My friend Nancy called me on a Wednesday and asked, “Do you want to drive to North Carolina with me?”
“When?”
“Friday,” she said. Nancy lives in southern Indiana and is a recently retired grade school teacher. She has always liked to travel, and did so frequently before her husband died, but I never knew her to be one who could decide on Wednesday to drive through the Great Smoky Mountains on Friday. But it developed that two mutual friends were driving from Clearwater Florida to Franklin, North Carolina; one of the two was planning to surprise the other with a reunion of The Three Amigos: Lisa, Nancy and CJ.
My friend Lisa lives in Clearwater Beach and has developed a friendship with a longtime resident of the town. Tommy Duff is an ex-publican and the self-described “Mayor Of Clearwater” and has spent some time driving to southern Indiana to share Thanksgiving with Nancy, Lisa and me. Lisa has a sister who lives in Louisville, and for years, it has been a tradition for The Three Amigos to gather at “Turkey Time.
Tommy is an adventurer, an impulsive trip-planner who has found a willing traveling companion in Lisa. When Tommy says to Lisa, “Road trip?” Lisa will often reply, “I’m in: where to?” Tommy will give her a Muttly giggle and Lisa will settle into the passenger’s seat and wait for the car to stop. On this trip, Tommy had not told Lisa that he had invited our friend Nancy to meet them in North Carolina. Nancy invited me, but I had reservations about the trip and declined. I had not seen Nancy and her daughter for some time, though, so I decided to go to southern Indiana for a visit. When I walked into her house with my bags, Nancy said, “Let’s go to North Carolina. Tommy said it is only a five-hour trip.” Being the intensely analytical, cautious, risk-assessing person that I am, I said, “OK.” I arrived at Nancy’s house at 3:30 p.m., and at 5:00 p.m., we were stuck in rush-hour traffic on I-64.
“This is going to add some time to the — not five-hour, but seven-hour — trip,” I said. I was the navigator and Nancy was the pilot. I had brought my GPS device and was trying out a similar service on my Smartphone, both of which concurred with the seven-hour estimate.
By the time we arrived at the cabin in Franklin, North Carolina, Nancy and I had driven through snow, fog, rain and that terrifying moment when Nancy turned off the car’s lights while we were barreling down the highway at 70 mph. My GPS and phone had conflicting instructions and since I had not used the phone for navigation, I let the GPS guide us.
Which is why we spent an hour driving up and down a mountain, with the GPS device telling us to “turn right on Trail.” We never found a road named “Trail,” but we saw some serious dogs and gatherings of vehicles, and imagined that we heard faint strains of banjo music. Our cell phones had no signal, so we could not contact our friends for help.
The cabin in the Nantahala National Forest was a thing of great beauty, and four friends gathered around a fire that night and shared a toast to the survival of “The Lost Two: Nancy and CJ.” In the morning, I watched finches scavenge beneath empty bird feeders and chuckled deep in my chest, remembering the terror of the previous night, and my joy when I gathered my friends into my arms, a fitting end to an impetuous road trip.