Overlooks and Giants

I don’t know about you, but most of the time when I am trying to get from Point A to Point B, I want to get there as quickly and efficiently as I can. I want to take the fastest route. I want everyone to utilize bathroom stops so that we don’t need to needlessly take another one. That’s how I operate even when I walk. My then-girlfriend/now-wife kept encouraging me to slow down by adorably saying “Don’t be Point A to Point B. Be Point EA.”

All of which is why we made an official statement of travel to our boys at the beginning of our roadtrip: We will not let our ultimate destination dictate the day but will allow ourselves the freedom to stop and chase whatever we come across. If there is a beautiful sunset then we are going to pull on the side of the road and enjoy it. If there is an intriguing billboard advertising a destination, we might go see what it’s about. If there is a scenic route, we’ll likely opt for that over the quicker interstate.

This strategy naturally flies in the face of the question that natural law demands every child to ask of their parents: How long until we get there? There was an ETA, but we were holding that ETA loosely.

Gosh, I am grateful we held those ETAs loosely. What we lost in efficiency we were repaid in sea lion caves, breathtaking overlooks of the Pacific Ocean, rocky beaches to climb, driving through the Avenue of Giants, and so many more things we would have missed if we had tried to make it to our destination as fast as we could. It sometimes drove our boys wild. One day in Yosemite, I pulled the car over multiple times on the way back to our lodging because the sky at dusk was unlike anything we had seen. And sometimes they got why we were making the stops.

I am thinking about how we chased what was around us as our boys start another year of school tomorrow morning. It can be really easy to want to get to the final bell, to Friday, to summer vacation as quick is you can during those years. Yet you can miss out on so much if you live life that way because it can go so quickly. I’m trying to wrap my mind around the fact that tomorrow we will have a high schooler and a middle schooler in our house. It was not too long ago that I was writing about them taking their first steps. All the more reason that I am grateful we decided to spend two and a half weeks in a car together.

So I hope a little bit of how we traveled this summer rubbed off on our boys. And I hope that being present and the willingness to venture on side quests sticks firm with me. I would hate to miss some incredible sights and moments because I was in a hurry to make it to the next destination.