It’s been a really long time since my last post. And I’m okay with that because I’ve been quite busy. On June 20, my daughter Tessa and I loaded ourselves and a bunch of belongings into our Chrysler Town & Country and headed out of Orlando, northward toward the panhandle. After a couple of hours, we headed west on I-10. Four days later, we were in Las Vegas, where we picked my wife Julie and son Nicky up at the airport. And this was just the beginning.
For the next two weeks, the Cingolanis drove from one WorldMark resort to the next, making our way through Utah’s southern deserts, then up into Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. From there, we visited the southern Rocky Mountains in New Mexico and the deserts of Arizona. After spending a half-day in Sedona, we all started the drive home. Three weeks plus a day on the road. I still miss it a month later.
(Check out my posts at www.WordsOfWyndham.com for more details about our adventures. Bookmark it if you like, because posts about this trip will be added continually over the next few months.)
Okay, so you’ll recall I got laid off from my job back in December, and while I’ve been doing okay freelancing, I still don’t have a steady gig yet. What the hell are we thinking taking a three-week vacation when we have what many would describe as a pretty unstable financial situation? This thought crossed our minds a lot. It seemed so irresponsible! It’s like we’re constantly receiving messages from the media telling us that we’re supposed to be miserable. That we’re victims of a failing economy. We’re supposed to be stressed out, seething with anxiety!!
I’m sure you can see the dilemma, though. If I had a full-time job, I can’t think of an employer who would give me three weeks off, even if I had the vacation time. So instead of my layoff being a detriment to taking this amazing trip (which has been a dream of mine for years!), it turns out to have been the event that liberated me to take this amazing trip! Plus, I’m too busy and too happy to seethe with anxiety anyway.
So Julie and I decided before the trip that, with our laptop, we’d get some work done here and there while we were on the road, and monitor our emails and phone messages. And since we were staying in timeshare resorts, we’d always have a kitchen, so we avoided pricey restaurant meals as much as possible, and away we went! So in about three weeks’ time, we experienced: Zion National Park, the Las Vegas Strip, Arches National Park, the Rocky Mountains, Red River NM, Petrified Forest National Park, the Grand Canyon, Sedona AZ, the windmill farms of West Texas, and the French Quarter of New Orleans (twice!).
I am still riding an emotional high that may take years to level off!
It’s funny. For more than a decade, I’ve been in the timeshare advertising business and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written and read the phrase “Vacation of a Lifetime!” followed by something like “4 days and 3 nights in Branson, the live entertainment capital of the world!” No offense to Branson — I’ve been there, and had a good time — but what my family and I experienced together truly was a vacation that we will remember for the rest of our lives.
