Road trip!

Now that our trip to Mexico is long over, we are planning a trip that started as ‘let’s go to Charleston’ and has evolved into a trip to Gettysburg, Appomattox, Charleston, Savannah, Nashville and Lafayette. It will begin with visits to Civil War sites, add in a little country music, and end with a visit with my daughter and son-in-law in Lafayette, Indiana.

The first order of business was deciding when to go, and it makes sense to wait until after all the school breaks and leave at the end of March. The next step was to head to the Canadian Automobile Association to get maps and TripTiks, which I haven’t seen since we used to take family trips to Florida in the 1970’s. They have evolved since then, as they are custom printed in a matter of minutes, mapping out the overall route and any stops along the way. We were in and out of the CAA in 15 minutes, loaded up with maps, a customized TripTik for our route, and Tour Books for each major State. Although we will also use Google maps, Trip Advisor and Expedia, it is helpful to have physical maps to get a better sense of where we are going and the options along the way.

Our overall journey is 3945km and just under 40 hours of driving time. Having the TripTik with mileage and hours mapped out for each of our major stops helped in deciding where to book hotels along the route. We don’t want too many long driving days, and want some flexibility but are more comfortable knowing we have at least some places booked along the route.

Now we are researching places we will be visiting. We both loved the PBS series by Ken Burns on the Civil War, but it has been years since we watched it. Fortunately our local library has the DVDs so we are working our way through it and anticipating visits to some of the major battle fields and museums. Last year we were in Mississippi and thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Vicksburg, and will build on that starting with Gettysburg and Appomattox.

I also have some reading to do before we go. Although I am sure Shelby Foote’s history of the Civil War would be fascinating, I am overwhelmed by the thought of reading 3 volumes and nearly 3,000 pages before we head out. Instead I recently read Donald McCaig’s book Jacob’s Ladder: A story of Virginia during the War which was fabulous, and have a few other books related to the Civil War in my reading pile. I am also working my way through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt about a murder in Savannagh, Georgia in the 1980s and the descriptions of characters, events and locations will enrich my visit.

Since Nashville is on our route from Savannah up to Lafayette, we will likely make a stop there so we have started watching Country Music, another Ken Burns series that recently aired on PBS. We also watched Wild Rose, starring Jessie Buckley, about a country singer in Glasgow of all places that dreams of making it big in Nashville. Maybe in Nashville we will hunt down a tattoo parlour and have ‘three chords and the truth’ tattooed on our arm like she did, a quote from song writer Harlan Howard about country music. But probably not.