don’t get to choose which moments become keepsakes.
Sometimes it’s the mountain view.
Sometimes it’s the attraction you’ve been looking forward to for months.
And sometimes it’s your husband announcing he’s qualified for NASA because he discovered steering-wheel buttons.
It’s somebody from Louisiana showing up hundreds of miles from home.
It’s a song playing at just the right place on the road.
It’s tortillas warming on a cabin stovetop.
It’s a stranger taking your picture.
It’s the road Mabel chose that Bubba absolutely did not approve of until he figured out where she was taking us.
It’s finally seeing a deer.
It’s pulling into your own driveway.
Maybe the things we remember aren’t always the things we went there to see.
Maybe some of the best parts of going somewhere are the things that happen in between.
And maybe that’s why I came home with more than pictures.
I came home with stories.
Off the Apron
That little Georgia supper has been hanging around in my head because it wasn’t impressive at all.
It was simply what we had, where we were, made in a way that worked.
That’s one of the reasons Use What You Have ~ On Purpose sits right in the middle of my Chaos to Cozy Kitchen System™. It isn’t about becoming clever enough to turn every handful of ingredients into something spectacular. It’s about looking at what’s already available ~ food, time, energy, tools, help ~ and asking what can work tonight.
Apparently sometimes the answer is Steak-umms, Mama’s tortillas and a flat-surface stove in Georgia. 😂
And sometimes that’s plenty.
From the Porch
I don’t think I need to turn this vacation into a lesson.
I’d rather keep the mountain views, the music, the ridiculous conversations, the people we met, the meals we pieced together and all those little moments that weren’t supposed to be the important ones.
Because regular life will start moving again soon enough.
But today, I’m still smiling about Cable Mill having absolutely nothing to do with cables.
And I’m pretty sure that one is coming with me. ❤️
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