Setup
This is a pretty easy one. Get ready to go home, then go home. Not much else in store for the day. Driving home on the Saturday makes it less pressing that we leave. And when we get home, we have some time to decompress.
Cleaning
We’re always given free room & board for the week, so it’s only fair that we help clean up after ourselves, which entails bathrooms, bedrooms, and doing some of the laundry. Oma takes care of the bulk of the laundry but we strip everything and start it before we go. This is part of the routine and it’s a small price to pay for being able to stay here, especially given that I don’t really clean anything.
Store
Every time we come up here we say we’re going to hit the food store before we leave, to bring some stuff back with us. We never do. Being today was a Saturday, and as mentioned earlier we were in no rush, we had a chance to buy some of the things we enjoy, which includes meats & cheese and a few other things we can’t get in the states.
Pack
Back home and we pack up, then take some pictures of all of the remaining people before we go. Bear refused to cooperate, but he did get snagged in 1 of the pics. We should have done this when we were 12, but we didn’t think of it. Oh well, there’s always Xmas break, which should be our next trip up. It’ll be too cold on the porch though.
After these Adri & Olli left and we were down to 7 people and 1 dog, up from a max of 13 people and 3 dogs.
Lunch
Opa broke out the smoked meat as a special meal before we left. This is from Schwartz’s Deli in Montreal, which they sell at Costco. It was fabulous, and a great sendoff.
After lunch we said our goodbyes and hit the road.
Drive
The drive is clear and uneventful, and more or less boring which is fine by me. We stopped 2 times on this leg:
- After the border for gas, bathroom, and tea/coffee
- Random pee break on 87
And then we were home.
Summary
Another trip in the books. 8 days in total, 6 full on the ground and 2 for driving. I think I prefer driving on the Saturday, and not leaving after work to start the trip. I also prefer the Saturday coming back because everything is less rushed. More thoughts on all of this in the next section.
Reflections
I really enjoyed this trip for a variety of reasons, but I would be lying if I failed to admit that I’m starting to think about retirement and what that might be like. This week was almost exactly that. The weather up here, while erratic this week, is just great in the summer and I love the mix of being indoors & outdoors. As much as I thrive in the outdoors, I enjoy my creature comforts like boutique coffee roasts, showers, air conditioning, and beds. So I’m firmly in between the rough & tumble outdoorsman and the pampered modern consumer.
I don’t pretend to know what our future brings but if you showed me a glimpse of it and we were here in 10 years, I wouldn’t be even a little bit surprised. I enjoy New Jersey, but I don’t know if we’ll be here forever (spoiler alert: highly unlikely), so I’m always on the lookout for the future. I feel like this past week was a glimpse of that. That said, I would be fooling myself if I didn’t admit the good meals being cooked, and the festive atmosphere didn’t lend to some of the enjoyment.
Regardless of what the reality might be, I can cling to some form of this, in some location undetermined, as our future – at least in my mind’s future.
Traveling Normandy 