It had been more than two years since my wife and I had a vacation, so last week and over the weekend, we took a bit of a “mini-vacation.” Didn’t go anywhere very special, just strapped on the old Dansko shoes, threw a few clothes into an old duffel bag, and headed out of town.
Okay, we also planned in advance with hotel reservations and a rental car (our old Ford isn’t up to much of an out-of-town trip anymore), but really we didn’t plan much more about the getaway. We went to a major city in our state located about 200 miles from here and then did almost nothing but collapse in the hotel, enjoy a few meals and some “together time,” and made a short trip to my boyhood hometown one day that we were gone.
It was good. We made an effort to read and watch almost no “news” at all while we were gone. We couldn’t break the newspaper habit completely, though, and it was interesting to see a real live “hold in your hands” newspaper of major size again. Also, we brought back a copy of the tiny weekly edition of my hometown weekly just for chuckles. (It was, journalistically speaking, at least as well done as our local “mid-sized city” daily rag here in Springfield.)
Go ahead. Get out of the house, get out of town, just get out there somehow somewhere before winter weather sets in, and enjoy a little renewal of the spirit yourself. And if you’re in no better physical shape than I am right now — you, too, might find what renews the spirit definitely tires out the body!