2. HOCKING HILLS

Logan, Ohio

7/10/2009

We would be married almost a year before we began our first “test trip,” as I called it. A lot had happened in the last year, most importantly the arrival of our first child – Daniel – in May. So now we have a little buddy to join us on our trips. While planning this trip, we discovered that Jerry Seinfeld was appearing in Indianapolis, which would be on our route. During the planning we had been renting DVDs of Seinfeld and have become born-again fans, you could say, ten years after the show went off the air. However, we knew we wouldn’t have the money to take the full trip by that date, so we decided to split the trip into two parts so spread out the expense a little bit – and to ensure we could afford to see Seinfeld. My wife’s chants of “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” while dancing about the apartment told me this was a good decision.

One of my most notorious flaws is my ability to get outrageously lost each and every time I attempt to go anywhere. I would regularly get lost driving home from work when I lived less than ten minutes away and had worked there for years. To this day I can’t navigate through my hometown neighborhood without assistance. When it comes to getting places I am useless – which we realized would be a big problem since getting to places is exactly what we are trying to do. So, we invested in a GPS system for the car. I’m in love with it. Actually, my affection for it disturbs Laura quite a bit.

The first test of my precious GPS was to get us to Hocking Hills State Park. We left home at 6:00 am and got to the Old Man’s Cave (the most famous landmark in Hocking Hills) around 7:30. All along the way I commented on how many minutes were left on our trip according to the GPS, and how many miles were left on our trip according to the GPS, and how many minutes I was able to shave off of our trip according to the GPS, and the different color-schemes the GPS uses to designate different geographical features, and the way the GPS displays little icons to indicate gas stations while I let out a little hoot every time we approached the gas station at the same moment the little gas station icon intersected the arrow thing that represents us. It was fun.

Hocking Hills was really beautiful. We got there early enough that there was no one else there at all. I strapped Daniel to my chest with a baby sling and Laura and I explored some of the trails. It really is an idyllic place, and it was just such a nice way to start our trip. I visited Hocking Hills as a Boy Scout and Laura had been there with her family some years ago. However, we decided at the beginning that trips made before we were married don’t count. The point of these trips is to experience these things together. Before we left, Laura fished an interesting rock out of a small stream. We jokingly referred to it as our “sacred stone.” It was at that point that we decided that we should collect some sort of trinket from each of the places we visit as a memento – the kookier the better. We left Hocking Hills around 10:00, just as more and more people were beginning to arrive. Hocking Hills truly is a majestic place and we were glad we got there early enough to have it all to ourselves for awhile.