So, I've been home from my trip for a week now. I actually had the conversation with someone at work today. When you go 6500 miles across the country and back in two weeks, it is a trip, not a vacation. (Har har) I looked around and thought, "something is missing." And suddenly, just now, it dawned on me. I have not blogged in so long. So long in fact, it has been nearly a month! I will hang my head in shame now. *hanging head*
Okay... now that we've gotten that out of the way, I wanted to talk about what that trip did for me. First of all, it gave me a whole new appreciation for this country. Wow! Is it ever beautiful. And boy howdy, America does big well. I saw so many larger-than-life things in those two weeks: The Grand Canyon, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Rushmore, The Badlands, the Redwood National Forest, the Pacific Ocean! I even saw some aircraft carriers on this trip. It was all so cool!
I also gained a new sense of time. Nothing makes 18 hours drag like being stuck behind the drivers wheel all night and then listening to "I'm hungry", "I'm thirsty", "I need to go to the bathroom", and my favorite, "Are we there yet?" I love my children dearly, but vacation for me means being alone. I call it vacation when I can find a babysitter and get out to the bar to see a band play, but this is all beside the point. Until this trip, I really couldn't comprehend just how long a day could be. It made me empathize for a couple of my characters. I think there will be some rewriting going on in the very near future.
The last thing that this trip did for me was made me realize that even in a different part of the country, I can feel like an alien--like I fell onto a completely different planet. The difference from state to state alone was pretty impressive. Going south into a few states with a few cities and a lot of small towns way off the interstate, and how tired that made me feel. Getting to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the strange plants that grow there, and the desert and all the canyons. Wow again.
The trip was amazing and I encourage anyone who writes to take one at some point in their life. I think this will do great things for my writing and my imagination and how could any writer pass that up?
