I’m just back from a fourteen day, 3,500 mile, 12 state driving trip…a loop from Oklahoma to Charleston and Savannah and back. More to come on all of that, but I’m mostly glad to be home. Mostly, I said. The reality is that it takes awhile to get out of that routine, harder than the planning to leave, more tedious than the trip itself.

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There’s nothing like crossing the state line of your home state, especially when you’ve spent your whole life there. This trip, we entered from the southeast, up the Indian Nations Turnpike, through one of the loveliest, most lush areas of the state. In my family, we sing “Oklahoma” as we enter home territory. When the kids were little, we sang it out loud. I’ve even done that by myself, sung it out loud, but this time, I was thinking the words. I wasn’t in the plains in this part of the state, so the irony struck me. I thought about what people who have a certain image of Oklahoma think when they drive through green, rolling hills. Oklahoma has a lot of looks…

There’s nothing like seeing the first sign with the name of your home place on it. You’re almost there…

About an hour or so away, we got pulled over by the highway patrol. He looked at the packed car and we visited about where we’d been and that we were heading home and he said we went over the speed limit a bit while passing a semi on the interstate. It was the beginning of Labor Day weekend, so caution is the rule. He gave us a very gracious warning and sent us on our way. Sigh…that was even a pleasant experience.

I think the fatigue sets in as you get closer. On a road trip like we just took, you are constantly heading for the next place. We weren’t rushing, but that’s a lot of driving, touring, walking, planning, getting lost even with GPS and maps of paper and electronic kinds. Pulling into town, we stopped at the grocery store for milk and a few things and FINALLY pulled into the driveway. Now the reality hits…

Opening the door, the dogs are jumping, the cats are meowing…their people are back. I’m not one who can just leave stuff in the car, so we unpack all we took and all we brought back with us. Then I start sorting through the piles in the house, throwing dirty clothes into the washer, putting flashlights, first aid kits, food away. It’s overwhelming. It seems like there is a house full of stuff coming out of the car. All my purchases…another blog…are stacked around. There’s a bag of receipts, books, maps sitting here still. The pets need to be fed. The plants need to be watered. The mail needs to be opened. Emails need to be deleted. The over 900 photos I took need to be downloaded to the computer for sorting, cropping, fixing, deleting, deleting, deleting… A serious trip to the store is ahead. Everything I left undone before the trip is still here, staring me in the face. The next day was nothing but sorting, errands, and total fatigue. And college football started…I could barely raise my arms when OSU scored!

It will take days for the dregs of the trip to be absorbed into my house, for me to sort through my thoughts and memories, aided by the photos. And, real life starts up again immediately, as always.

Do I still love road trips? You bet! Am I glad to be home? Always. Time to make that trip part of my life experience and take what I’ve seen and learned and use it to more clearly understand the world around me. Ahhhhh…home is so sweet!