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The trip started with a funeral for a first cousin. I had to drive from Connecticut to South Dakota, and I took my two sons with me. There was a problem moving my cousin's body back to South Dakota, and I had about a week for the trip out, so my boys and I camped in parks on the Great Lakes on the way out. We had a great time enjoying the simplest pleasures of life. We fished and built sandcastles and all that stuff.
We attended the funeral. It was sad, of course, but good to see far flung friends of my childhood, the people I saw every Thanksgiving and Christmas of my childhood. My kids got to play with new friends, and drive a tractor for the first time, and ride a horse for the first time, etc.
I was way the hell away from home, so I decided to make a memorable road trip out of the excursion. From South Dakota, the boys and I drove south, meandering through the midwest before visiting a friend in Arkansas for a few days. From there, the boys and I drove along the gulf coast (kind of) to the Atlantic. We drove for a few hours each day, and camped in a new place each night. We saw lots of things we had never seen before. One highlight was the trip to Graceland the week of the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death. We stayed in parks and camped most nights, and swam in rivers when we felt like it, and I taught my oldest son to drive for the first time. I slept side by side with my kids each night, and we avoided every freeway we possibly could.
We stopped and camped in several places in North Carolina, one of my favorite places in the entire world. We camped in the mountains in the west and on the beaches in the east, on the Outer Banks, where we visited Kitty Hawk, something my son always wanted to see. We went to Washington DC -- got a hotel that night! -- and we saw all the big monuments at night in the dark, which was fabulous.
We were gone for a month, and I remember how great it was to be with my favorite people and being a kid again, too.
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less I say, smarter I am
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