Welcome to another week of life on the road. I’m Genie Leslie, a freelance writer working remotely and traveling the country with my husband.
This week, we’re in Durham, North Carolina, enjoying fall trees and warm temperatures.
We’ve been in North Carolina for just over three weeks now, and honestly we’re really loving it. We don’t know if Durham itself is on the list of places we might land (it might be a bit too small), but at the same time, the state has a lot of potential. It’s a good halfway point for so many places on the East Coast, north and south. A lot of family is a long drive or a short flight away (and one of my cousins is a short drive away). The sunshine is plentiful.
The very first weekend after we arrived, there was a family wedding. My cousin was marrying her partner in Boone, about a three-hour drive away. On Thursday, my mom and aunt (who were driving up from Mississippi) arrived at our house to spend one night with us.
Together, we went out to eat and then took part in the age-old tradition of “taking a drive.” When I was a kid, and my aunt and uncle would came back to their hometown of Oxford to visit, they were always taking drives. They wanted to see what’s changed in town—which houses are still standing, which ones have been added onto or torn down, where the new subdivisions have popped up. They’d mostly drive, occasionally stopping to get out and look around, and even once, going inside a house from their childhood that was currently under construction.
Durham is not a town my mom and aunt know from childhood, but still, the drive is customary for getting to know the lay of the land. We didn’t know where we were going, really, but we checked out the Duke campus and then drove somewhere east to check out a big park. Honestly, we didn’t see much, but we had a great time laughing together.
We rested for the afternoon (they’d been driving for two days) and ordered food delivery for the evening. My aunt made my husband a gin and tonic, her signature drink, and we just sat around and talked. We talked about the places we’ve traveled, we talked about what other people in the family are up to, we talked about who was coming to the wedding that weekend. Every so often, we’d go quiet, and I’d briefly wonder if we should watch a movie or turn on the TV. But then someone would ask a new question or bring up a new topic and we were back to talking. This is what I miss, really. Having people around to just hang out.
The next morning was more of the same. Coffee (always, always coffee first with our family). Leftover scones. Sitting around the dining table making plans for the day (including goals like leaving by 1:30 PM which we immediately blew right past). After everyone finally dressed and packed for the weekend, and after Aaron spent a good ten minutes in my mom’s car doing a connect-your-phone-to-the-car tutorial, we were ready to hit the road eat lunch at Geer Street Garden. And then hit the road.
North Carolina is beautiful, and the drive from Durham to Boone was full of golden-red and yellow trees, but I must say this: Drivers here need a reminder about highway driving. There are no actual signs along the road that say “Slower traffic move to the right” and boy does it show. Everyone’s going the same speed in both lanes. You can’t get around, you can’t get past the clumps of cars. It’s quite frustrating. But we did make it, and that’s all that matters.
We had a lovely dinner with a few family members, and Aaron and I chatted up my mom’s cousin’s husband (no idea how to shorten that description or how I would relate him directly to me) about travel. I spoke to my cousin briefly about organizing a ride for my sister, her boyfriend, and his daughter, who’d run into travel issues on their way from LA, and discovered that she and her partner were taking care of an aunt who’d broken her arm at the wedding party dinner (it’s not a wedding without travel screw-ups or a last-minute trip to the ER, right?). We all went to bed exhausted but excited.
The next day was wedding day. My cousin, staying very true to herself, was having a casual outdoor wedding. We all met at a park in the mountains wearing flannel, jeans, or anything else that we found most comfortable, to enjoy a picnic by a lake. With a short, matrimonial ceremony thrown in the middle. The view at the lake was absolutely stunning, and the park was filled with people who love my cousin and her partner, all ready and excited to celebrate them. We caught up with family and friends we hadn’t seen in years, we ate delicious chili on picnic blankets, and my cousin and her partner were pronounced “wives, y’all!”
The day ended a bit abruptly, as clouds rolled in and wind started knocking over decorations. Nobody wanted to do the curvy mountain drive in the rain, so people started to disperse. But it was okay, because many of us were getting back together the next day to do a morning hike with the new wives.
The next morning, Aaron, my sister’s boyfriend, and I got up and piled on layers (the rain brought in a cold front) to brave the hike. And so did about 40 others. Is that an exaggeration? Don’t think so, but I’m not gonna check. This was actually my favorite event of the weekend. I got to talk to my cousin a little more, but I also got to meet several of her friends and talk to them. It felt like everyone on the hike (it was really a walk, with a last-minute location change to a beautiful lake that had a very easy trail surrounding it) wanted to meet everyone else. We wanted to see who else was in their lives and how they were connected to my cousin or her wife. We split into little groups as we walked, but then the groups would shift and morph, rotating people in and out, like a game of musical chairs for early morning conversation. There were also at least two dogs on this walk, which of course brought me and Aaron so much joy.
The entire weekend was full of laughing and talking, catching up with people I haven’t seen, haven’t even been physically near to, in years. I felt filled back up when it ended—filled with love and connection and excitement.
This might also be why the state of North Carolina is creeping its way onto my potential places list. Because after a year of traveling and, at times, a good bit of isolation, it is so comforting to be back in a place and with people that feel like home.
What else is going on?
I finally mailed some of my crochet creations to their designated owners, which means I have room to make more!
Aaron and I went axe throwing, which I think will get its own essay soon enough, so get ready for that.
We watched all of The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix and really enjoyed it. Maybe my favorite of all the Mike Flanagan horror series of the last five years (and the last one we’ll get, I hear).
I’ve heard really good things about the movie Fingernails and I can’t wait to watch it.
And now that I’m just on Youtube watching movie trailers, Quiz Lady with Awkwafina and Sandra Oh looks delightful!