Peace, quiet and sleep

Discover Uncle Tupelo!

Abby and the kids are gone. At 7:00 AM this morning, I dropped them off at the airport, along with Grandma Nancy, to catch a plane to Minnesota. For the next 5 days, they'll be hanging out at Green Lake, MN while Maddie and I will be kid free (here and here are some old posts related to previous trips to Green Lake). They're gone. It's a bit hard to believe. As the barber at work put it, "How did you manage that?" Then the guy at Trader Joes asked, "What are you going to do?" What are we going to do? Indeed.

Before getting into our plans, I should note that it's not as if Abby is involuntarily taking the kids with her. Trips to Green Lake are a longstanding tradition in her family. But for various reasons (specifically, it's a bit boring), trips to Green Lake don't appeal to me very much. Given the outrageous price of a plane ticket to Minnesota and the fact that Margaret needs a ticket, I decided to bail on the trip this year (after all, Green Lake is a bit boring.) But the kids had to go. So I grudgingly allowed Abby to take them with her.

As for those of us left behind, we're heading to the mountains of northwestern Virginia tomorrow morning. In the past, I've taken multiple hiking trips with my brothers into mountains all across the western U.S. Recently, for obvious reasons, those trips have become less practical. So I suffer in two ways. First, I can't take trips with my brothers. Second, on the rare occasion that I'm able to go backpacking, I have to take more modest trips somewhere in the Virginia, West Virginia, etc. area. And, frankly, that area isn't nearly as exciting as mountains in the west. (Here's an earlier post with pics from an excellent trip to Wyoming.) Nevertheless, Maddie and I are heading to the George Washington National Forest where we plan to hit a number of trails. It might not be relaxing in one sense because I'll be walking with a big pack, but in another sense, with no kids, it's inherently relaxing.

Why the song at the beginning of this post? Well, when I took backpacking trips with my brothers in the past, we would always throw in Alt-Country music to get us in the mood. And Uncle Tupelo, the source of the above song, is perhaps the greatest Alt-Country group ever. Listening to this type of music with its high, lonesome sound, especially when driving through the backwoods of Virginia, is a great experience. And makes me feel as if Dan and Steve are with me and Maddie, even if they're miles away.