Trip Reflections and What’s Next

The leg from Big Spring to Fort Worth was an uneventful slog along I-20, with a stop in Sweetwater for lunch.  Our intention was to visit Allen’s Fried Chicken, a local family-owned joint of longtime notoriety in Sweetwater.  Bubba had strongly recommended the place, but upon our arrival, we found an empty parking lot and a sign on the door indicating that the proprietors had gone on vacation.


Having anticipated this stop for, oh, several hundred miles!, we were sorely disappointed, to say the least.  Sandy immediately sent a text to Bubba regarding the status of Allen’s, along with a good deal of invective that was not exactly deserved by poor Bubba.  However, he was wisely restrained in his response, allowing Sandy to vent harmlessly, as it turned out.


Since we were parked already, we strolled over to a local eat-a-bite next door and had a thoroughly substandard lunch.  I can’t remember the name of the place or what we ate, because I successfully blocked it out of my mind.


The featureless grind along I-20 gave us time to reflect on this trip and to begin to make plans for our first 'breakaway’ adventure after retiring next June.  Now you might have learned from an earlier post that I am not much of a planner, but leaving the work world will be such a momentous event, I can’t help but do some imagining as to what that will be like.  That seems like planning, and it’s only 313 days away! 


Our initial hack at this ‘planning’ thing is to head back to Colorado next summer then continue northwest to Yellowstone. (Sandy’s never been, and I was ten years old when I last visited, so I don’t remember much.)  After that, we would make our way eastbound through the Dakotas to check out Mt. Rushmore (neither of us have seen it).  Then we would continue east to arrive in Wisconsin and upper Michigan in the early fall.  From there, we would make our way back to Texas.
 
I’ll have to give a nod to Gordon and Juanita, whose posts of their meanderings in that area have kindled my desire for this to be our ‘maiden voyage’ as new retirees.  We will certainly be reviewing those sections of their blog.


We’ll have to figure out just when to leave Texas in order to complete, in a fairly leisurely pace, this journey we’re planning.  We want to be able to arrive in Wisconsin and Michigan in time to enjoy the fall foliage.


We’re going to have to do a good bit of research in order to capture all the ‘can’t miss’ things to see on such a long trip.  If you who read this have suggestions, we would love to get them.


There are other possible changes in our thinking that we’ll talk about in future posts.  For now, this is enough to make our heads spin…