This is the last post describing what we lovingly refer to as “The Big Trip”. For those of you who have followed the whole journey, thank you for your patience in all the time that living life has made it hard to find time to write. If you’re new, we welcome you to read older posts about this amazing trip that changed our lives. While we started this blog as a way to document this particular trip, we have big plans for it in the future! So stay tuned, because the Lindstroms are definitely staying “on the road”!
On Sunday, November 18, we buckled the kids in the car in Virginia and started the final leg of the trip, back to Hatboro, PA, where we’d started the trip exactly 91 days earlier. There were those who said we were crazy to undertake such a journey. There were those who predicted we would give up and turn around after a few weeks. After 13 weeks, we could honestly say that we’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
But it was too dramatic and extraordinary a trip to just fade quietly into the night. Or perhaps more accurately, that’s exactly what happened on that last drive. We suddenly had problems with the wiring to the trailer, so that the lights weren’t working properly. We were so close to the finish line, to suddenly have electrical problems was frustrating. But even though we were so close, the sun was going down, and we knew that I95 between Baltimore and Philadelphia is no place to drive in the dark with an unlit trailer. The only solution we were able to find, finally, was to connect the trailer to the hazard lights and blink our way home. And so the last two hours of our trip were filled with the clicking and blinking of hazard lights. Perhaps that is as it should be.
It was hard to process the full impact of our adventure right away, as we filled our last few weeks in the US with visiting friends, celebrating Thanksgiving with family, and last minute shopping trips. It was a wonderful way to conclude our journey. We have the rest of our lives to discover all the ways that we grew, changed, and bonded as a family as a result of this experience. We will never be the same.
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered” – Nelson Mandela
Thanks for a new shot at catching up with you.