Coda

Best laid plans. We disembarked shortly after 9 AM, and we were to drive all day and be snug in our own beds by now. This is all well and good for people with no kids, but as it went it was twelve hours later and we were both road-blind and weary. Time to pull over and risk a roadside retreat. Unlike the decent Comfort Inn in Mercer on our way to NJ, this one is of the Motor Lodge variety and the doorway faintly smells of piss. However, all three of my traveling companions are asleep and I am being dragged down to join them.

Maybe I will have time to reflect upon the feelings that welled up in me this morning as I strode down the 5th Deck "Promenade" (seriously - it's a mall on a boat, without the listing you would have no clue you were at sea) passing hangover people with suitcases ... this trip was a blind spot for me the past, I don't know, two years, but I was deeply looking forward to it. To spend nearly every waking morning concentrating on my children, doing whatever they wanted to do and nothing else. And that's more or less what happened. And now it's over. While that makes me sad there are just too many other responsibilities weighing me down and I just have to sigh, make prints of the 300+ photos I took, and suck it down.

Tomorrow: The Bell House + Penn's Cave