Techless road trip
I spent the weekend mostly without cellphone service and completely without internet. We took a long road trip - a return to days gone by when we dropped everything to drive 24 hours in the car to spend 12 hours enjoying a certain beach, a national forest or a natural hot spring. The was, of course, before kids and before we both had real jobs, when cheap was more important than clean. Long before we had dreamed of anything as revolutionary as personal GPS devises.
Usually when I visit a city where I have lots of old friends, I spend my time with them, and I visit all the typical tourist institutions - museums, attractions, well known eateries. This trip was the opposite. Save a quick hour at a park to break-up the trip home, I didn't call anyone to let them know we were coming.
The first night - in the city of my mother's birth - we found a country-western bar and listened to a live band, eating ribs with the kids until 11pm. The second day we went to only one "tourist activity" in a town completely inundated with ways to spend your day (and your money - it is also referred to as a tourist trap) and the "world's only talking mime" was a bigger hit than the fireworks - it was, after all 4th of July weekend). The third day we blew off every attraction and spent the day wandering through street fairs, Chinatown and in the evening we headed to a harbor-side music/cultural expo. With no actual tour plan, the trip was much more relaxing than I expected. We ate when we felt like it, and when we weren't meandering through town, we were swimming in hotel pools. We swam so much that the kids haven't missed swimming today.
It was relaxing to be tech-free. Since it's summer, I plan to blog less, e-mail less and check Facebook only 20 times instead of 145 per day. Last week, with no internet access I read more (I finished Commencement in 2 days, and I'm half way through People of the Book - like the first one, love the 2nd) and I knit more - finished a wedding gift and nearly finished a hat.
More travel, more knitting, more reading... despite how stressed out I have been feeling and all the rain, Summer 2009 ain't that bad!
Usually when I visit a city where I have lots of old friends, I spend my time with them, and I visit all the typical tourist institutions - museums, attractions, well known eateries. This trip was the opposite. Save a quick hour at a park to break-up the trip home, I didn't call anyone to let them know we were coming.
The first night - in the city of my mother's birth - we found a country-western bar and listened to a live band, eating ribs with the kids until 11pm. The second day we went to only one "tourist activity" in a town completely inundated with ways to spend your day (and your money - it is also referred to as a tourist trap) and the "world's only talking mime" was a bigger hit than the fireworks - it was, after all 4th of July weekend). The third day we blew off every attraction and spent the day wandering through street fairs, Chinatown and in the evening we headed to a harbor-side music/cultural expo. With no actual tour plan, the trip was much more relaxing than I expected. We ate when we felt like it, and when we weren't meandering through town, we were swimming in hotel pools. We swam so much that the kids haven't missed swimming today.
It was relaxing to be tech-free. Since it's summer, I plan to blog less, e-mail less and check Facebook only 20 times instead of 145 per day. Last week, with no internet access I read more (I finished Commencement in 2 days, and I'm half way through People of the Book - like the first one, love the 2nd) and I knit more - finished a wedding gift and nearly finished a hat.
More travel, more knitting, more reading... despite how stressed out I have been feeling and all the rain, Summer 2009 ain't that bad!
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