Home Sweet Kitty Cat

Road Trip Day 14: Lexington - Durham

It’s eerie how quickly we can adapt to change in life. Like, really eerie.

I’m sitting here reflecting on the final day of our trip after a very long day at work. I thought the transition back to work would be slower but it picked back up like I had never left. It’s funny how long the trip felt for me, but for the rest of my coworkers it probably felt like I just left yesterday.

Yesterday was the day we finally made it back home to Durham, NC.

It feels so weird. Like I said, it’s funny how quickly we adapted to the traveling lifestyle. Waking up, packing up, driving to the next location, finding dinner, and settling in. And now we’re thrust back into our “normal” life again.

We just finished a Chickfila dinner in our own house and are now sitting here like, “we have so much time on our hands now.” 

Anyways, yesterday we woke up in Lexington feeling groggy again. This time it was even worse than Kansas City. In fact I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, thinking it was like 4 am because of how tired I was. I was shocked when I looked at my phone and it was 7:30 am! I quickly set an alarm for 8:30 because I knew we would too easily sleep in until 11 and never make it home.

We had originally planned on visiting the Kentucky Horse Park and do a trail ride that morning. The rides are first come first serve and you can’t sign up until 9 am. The first available ride for the day also isn’t until 12:30, which would have put us home around 9 or 10 last night.

When waking up at 8:30 felt impossible, we made the tough call. We decided we would rather plan another trip to Kentucky and be able to spend more time at the park. This way we wouldn’t feel rushed and we could make it home at a reasonable time.

Not to mention, our rushed morning at Kansas City was not much fun at all, and being able to have a chill Sunday morning sounded glorious.

We were even able to stop at a delicious coffee shop, which (unlike Rapid City) also had amazing donuts!

We got a cinnamon sugar, graham cracker, funnel cake, and chocolate chip pancake (which actually tasted just like a pancake, syrup and everything).

The coffee was so much better than hotel coffee! 

The timing of our morning worked perfectly once again (praise the Lord). We got in the car with our donuts and coffee and were able to live stream church for the first stint of our drive. It was such a beautiful way to start the day.

After church (which was a fantastic sermon on when Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac) we continued on our journey. At this point there were about 6 hours left and only 3 hours left in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Oh, we also decided with this plan we’d get home in time to grab some Popeyes and watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So we were pretty excited!

We were also excited to see the puppies and kitty cat of course.

The next 6 hours went by pretty fast with minimal stops. Well, not exactly. The next 3 hours did. The last couple hours felt long when we got on the familiar roads leading home. At that point we just wanted to be home, but the roads just kept winding along endlessly.

It’s crazy how far we traveled on our trip. We haven’t done all the math, but it was around 6,000 miles (or 10,000 kilometers as my coworker pointed out this morning). It was long enough that we had to stop and buy more oil for the car!

3 long hours later and we had our Popeyes and headed home. Gosh, it felt surreal.

The puppies were beyond excited! CJ was too! They all stormed to the door to meet us, jumped around in excitement, and barked a bunch. CJ rolled all over the ground and then ran away when Lucy noticed her and chased her off.

Wow, the garden is massive now! We walked out there and it’s like a jungle in our backyard. The pumpkin vines have decided to leave our garden plot and venture into the actual yard, and the cucumber that we once feared would die has done a similar feat. We had a bunch of ripe peppers, but unfortunately, all the peaches shriveled and died. The tree might have a disease.

It’s funny how different the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie is from the book. Like all the main plot points are the same, they did great with that, but the amount they cut out is crazy. I mean it makes sense, but it’s still crazy. The movie just felt way too fast! There were scenes that lasted 15 minutes on screen but took us 3 hours of listening. The book just adds so much more suspense, and also answers dozens of questions the movie leaves out.

After the short movie, we went to bed. In our own bed in our own house. And the journey of life continues. Just in a different venue for now.

It still feels surreal, but soon we’ll be looking back at the road trip, and that will be the foreign lifestyle. 

I’ll say it one last time, it’s funny how quickly we can adapt. The last bit of reflection I have is actually a reiteration of how beautiful it is that when I adapt in life, I get to adapt to it with my beautiful wife by my side. That’s such a blessing I will never take for granted.