Making plans for the future

I’m going to a wedding! Not mine.

I have eight months to plan for a niece’s wedding, which happens to fall during one of the busiest travel times of the year. The wedding also happens to be in another state. If I drive it’s about 16 to 18 hours. If I fly, there are headaches in the aspect of how much will it cost. Plus there’s also the expenses of getting a hotel room, plus meals and who knows if gas prices will still be up or will have dropped by then. It’s still eight months out, but I’m already wondering how I’m going to go about this.

On the other hand, this is a chance for me to do some travel. Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Frankly except for visits to family in Brainerd and Thief River Falls I haven’t been anywhere really in the last few years. Sometimes I think even a trip to Duluth would help me get out and do a little more.

Travel is something that my family did quite a bit when I was growing up. There were trips out to Montana every other year to ski in the mountains. There were even the odd weekend trips to smaller ski places in Minnesota or Wisconsin. In the summer there were the occasional weekend outings for camping in our pop up camper.

Looking back it makes me realize how blessed I was to have parents who would save up for trips like that and who wanted to travel. Even the small trips to a campsite with a lake allowed us to get away from home, break our routine and see someplace new.

So I guess I’m going to be making some calls and checking some websites and doing it relatively quickly.