Bumgarner (Birthday!) Beach Week

With all the grandkids getting older and starting school, in a variety of school districts with varying school district schedules, we opted last year to move our family's beach week to August instead of spring break. So we had to wait several extra months this year to scratch our beach itch, but we finally made it! And celebrated Charlotte's birthday there, to boot!

(Girl's going to start thinking she gets a trip every year for her birthday.)

I made a laughably fundorable janky sunshine cake, per her beach birthday request, and it was... something. (She loved it.)

In better crafty news, I also made that shirt myself with a roll of iron on glitter paper and a blowing up a fun font and tracing it, oh yes I did, LIKE A BOSS.

Her one birthday request for the beach was to have an egg hunt. Normally we have always been there near Easter of course, and we often do a big family egg hunt outside on Easter afternoon after our beach arrival. Egg hunts aren't really part of our Easter celebration at home, so she totally associates eggs with the beach, not Easter itself. And. So. She wanted one for her birthday. At the beach. BECAUSE EGG HUNTS ARE A NORMAL BEACH ACTIVITY DUH.

After her birthday, the rest of the week was full of drinking and ice cream and watching the Olympics together, which was sort of fun since we hadn't done that together since we were kids.

We also took some of the kids to a tye dye event in the little pavilion by the town hall. Excellent activity.

We waited by a turtle nest for some turtle rescuers to shepherd some babies into the ocean (Holden Beach is a turtle sanctuary and we were there exactly the right week!) but it had already mostly hatched, so we only got to see leftover eggs, no babies.

John and Mark and the kids built a lot of sandcastles. Like, a lot. A LOT. Sometimes I think those two only pretend to be into it "for the kids" because they just legit like digging themselves.

Anneliese figured out how to ride waves in on the boogie board, and spent literal hours doing it. At one point during the week she asked me if there was an olympic medal for boogie boarding. "No reason, just curious."

We had some lovely evenings out on the beach, too. Our normal (little kid) routine had been to bring everyone in by 4 or 5 for dinner and then into bed afterwards. But this time of year, when it's hot in the day and everyone doesn't need to be in bed super early (because Olympics) (and getting older), it became easier to have some a/c time inside in the middle of the afternoon, and play to our hearts' content in the evening. Just so amazingly beautiful.

And fun uncles make things pretty fun too.

Thanks for a fun week as always, Dad and Cathy! It's so fun to see how the kids grow up all crowded around you at the beach every year. We are lucky to do this and lucky to have you.

It seems every Carolinian family has "their" beach town that they go to every year, a thing that is apparently unfamiliar outside of this part of the country. But it happens, it starts to feel like home, everyone has one, and this one is ours.

See you next year, Holden Beach.

Not the Outer Banks

Well, our long-planned trip to the outer banks this weekend for ferry riding and camping and lighthouse climbing and shipwreck museums IS OFF. Sad face. It's pouring rain everywhere -- like, everywhere, across the whole state -- all weekend.

It's a rare weekend when Mark is off work though, so we didn't want it to be for naught. We tried to find some fun things we could do with the kids, and still maybe balance it with some lazy at-home time, and the best idea we landed on was pitching the tent (yes ha ha ha) in the bonus room and letting them "camp" in there.

So we did. Who knows how this will go.

We also made s'mores on the stovetop. Believe it or not, this method actually works better on an electric stove than a gas burner, but we made it work!

It's fine. It's sweet. It's not the family time we have been dreaming of, but it's fine.

(I am bummed.) (Wine me.)

Road Trip, Days 1-2: Millers Creek, Tweetsie Railroad

Y'all. Remember how I drove up the country last summer with Another Nathan, and it proved delightful? I tempted fate and did it again. This time with Marky and all the kids. Intentionally slowly, with many stops along the way, making a vacation out of it, and you know what?

IT WAS DELIGHTFUL AGAIN.

I know, I kind of can't believe it either. Except I can. Let this be a public service message to people with toddlers, doing nightly rounds of abject weeping about the state of chaos: it gets better. Babies are cute but big kids are awesome. You can throw them in the car and drive around the country and all fully enjoy each other. I know. I KNOW.

Anyway. Now backdated, but here goes.

Yes, yes we did buy a selfie stick.

Day 1: Millers Creek, NC

We spent the first night on the road at my Grandpa's farm. I was so full of feelings, knowing it would be the last night ever to be there, since he died earlier this summer. Grandpa built the house himself, in the 50s, when my dad was just a toddler and they were living in what's now the rec room as he added onto the rest. My dad and aunt grew up here, and as grandkids we had so many summer and Christmas visit memories, and it's such a special place. I was glad for one more night to wander through and smell the smells and touch the counters and books and furniture, and cry a little. It's beautiful.

We also had Igloo hot dogs and ice cream for dinner, because obviously.

Day 2: Tweetsie Railroad! 

(This is an amusement park. It's named after a train that used to go over the mountains between NC and TN. I had no idea how many people didn't know what I was talking about when I posted this on facebook. It's just... a train themed, wild west expansion themed, slightly politically incorrect amusement park.)

Okay, so my previously nervous children have apparently become Amusement Park People this year. My dad took Nathan and Anneliese to Carowinds earlier this summer, and they rode a ton of rides, and generally became fearless (??) so when we were at Tweetsie, they clamored to do things that, a year ago, I would never have dreamed they'd be interested in.

Look at this! It's a thing that drops from the sky! Anneliese basically bounded onto it. What??

Also Nathan and Anneliese rode this fast spinny thing many many many times, and never looked less happy/thrilled than they do right here:

Even Charlotte was quite insistent on any ride she was tall enough to get on.

(She also walked straight into a beam and conked her head got a giant goose egg, so some things stay super normal even on vacation.)

We rode a chair lift and I only freaked out a tiny bit. Nathan and Anneliese rode the spinning teacup thing at least ten times, enough that Mark and I had to bail and watch from the sidelines because we were done. (See? Big kids! Best!)

Oh! And there was a little petting zoo area, where you could pay fifty cents and get some feed for some animals, and they told us to please try not to let the goats out (!!!) and also don't pick them up (!!!!!!) and we didn't know what they meant until we got inside and there's like... goats wandering around. Not in pens but on the sidewalk. Like puppies. (It was surprisingly hard not to pick one up. I can see why they had to ask people.

Anyway so my suddenly fearless children are not only not scared of rides, but now not scared of animals they don't know. Apparently. They happily fed goats and lamas and alpacas and all manner of petting zoo creatures. From! Their! Hands!

Also, we sat in a covered wagon and I joked that that was all I even needed from a road trip so we could just go home now, and the kids pleaded with me not to, because they are very serious humans, apparently.  So earnest! I WAS KIDDING, DEAR CHILDREN.

And then we drove down the mountain (this portion of our trip sponsored by Dramamine) and drove north and west.

We stopped at a rest stop at the Kentucky line for dinner from the cooler, including monster apples I had purchased on the sly at Tweetsie.

We made it a few more hours, as far as Lexington, and we stopped for the night. We threw the kids in bed and high-fived oursleves on pricelining a great hotel suite and for remembering to put beers in the cooler at the rest stop. Cheers!

Aaaaaand I thought I was going to write our whole northbound journey in one blog post, but HAHAHAHAHA *wipes tear* y'all knew I couldn't do that, right? Stay tuned.

Montreat 2015

I heard someone say last week that one of the great things about Montreat is that every year youth conference is different, a brand new experience; yet somehow it also feels just the same as always, so familiar, and known. It's the most true sentence I've heard in a while.

This year was just lovely for me up there. It's the third year in a row I have gone, so that familiar thing is totally real for me now. Just driving into the gate and climbing up the million steps to the top floor of the inn, or hiking down the path by the lake to go to church or my small group, it all makes me feel warm and homey and happy.

This was Anneliese's first year to go be a clubbie, and she did just great. It amazes me how quickly she makes friends and finds delight in new people. She loved her club kids and her counselors and swimming and singing new songs and her group even got to go do the most! fun! activity! ever! which was... walking to a field by the main entrance road, and waving to people driving in. They made it very official and called them the Montreat Wavers (listed on their official schedule) and I almost fell over laughing but she delighted in it, so, okay.

(Isn't that exactly the kind of thing this child would delight in? I mean.)

The first few days really pushed her limits on exhaustion and tears and so much walking, but she adjusted and by the end of the week she was an old pro, save the miserable window between her nap (when I was in my daily afternoon meeting of small group leaders) and our dinner (scooting into the dining room in the last opening minutes, so to maximize her rest time), when she was hella crabby. But! Other than that! Easy! Great first week of Montreat!

I think I have decided that Montreat is really good for the kids. I mean, not that that's a novel idea; it hit me the first year with just Nathan how good it was for him to be a bit out of his element and try new things and new foods and new people. But this year I felt it in an even bigger different way. Both Nathan and Anneliese can have so much freedom there, freedom that our normal life doesn't afford. With Nathan, I can just set a time/place to meet, and let him go off on his own, and trust that he will be there. He knows which roads are too busy to cross, he knows which people will help him, staff nametags, etc, not to mention the whole place is crawling with teenagers who are high on being Good Kids and tend to flock towards him as some kind of mascot. (You should have seen the teenagers lined up to play cornhole against him in the barn one night.)

And when we go to a playground or the dining room or sit down outside or wherever, both of them can just... run free. Into the woods, not in my line of sight, whatever. I know this doesn't sound novel to those of us who grew up in the 80s (or who live in small towns), but this is... not like our urban Raleigh life. It just isn't. It will come, in time, but we aren't there yet at home. Montreat is a really good place for them (and me) to get used to some kiddie freedom, and they loved it. They walk around and enjoy it like they belong. Which, of course, they do.

Anyway, the whole point of the conference isn't the kids, but the youth, and getting to be a small group leader, and bonding with the other adults who are there to do the same. And this year was as great for that as always.

Another Nathan (who roomed with Nathan in an adjoining room again this year) was there as a shadow (he's running this whole conference for two weeks next year!) and it was the most chill I have ever seen him at Montreat. Like a vacation! He showed up several times at the ends of my sessions, with coffees in hand. He met Nathan at meeting points. He pedaled Anneliese (and all of us) on a sparkly paddleboat.

We all went for a barbecue dinner. We had a lovely week together. (And a lovely few days in Raleigh before that.) It was a super friendship bonding time for us, in a special place. Remembering last year on the edge of the cliff of his move, and all the work and stress and angst about that, it just felt so nice and easy this year. 

And my small group was incredible. We had one hard day full of hard confessions and some things that needed Adult Intervention, but they were well-poised to support each other in it, since they had bonded so quickly at the beginning of the week. They are smart and thoughtful people, these teenagers. And I know I say it every year, but anyone who feels cyncial about kids this age has not watched them stand in a room and look each other in the eye and pray to God to give thanks for other people in that room, specifically by name, people who they only met mere days ago. It's amazing.

So yeah, it was a wonderful week again. It's always hard to leave. After we took Another Nathan to the airport, we came back to load up our own stuff and the kids wanted one last Huckleberry ice cream, and Anneliese spent many weeks' worth of allowance on a neon green sweatshirt blanket that says Montreat on it, so we drove away both happy and sad.

See you next year, Montreaters.

Mt. Holly for the Fourth

We spent the weekend with my sister and her family in Mt. Holly for the holiday weekend. Let me tell y'all something about small towns: they know how to do patrotic holidays in the best most 'MERICA ways possible.

On Friday night we made a campfire at Ashley's and lit sparklers for the kids, and made s'mores. It was hot as the blazes and John's idea of a campfire is basically FOREST FIRE (just kidding) (except kinda not) but the kids loved it and baby Everett didn't seem to mind the cloud of ashes blowing around his head too much.

But! The s'mores were fantstic, and the sparklers were SO FUN, and John even got some long rainbow ones for Anneliese, because he is an A++ uncle, for real.

On Saturday morning we got up early to take the kids to a parade in town. Except they were actually in the parade -- one of those things where all the kids can dress up in red, white and blue and ride a bike or a wagon or whatever, and wave. Since they are so little, we all decided to walk with them.

Which is, apparently, what everyone else decided to do too. Because basically everyone else who showed up for the parade was also in the parade. There were maybe ten bystanders along the whole route.

Basically, the whole town took a walk together, is what I'm saying.

And then afterward there was free ice cream for all the participants! (So, the whole town.)

(And yes, it really was free. I finger-erased those quote marks for them.) (I also erased the ones around parade but Ashley pointed out in hindsight those probably could have stayed. Ha.)

So here we are, parade completed and eating ice cream, all by 10am. 'MERICA!

After the parade we went to John's dad's house, where he lives in a compound of sorts with his mom and sister. (It's not really a compound, they just call it that. Their houses all back up together and they share a pool and tennis court and such. It's cool!)

The kids swam in the pool and John jerry-rigged the slide with a hose so they could use that too. We had pizza for lunch and the baby slept in the outdoor bar area and then it started raining and we still had trouble pulling the kids from the water.

Anneliese did this slide easily a hundred times. Just, on repeat, never less delighted with it.


(If you can't see the video embedded above, click here to watch on YouTube.)

That night, John set off a bunch of fireworks and... okay. Here's the thing. They weren't fancy by like anyone's downtown official fireworks show standards. But they were waaaaay fancier than what any one person should be shooting off at home in their front yard. I mean. It was very cool to see, and also a tiny bit terrifying.

John had some noise blocking ear covers for the shooting range (of course he does) so Charlotte wore those until she fled away with Anneliese.

The boys were impressed and the girls were... impressed from the window inside the house.

Happy small town fourth of July, everyone!

Great American BFF Road Trip

So, the kids are all back to school this morning! All of them! Well, not Ali. I promise that usually during these Mondays I will be very busy with errands and laundry and groceries and swim lessons and and and and -- but today is the first one, and I am lazy at home with the baby, who is asleep, so! Bogging!

Hey how about I blog that big ol' road trip I took across the country this summer, remember that?

When Another Nathan moved at the end of July, he needed to get his car to Minnesota -- too far for him to drive alone, so I got to go.

Yes, I said got to -- it was lovely.

I know that's hard to believe, because it should have been rough -- driving for three days and thousands of miles in a small car with one other person, a person with whom you miiiiiight have been known to occasionally bicker, a person whom you love dearly and will have to say good-bye to at the end of said thousands-miles journey -- but it totally wasn't rough. It was awesome, actually.

We listened to music for maybe an hour, napped for maybe half an hour each, and other than that we spent three days in the car hanging out, chatting, eating snacks, taking pictures at every state line we crossed, joking about the travel diary we'd make when we got home (here it is!) and opening presents (yes we brought road trip presents).  We were teary when we felt it, but mostly laughy when we didn't.

Anyway, these pictures from our trip have been sitting my camera roll for over a month, so here are the state-by-state highlights of delightfulness between NC and MN.

NORTH CAROLINA

Okay so to give you a clue to how pre-planned this whole thing was... it wasn't. We needed to meet the property guy at his new Minnesota house around noon on Friday, and we rolled out of Raleigh sometime mid-morning on Wednesday, with no real plan between there. Nathan was not hearing any advance planning; he just wanted to drive and see how far we got, and look things up -- which routes and which places to stay -- on our phones, as we went. I won't lie, I cringed. But I rolled with it. (And it all worked out great.)

All that to say: we stopped twice before we ever made it out of Raleigh, and then twice more before we made it out of the state.

First road trip picture! Half an hour from home! At Starbucks, obvs.

Also before we made it out of NC, we were in a debate which, actually, I'ma need some bloggity help to settle, right here and now. A poll: Which of the following is a more cute/fun/clever nickname for a phone car charger, if one were to name such a thing?
    A. Chargey Cord
    B. Charles in Charger
I mean the right answer is obvious, and I won't tell you who suggested which name, but y'all tell me which is better, and settle this debate for us please? Kthx.

VIRGINIA

Somewhere in the lovely mountains over our first state line crossing, I became convinced we were about to pass our last exit for many many more miles, so we stopped for lunch in a town called Fancygap (all one word?) Virginia. We ate at outside at a little deli which was, as best we could tell, the only restaurant in town. ("Town" here being a loose meaning of the word.) I don't know what I was picturing for our road trip, but our first meal being sandwiches in a butterfly garden (if that sounds serene to you instead of panicky, we are not friends) was probably not it. The food was really tasty though! And it actually was sort of lovely out there! The flowers were pretty! And no butterflies landed on me, so.

There was a hilarious little garden shop next to the deli so of course we went and awkwardly shopped around some while the owner chatted with us. (She opened it up especially for us, so we had to at least wander through.) No pictures allowed, so you'll have to take my word for this, but they were well-stocked with barn art, hundreds of decorative pumpkins and other Halloween things, and anything you could ever need made from a mason jar: wine glasses, key rings, pencil sharpeners, coat hooks... there is nothing you can't make from a mason jar. That's what I learned in Fancygap, Virginia.

(Turns out there was an exit with tons of normal stuff, like... three miles later. Whatever. That would have been less interesting.)

WEST VIRGINIA

We decided West Virginia was the prettiest state we drove through, yet we somehow came away with a sad paucity of pictures.

But it was lovely, up through the blue ridge mountains (literally through -- there were a number of tunnels which were apparently foreign to Nathan, who was hella startled the first time we approached one).

It was overlooking the river (so pretty!) in Charleston, WV where Nathan finally let me open up some travel apps and think about where to stay for the night. We decided to shoot for Dayton. As in Dayton OHIO. Which to me sounded super far from home. I think that's when it hit me, whoa we are driving across America whoa.

OHIO

Ohio was notable for five things:
- it was the first place people started talking funny
- it was the only bad weather of our drive: a short but strong summer storm
- it was the first place with wide open cornfields like I'd never seen before
- it was the first time I had to got to drive
- it had a truck stop with more tractor trailers than I have ever seen in one place; I felt like I was in a Friend Car movie and they were all lined up to watch the big race together or something.

(That's my Hollywood moment, in podunk Ohio. Yes I took pictures.)

At some point while I was driving in Ohio, Nathan stumbled into this blog post and video (Him: darn, I  keep opening this tab on my phone to look for a new post, and then I remember you're with me so there's nothing new to see. Me: *raises eyebrow*), and we ugly cried until the crying turned into laughing, which is one of the best feelings in life, isn't it? It was cathartic. After emotional months and weeks and days and four states from home, we needed it.

Ohio has pretty skies after a storm.

We made it to Dayton for the night, to our steal-of-a-deal nice hotel (this is where I grudgingly admit that sometimes last-minute planning works out), and dinner at a fire station turned restaurant, and we drank beers and marveled that  not twenty-four hours earlier, we had been doing the same thing, at our regular place, in Raleigh. We already felt so far from home. Yet still so far from Minnesota!

And that's how we decided Dayton, Ohio might just be our safe place. All the goodbyes and transitions from Raleigh were behind, but our goodbye and transition was still many days ahead, and it just felt good to be in that in-between place. Safe. Easy. Normal. As normal as you can feel when you're many states from home on a road trip to say bye to your best friend. Which is... well, surprisingly normal. Dayton: RECOMMEND.

And then, we slept. I slept hard, one of the best sleeps I have had this year. We had scrounged some cough drops for Nathan at an almost-closed drugstore nearby, and they helped more than the myriad fancy prescriptions he was on for bronchitis (because of course, the week of a cross-country move) so he finally slept too. And we slept late. And then drove several hours to...

INDIANA

My first new state of our trip! Also, where Mr. David lives! But because timing is sometimes a bitch, he was not in town that day, so we did not get to have lunch with him or see his workshop or drive into downtown Indy, but! we did see the pretty skyline, and we got to have Steak N Shake (it was a road trip requirement for me), and I only rammed Nathan's car's under-bumper into one median on one busy highway, so. (It was fine. We're still friends. He just needed to cuss a little.)

And then Indiana got kind of awesome!

Okay first, did you know that corn ethanol is a real thing? Like, fuel for your car, from corn? This is not a movie thing or a hypothetical/hippie thing. They already make it! And sell it at normal gas stations! HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS. Corn gas! We are living in the future!

And THEN. I saw someone win the lottery in this very same gas station OH YES I DID. He had a scratch ticket and he won! Like ten bucks. Which was paid out from the cash register. There was no tv news crew or anything. (You're shocked, I know.) But I SAW SOMEONE WIN THE LOTTERY and it was very cool and no one can take that from me.

Not even Nathan who rolled his eyes and made me hold a can of pop. POP. Um, it's not called pop, it's called soda. Can I have some paaaaaahp? NO SIR ANOTHER NATHAN.

We drove past many miles of cornfields, everything got flatter and flatter, and I feel like my eyes got wider and wider. I just kind of couldn't believe the space. (Looking back, I'm amused -- that was nothing compared to Wisconsin or Minnesota.)

At some point when we were still in Indiana, we were also suddenly in Chicago. I was just in Chicago last summer, but apparently my geography is bad, because I don't think I fully understood that Chicago sort of spills into Indiana. Hence the eight lanes of interstate and suburban exits when we hit the Illinois state line.

ILLINOIS

Our first goal was to get through Chicago before rush hour. Magically our phones went back an hour, which helped, but we got slowed down by other things -- first, a berjillion toll booths, and then the siren song of... the Interstate Oasis.

I had never seen these before, so if this is something everyday and boring to you, then, first of all, bear with me in my delight, and second, well don't you lead a charmed life.

Okay so because of all the tolls, people can't really be in the habit of taking exits when they want a snack or some gas or whatever, so Chicago (all of Illinois?) has built these little exits-but-not-exits: parking lots with gas stations, connected by a building that stretches across the interstate, and inside are things like food courts and shops and transportation offices and whatnot. All the benefits, none of the land costs, none of the toll on/off inconveniences. Over the interstate! SO SMART, RIGHT?

So of course I made us go inside one. And take pictures. And get Starbucks. And also some egg rolls, because egg rolls are pretty much the best junk food you can buy for a dollar. (Nathan was horrified that I brought egg rolls into our road trip. He got over it. They were delicious. And not just because I bought them in a food court on a bridge spanning an interstate. But partly because of that.)

Oasis stops: RECOMMEND.

As we were pulling through the northern burbs of Chicago, Nathan got hungry (shoulda had an egg roll, is what I said) so we unpacked the cooler (wait! I forgot to say this! we had a foam cooler from the Chamblees full of snacks and goodies and such, which was lovely and awesome but SQUEAKY, so we had been listening to this thing for six states by then, now and I might avoid styrofoam for the rest of my life), and made some pimiento cheese sandwiches in a busy Chicago interstate.

Maybe we were tired or maybe we were high from the magic of the Oasis but basically we were punchy and could not stop laughing. Also that pimiento cheese was delicious.

Hey are you still reading? I am about to go to the next-to-last state!

WISCONSIN

Holy crap if I thought Ohio felt far from home, Wisconsin felt reeeeeally far from home. But it was gorgeous. The wide open spaces and cornfields blew my mind. I seriously felt like I was on the set of Smallville. I have only seen open space like that at the ocean. To see so much land, going and going and going and unbroken by towns or trees or anything, all the way to the horizon, was incredible. And, like the ocean, it's something you can't capture the vastness of in words or pictures. I didn't know til I saw it. And I am a fairly well-traveled person! I have seen middle eastern deserts and sand dunes, and african bush, and mountains and beaches and cliffs and all sorts of natural beauty -- but the cornfields of America were new to me, and kind of amazing.

(Nathan laughed at my amazement. Whatever.)

(Also, he knows a lot about corn. He claims it isn't much, but he can tell you about feed corn and sweet corn and seed corn and which kinds have which tassels and grow how tall and something something something, he knows enough to bore the socks right off your grandpa, so... never ask him about corn. His Iowa blood runs thick.) (This PSA has been brought to you by corn.)

Somewhere into the cornfield depths of Wisconsin, Nathan mentioned something about the Dells, which are... also in Wisconsin. *record scratch* wuuuuut?

You're getting this, right? That means it's a real place. Not just a nursery song. I KNOW.

So he half-joked that we should have dinner there, and suddenly we tapped our phones a few times and asked google maps and urban spoon, and then heck yes we went and had dinner in the Wisconsin Dells.

And, it sort of defies description. Not the dells themselves, they're like rock formations in a river or something - but the town itself is... well. How to explain.

It's like Myrtle Beach, but smack dab in the middle of Wisconsin. There are water parks and themed hotels and a gift shops galore. We drove slowly through town and laughed and laughed and had very wide eyes. We were delighted.

Between the Oasis and the Dells, July 31st was a day of midwestern wonders for me.

After our Wisconsin Dells dinner (at the least-crowded restaurant in town, which was tasty but sketchy in the most put-together-un-sketchy way possible; it was most definitely a front for like mafia work or drug deals or something, I decided), I talked Nathan into going a few more hours to make the next morning easier, even though we were both tired and he was increasingly anxious.

We did our only night driving of the trip (including a stop at one of the hundreds of gas stations that sell cheese! every gas station in Wisconsin touts its fancy dairy case!) and crashed for the night in Onalaska, just before the Minnesota state line.

The next morning we were weary, but we got some coffee and put on brave smiles for the last day. (Also to take the one and only car selfie of our whole trip.)

We crossed the river (I had never seen the Mississippi! Well, except on a cruise ship at its mouth, in New Orleans when I was a teenager) and...

...we were officially in Minnesota! Another Nathan's new home state!

MINNESOTA

And then we drove through corn and more corn and more and more corn, and yes it was all still beautiful. I took a crap ton more pictures but (shockingly) they all look somewhat the same, so here's just one.

My camera roll from the whole Minnesota portion of the drive is basically THIS.

At one point when we were allllllmost there, we hit a road under repair and there was a detour, from which we took a wrong turn, and it took miles and miles to correct (because CORNFIELDS) -- and that was the only bickering we did the whole trip -- less than half an hour from our final destination.

And then, we got there. Suddenly amidst the cornfields, in the middle of nowhere, there was a little neighborhood and a house, and that's where he lives now.

(And beyond that, the town of Northfield and beyond that the twin cities, thank goodness, because from our driving route, it felt smack dab in the middle of the corn.)

I spent the weekend there helping him get settled, and the town grew on me the whole time. We walked by the river, we had drinks at a pub, we shopped in delightful stores downtown, we walked all over campus at his beloved St. Olaf.

We also unpacked boxes with his parents, had a perfect friend date with drinks and coffee at a local foodie restaurant, and went to worship at his new church and got to sing hymns in worship together for the last time for a long while.

Really, the weekend was lovely and sad and happy and wonderful, all at the same time. We made new memories, the whole time, even in the eleventh hour.

Northfield is exactly like I wanted it to be for him. His new church people are warm and kind (almost southern!) and one man even write down his name and address in case I ever wanted to come visit with Mark and the kids, since he and his wife have lots of space and loving having people around. I met the famous (and infamous) composers and teachers who have known Nathan longer than I have, who love him already, who will be his support system in his new job. I left knowing this call is the right thing, and feeling legitimately excited for him in it.

Not that I wasn't sad to leave. We had a quiet coffee and a quiet drive to Minneapolis, and then we sat outside the security line at the airport for over an hour, not ready to part. We finally, after countless convenience stops over the week, found a diet coke with one of our names on it, and we took one last happy-sad picture at the MSP airport, before our dreaded good-bye.

We hugged and cried a lot, and then when I got through security and to my gate, he called, still on his side of the airport, and we cried some more. And then after a miserable crowded connection in Chicago and a dead phone and a late arrival back in NC, I sat by an outlet in the Raleigh airport at 1am, and we talked and cried yet more.

It was a terribly sad night for us, after a fun and funny trip. I still feel teary remembering it.

But. It is all okay. The goodbye was the hardest part. A month later, some days Mark and I look around and it still feels weird, like wait where's Another Nathan? But in general, real friendship persists, across states and miles, and through texts and calls and FaceTime and photo streams, and it is very okay. Even with the gut wrench at the end, this road trip was one of the best things we have ever done as friends.

So I'm not sure what else to say besides this: if you ever have the opportunity to drive across the country with your best friend, even if it's to say good-bye? Do it. RECOMMEND.