There's a chance that Bethany and I are beginning to embrace the concept of "Go Big or Go Home" when it comes to celebrating milestone anniversaries.
Our fifth anniversary was spent cruising the Pacific Coast Highway in a rented Hyundai Sonata. The Sonata was a bluish-gray if anyone is interested. Then, after COVID got in the way of our original plans for ten years of marriage, we saw fit to jump out of a plane instead...with parachutes.
While we had originally hoped to be able to take our preplanned trip to Canada and Maine this year, the continued closure of the borders made that an impossibility. Therefore, we decided that the only thing left to do was go somewhere on a Whym.
Whym, for those that don't know, is a surprise travel agency. After answering a rather intensive 50 question survey, Whym will plan a vacation catered to meet the interests of everyone in your group. The kicker? You have no idea what you will be doing or where you will even be going until about two hours before it's time to leave.
Before this year, Bethany and I had never heard of Whym or the concept of surprise travel agencies. However, after some of our friends shared about their surprise trip to Austin, we were very intrigued. Therefore, after checking out all of the surprise travel agencies out there, we decided that Whym was the best fit for us and our trip was booked.
A week before leaving, we received a seven-day forecast for our destination (no spoilers though) helping us to pack with an updated forecast coming the day before our departure. The crazy thing about these two forecasts is that they changed dramatically over that time frame. Luckily, we had plenty of time to repack our suitcases accordingly to make sure we were prepared for any weather to come.
Now, one thing to note was that our surprise trip wouldn't include air travel like most companies. Instead, we would be driving AND we would be leaving from Bethany's parents in Nebraska as they were taking care of Ellie and Ethan for a few days. As you can probably imagine, by the time we reached the home of Bethany's parents on the eve of our departure, our anticipation had reached a fever pitch. While we each had ideas of where we might be heading, neither of us really wanted to guess one way or the other.
Finally, it was time to go to bed and try to get some sleep so that we could be awake and alert for the drive the next morning. As you can probably guess, that was easier said than done. I, for one, spent most of the night tossing and turning in anticipation of what would be coming. Finally, 5:30 came and Ellie climbed down from her bunk bed, waking Bethany and I up as she turned on the radio in the room. With that, I turned my phone off airplane mode only to be subjected to a rapid-fire series of texts, courtesy of Whym. We finally had our destination!
In addition to our destination of Minneapolis, we also received driving instructions, two road trip playlists, and various resources teaching us things to know about Minneapolis. So, with that, we quickly got ourselves dressed, packed our bags in the car, said goodbye to the kids, and set out for a 7-hour road trip into mystery.
Mystery that will be revealed next time on #DaddyWrite.
P.S. Minneapolis was my guess all along. Not that I'm keeping track or anything.
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