Somewhere in the finite stretches of our lives, we crossed an invisible threshold and passed into the stage in which we travel with one of our pets. I realized this in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where I stood with our seven-pound chi-weenie on a leash, watching the drive-thru line snake slowly by,
The occasion: a quickly-planned weekend trip to Charleston, one that happened to coincide with Kel’s birthday, but one that was mostly made possible by the clearance of normal weekend events. Late Thursday evening I decided to cash out a small bevy of credit card points and book a hotel room. I hadn’t been to Charleston in years; it had been even longer for Kel and would be the kids’ first trip.
Rapidly-planned trips require an odd sort of coordination. We weren’t going to be there long–checking in Friday evening, taking advantage of everything we could Saturday and Sunday morning, then planning to get home in time to take care of chores and the other business readying for the week ahead. We ought to only plan to do three or four things, tops. We decided we owed it to the kids to book a hotel with an indoor pool. We planned to visit the USS Yorktown, a WWII-era aircraft carrier permanently parked on display. I figured we would do a very short tour of Charleston’s historic downtown (you know, show the kids a place where George Washington slept). We would, no doubt, end up on the beach for a walk.
