A couple of weeks ago, my husband V and I drove from Virginia out to Washington state to see my dad and stepmom. My stepmom has been ill and we wanted to spend some time with her and help out my dad. My brother C and my stepbrother J with his family were also planning to be there. Although this was my fourth cross-country trip to the west coast and back in the last 13 months, it was the first one where I didn’t go alone.
As the African proverb from which I borrowed the title of this post tells us, we can get somewhere fastest on a schedule that doesn’t account for the needs of any other travelers, but going the distance often requires more support. Although I have proven with my last year of solo road trips that I can go both fast and far alone, I can also acknowledge there have been plenty of times when having another driver and companion would’ve made the trip more enjoyable (and less worry-inducing for my parents?). And I certainly experienced that on this trip.
V and I left on a Saturday morning after a long work week that for me included a duty shift, covering other colleagues’ portfolios, acting for my boss, a handshake on my next assignment to Burma, and a tree limb that fell on my car on the 4th of July, denting the hood and breaking the headlight housing. Regardless of the roller coaster, V’s work deadlines, and being late to organize a cat sitter, we were in good spirits. The car was clean and packed with snacks, a jumbo pillow, and other supplies to make the trip more comfortable.
On the first day, we drove 687 miles through Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana, stopping just a few miles short of the Indiana-Illinois stateline. After a largely uneventful drive we stopped late, encountering last-minute aggravation with finding a motel in an explicably busy small town.
The second day we put up slightly fewer miles, at 670, through Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, to end in southeastern South Dakota. We’d made a pit stop that morning in a Chicago suburb to pay respects to my paternal grandfather, who had returned from WWII and died of polio less than two years later, just a few months before my dad was born. We brought flowers to his grave. It was the first time V had been there, and my third.
The third day of driving was our biggest: 811 miles, even though we only crossed South Dakota and Montana. We made a stop at Wall Drug in Wall, SD for a delicious lunch in the company of an 80-foot brontosaurus, Native American exhibitions, and a variety of cowboy-themed old-timey shops and cafes. Billboards for Wall Drug are featured prominently for 150 miles of I-90 on either side of the tiny town, so it’s hard to miss.
Later in the day we drove a couple of hours across the Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation, and it was cool to show it to V after my various adventures crossing it alone in the past.
That evening we made a stop in Livingston, MT to have dinner and drinks with V’s friend of almost 30 years, A, who’d stood up as best man in our wedding. We enjoyed a few hours of some beers and Mexican food, as moving along our route was deprioritized in favor of visiting with someone V hadn’t seen in a decade. Afterwards we drove 100+ grueling miles through a furious storm until we got to Butte and called it a night.
The following day we capped off our road trip at 703 miles, rising as early as possible to make it through the rest of Montana, Idaho, and Washington and get to my dad’s before 8 p.m. We each took turns napping as the other drove, enjoying the beautiful scenery. In this way it was wonderful to have had a relief driver – I still did most of the driving on this trip, but lately I’ve been more tired than usual and it was nice to recharge for a couple hours here and there while V took the wheel.
It was a different experience to take a road trip with another person vs. completely on my own. I couldn’t blast music that V doesn’t like the way I usually do, and our bathroom breaks were a wee bit longer! And he did not love the phenomenon of me deciding where I wanted to stay at 11pm in the parking lot of said establishment.
But having him there for all 2,871 miles was a lot of fun. He was a good sport about finding the treats I wanted that involved a *slight* annoying detour off the interstate. (Yay, Dairy Queen!) He was a great conversation partner and fellow adventurer when we saw things along the roadside we wanted to stop and look at. He helped us continue towards our destination when I needed a snooze, and I got to see where A lived that otherwise I would have blown right through. I even got to watch him experience his first 14-state road trip in which eight of the states he had never been to before.
Road trip with your partner – 10 out of 10 would recommend! Someday we will do another road trip where we go far without worrying about the fast part.
Collecting Postcards 
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