On The Road To Somewhere Good

We slept until noon, then quietly showered and packed, in a very subdued sort of way. It had been a long few days, at that point, and even though we'd slept for a good eight or nine hours, we were a bit groggy, still.

Chris finished packing up the car while I went to check out just before 2 o'clock. I told the girl what room I was in and she looked at her computer and told me I owed her three hundred and some dollars. This was a surprise to me. A good one, because I was expecting to owe five hundred and some. I just smiled dumbly and handed her my credit card. When I got outside and looked at the bill, I saw that they had charged me $109 for each night. Funny, because on my reservation reminder, it distinctly said that the room cost $109 for the first night and $209 for each of the other two. Of course, it also distinctly said that I was supposed to have a room with two beds, and when we had gotten there, they tried to stick us in a room with one bed. I'm assuming when the girl changed my room, she somehow changed the price, too. Whatever. Worked for me.

And then we were on our way. An hour later, we made our first stop. Frederick, Maryland: Home of Schifferstadt. (Or something like that.) Our friend Jilly is the director of a really cool museum that is actually a house that was built in 17-something. She took us all through the place, showed us everything, told us all about it. We were thinking about having lunch with her, but she was getting back from a late lunch just as we got there, and we were anxious to be on our way, so we didn't to wait around for dinnertime. Good thing we didn't, too. She gave us directions to a restaurant she figured we should try for lunch, but it was on a road that hadn't been in existence whenever my GPS was last programmed, so we drove past where the GPS said it was supposed to be about a hundred times before we decided a tire place wasn't going to magically turn into a pizza place any time soon and went to a Waffle House, home of worse-than-frozen waffles but also home of quick and fairly cheap food. We filled up on gas afterwards, purchased several inauguration day newspapers and a couple of flasks of water, and were on our way. After we drove through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and part of Illinois, we finally made it to the Fairfield Inn in St. Charles, begged and pleaded for late checkout, and drifted into slumber, at about 3 am. It was another very, very, very, very (etc.) long day.

We got up in time to take a dip in the pool, I took another collection of pictures of Chris, and we checked out, then headed to an outlet mall to pass the time until 5, when we could eat at Al Capone's Hideaway and Steakhouse. It was the second time I'd been there-ever since the first time, I'd been anxious to show it off to someone, 'cause it's a super cool place. I had the best prime rib EVER and enjoyed the scenery and the gift shop.

And then, finally, we were on our way home for good. Five more hours of half-awake driving and I was stumbling around in Chris's driveway to move my junk from Chris's car to mine and the I was driving home and at long, long last, I was home and sinking into my own bed. It felt soooooooooooooooooooo good. I slept. A lot. And when I woke up, it was definitely a brighter day.

Barack Obama was our president, I was no longer sleep-deprived, and, not to sound like a campaign cliche, there was an aura of hope in the world. It was a long journey--the campaign and our trip to Washington both--but we survived and were better, stronger, somehow more alive. Life is good.