On the Road Again

 As I was saying goodbye to my daughter-in-love on the phone, just before starting out on this “Darwin Escape” trip, I was whining that we didn’t know if we’d get on the plane (standby) or if they’d let us into the Northern territories (Covid).  To add to that (without taking a breath), I grizzled that the motor home people had emailed us to say our particular van that we’d ordered had ‘been in an accident’ and we might have to cancel.

Kylie, calm as ever, answered in a way that I could hear her smile, “You wouldn’t have it any other way”.  

So we’ve been in Darwin three days now, having had a pretty smooth trip. I have my doubts about the couple behind us on the plane, tho. We could just overhear them saying to the policeman in the terminal, “Yes, we drove thru Sydney but hey! We never got out of the car!”  

I’m guessing they’re now enjoying a two-week lockdown accommodation  at their own expense in a government appointed hotel.  I just hope they avoided the $4000 fine!

Anyway, it’s nice to be WARM!  Early this morning, Darwin even treated us to one of their classic thunder storms. Beautiful.

But as per our reputation, we’re having our usual dramas, although nothing too dramatic.  We haven’t rented a car because we’re still not sure about the motor home plans. We’ll find out tomorrow if they got it repaired, fixed up an upgraded rig, or canceled the whole thing. In the meantime, we’ve been walking everywhere because it’s such a small town.

However, to get to church this afternoon where we’ll meet an old missionary friend, and hopefully share a little with the folks there, we need to unlock the secrets of Darwin’s bus service. We tried a dry run last night, going to a nice beach a few miles away, but it was a classic fail. No bus, no taxis, and although we did manage to find an Uber, the system somehow didn’t like our credit card!

I think it’s significant that the following post popped up this morning while I was checking emails. It’s from a blog I posted 5 years ago, and it seems Kylie was right: we’ve never had it any other way!

Here’s what I wrote back in 2015: It’s pretty long so just skip it if you have enough life going on to be too busy! ha

Here it is:

Have you ever driven anywhere with a cat in the car? If so, then maybe you can relate to our journey these last couple of days across the endless miles from Maine to Michigan.

You see, we had the unlisted help of four ‘ladies’ in the car. We’ve named our various GPS systems “Nelda”, (the original Tom Tom model we bought when we landed in America), “Stephanie” (the onboard one installed in the rental car,) and two unnamed iPhone apps. I think they would be great, except that they don’t work just anywhere since they no longer have a phone service connected. That meant we had to stop somewhere and hook up to the internet before they’d talk to us.

Stephanie set us out on what she considered a 14-hour route to get us to Michigan before Tony was due at an online seminar (for his doctoral study) and then he was scheduled to preach at a Japanese church. Two easy 7-hour driving days. No problem.

We left the parking lot bolstered with courage, but there were already issues between the girls. One wanted us to go left, the other wanted us to go…….you guessed it, right. Of course most of these devices are very lady-like in that they won’t show you all their secrets until you stop, find an internet, promise them something and then find out what they intended to reveal about their ultimate plans … sometime later.

Eventually we found ourselves on an ever-narrowing dirt road somewhere in Vermont. I will admit that the scenery was breathtaking, but we needed to stay on task. We retraced our steps to the pavement and found a diner with a kindly waitress. “Oh, GPS’s don’t work here, too many trees”, she said as she used an archaic tool (her hand) to point the way. Off we went, full of blueberry pancakes and hope…….again.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but we gradually developed a routine: Drive about 2 hours, look at all the beautiful scenery, stop and find a place with internet and then have a consultation.

Attending the battle/travel planning meeting were our three “GPS Girls” while built-in Stephanie remained stuck in the car, pouting and plotting. We would of course ask her opinion when we came back to the car, but she claimed to have a “safety feature” that refused any discussion as long as the car was moving. So she said.

So off we’d go for another 2+ hours, craning our necks out the windows in search of moose or anything else of note. We did see a lot of trees and lakes…...

Finally we came upon an Alfred Hitchcockian motel, complete with a set of “ne’re-do-wells” lounging in the dark along the railings. I went straight for our room, slammed and locked the door behind us After checking the shower while whistling the theme from “Psycho", I collapsed on the bed. We’d been on the road for 13 hours and weren’t half way there.

Bright and early the next morning we dashed down to the office to check out the “free continental breakfast”. The “ne’re-do-wells” (who it turned out were some very nice middle-aged bikers trying to rediscover their youth) were already lined up, but we managed to grab a roll and a cup of coffee before hitting the road again. The sleep had renewed our resolve to ‘get this done', and since Lake Erie was lapping to our left side, I didn’t think the GPS girls could squabble any today.

Wrong. Nelda insisted we were 7 hours from the goal, Stephanie? 14. The iPhone cheerleaders backed up Nelda, so we followed her lead.

Before the day was out, we had gathered BOTH our laptops, both phones and Nelda into the rest stop for a final summit meeting. Canada has lovely rest stops called ‘Enroute’. They’re clean, predictable, decked out with fast food and tourist information, and a real comfort when you’re going nuts.

All the girls agreed, except of course for Stephanie, who kept insisting that we needed to circumnavigate Lake Erie, adding about 700 miles! We’ve come to the conclusion that she’s all looks and no brain and we’ll be glad to send her back with the car when the rental is finished.

After just under nine hours, we arrived in Detroit, found the motel we’d booked online, and Tony managed to log into his seminar on time. While he was pontificating, I called our Japanese friend and found out that he was still in Kentucky, having missed his plane home from a business trip! Hopefully we’ll see him and his wife tomorrow, at least at church if not before.

So it seems getting from “point A” to “point B” is not always a simple matter. It often comes down to where you put your faith. For this trip, we were “loaded for bear” with a total of two GPS units, two iPhone map apps and two laptop computers. As I think about it, I believe we would have had better success if we’d found more friendly waitresses along the way to ply us with pancakes and point us in the right direction.

When the writer of Proverbs tells us, “By wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory” (Pro. 24:6), I don’t think he had GPS devices in mind. There are those whose counsel is good and helpful, and those who if given the chance will take you down a dead end dirt road. We need to know whom we can trust, and who will lead us in the right direction.

Jesus said it well: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). If we’ll follow His lead, and the lead of those He provides, we can’t go wrong. Let’s keep our eyes on Him, read His Word and listen to His counsel. 

So long from Darwin! We’ll hopefully have smooth sailing and will have stories to tell next week! Happy trails, Marsha