… and sometimes you just go home.
First, a few updates! A lot has changed since our last high point. We had our second son, Maverick, on February 16th and we’ve spent the last nine weeks adjusting to life with two boys. Atlas is an awesome big brother although it took him a few weeks to accept the baby was sticking around.
And with the excitement of welcoming a new life into our world also came some sadness as we said goodbye to our sweet little Turkey dog. He was close to 15 years old and lived a life full of adventure. We will certainly miss him in our home and on the trail.
Now, before Maverick was born we mapped out a road trip that would give us three more high points. The route was pretty ambitious… we would take seven days and drive towards Virginia Beach to see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and then head north to get high points in New Jersey and Delaware. We wanted to stop at Diggerland for our construction equipment loving boy, and then we would drive through Washington D.C. on the way home and get the high point there too. We decided we would make it happen towards the end of my maternity leave — at that point Mav would be about 7 weeks old. At three years old Atlas is a champ on the road and at 7 weeks we figured Mav would just sleep most of the time — how hard could it be? Sound crazy? Yeah, it was.
We hit the road on March 23, 2021 feeling so confident that we got two kids and the car packed up and were on our way before 10am. We had no real plan for the first day, we figured we would stop as often as we needed and once everyone got too cranky we’d find a place to stay for the night. We made it to Roanoke, VA, which is about 5.5 hours from Chattanooga, but it took us about 8 to get there with constant milk/diaper/potty stops. We’d been to Roanoke before and it was late so we ordered dinner and got the kids in bed. I think at this point we realized our original plan was NOT going to happen – we were absolutely exhausted, still waking up all through the night with Mav, and trying to wrangle a rowdy toddler who had been cooped up in a car all day. I can’t remember in what order we started to eliminate stops, but by the time we went to bed we we decided to scratch our entire plan and head back home (LOL), and *maybe* we would drive to Clingman’s Dome in the Smoky Mountains.
The next morning we drove to Virginia Safari Park in Natural Bridge, VA about 45 mins from Roanoke. We had seen signs the day before and told Atlas we would go, and I am so glad we did. This place is AWESOME! It’s a drive through safari park where you can feed all kinds of animals from your car window. Ostrich, and llamas, and giant elk, and huge buffalo. It was wild and hilarious. I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard in my life. They also have a walk-through zoo that is really cool. Atlas got to walk right up to kangaroos and feed giraffes. If you’re ever near this place definitely check it out!
Natural Bridge, VA is also home to Natural Bridge State Park, which has some beautiful trails and a breathtaking 215-foot natural limestone bridge, which was carved out by Cedar Creek which runs below it. There is so much history in this area… George Washington surveyed the site in 1750 and you can still see his initials where he carved them into the rock (allegedly, it’s hard to spot). Thomas Jefferson also once owned the land.
After checking out the Natural Bridge area we headed back towards the Gatlinburg, TN area and decided to stop in Bristol. We stayed in a creaky old cabin that would have been perfect for some rugged fisherman but not ideal for a family of four, although it had some beautiful walking trails near the lake.
Funny enough, I was up with Mav around 2am that morning and I had a text from Malcolm that said “Can we just go home?” I couldn’t say YES fast enough. So, long story short (too late) … a 7 day road trip turned into 2 days because kids are awesome and hard and fun and exhausting and sometimes you just bite off a little more than you can chew, and guess what? It’s ok to just go home. We’ll hit the road again soon(ish).
“That is the magic of misadventure. The hardships and the struggle, the scary parts, even the undesirable parts all create this special bond that happens faster and holds stronger than the bonds made in our regular humdrum days. The humdrum days are important too. We have to keep showing up for those. But we shouldn’t consider all to be loss when the misadventure happens. We should hold on with all our might, pray for a good attitude, ask for forgiveness when we’ve lost it, and remind ourselves of this important fact: it will make a good story later.”
― Greta Eskridge, Adventuring Together: How to Create Connections and Make Lasting Memories with Your Kids
