Southland

I have a large wad of receipts in my wallet right now. Tomorrow, if I have time, I might remove them and distill the gas station receipts from the rest, to add up the amount we've spent on gasoline since June 27. That morning we backed out of our driveway and headed generally south and east, leaving Illinois and passing through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. We got as far away as Asheville, NC.

All together, by the time we returned to our driveway late this afternoon, we'd traveled 2060 miles -- not actually that far when compared, say, to driving to Alberta and back two years ago (4,800+ miles). So maybe that was our response to high energy costs: cut out a couple of thousand miles.

Actually, no. If we'd had a few more days, we'd have also gone to Atlanta or Charleston, SC, or both. Easily another thousand miles. Travel requires three basic resources, namely money, time and the will to go. Each of those can be, and always is, a limiting factor. Time was a little more constraining this time around than money.

Limited the trip might have been, but it still offered us the cool dampness of Mammoth Cave, the familiar charms of Nashville (including a 42-foot statue of a goddess), intense lush greenery, views that confirmed the accuracy of calling them the Smokies, distant roads with alarming mountain switchbacks, the highest point in Tennessee, and Gatlinburg, which probably has more tourist traps per square foot than anywhere else.

We saw the extraordinary Biltmore, an estate with few peers in North America. We sought out biscuits and gravy, milkshakes from a diner unchanged since ca. 1940, and chocolate balls infused with bourbon. The trip included a visit to a presidential home and a presidential grave site; there were houses along the way at which presidents had stayed; and a place at which FDR came to speak. Besides the presidential grave, I saw slave graves and the picturesque place where Daniel Boone is thought to lie. We pitched our tent (five nights) and also stayed in inexpensive motels (four nights). The girls swam at every opportunity in pools, and found boulder-choked creeks to play in as well. I heard dialects that I haven't heard in years, charming even when spoken by a probable con woman in a parking lot.

To judge by the crowds in some places, and the traffic, and the conversations I had with clerks, waitresses and a park service employee, people aren't letting an average of $4/gal. put them off completely from pleasure trips. I know our trip was, on the whole, a pleasure.