Clustering Small Adventures

I used to be comfortable driving long distances, driving down to southern colleges or military installations for family, going five hours each way for a day conference, that sort of thing. As I have gotten older, sharing 20-25% of the driving has become more important. I can daydream just as well or even better, but sleepiness slows me down with stops. I like driving medium distances now, and actively look for occasional excuses to do so. Small adventures look promising but not enough to drive far.  Helvetia, WV is a small Swiss-founded village that has a Swiss restaurant in season and some old Swiss-influenced buildings. Nearby Pickens has a maple-syrup festival in March. But we have lots of maple syrup events in NH, so the latter is not much of a draw. At most it might choose my date for a Helvetia adventure. 

I ran across a Russian Orthodox Monastary that keeps silence 9am-9pm and is available for retreats and spiritual direction.  It is even farther into WV, on the border with Eastern KY. As I have only driven through WV on Interstates, getting into the mountain roads looks interesting. But not interesting enough to drive 13 hours, because we have back roads in the mountains here in NH, and silent retreats an hour or two away - though not together.  The skiing areas have Swiss-looking chalets, also.

To cut down on driving I could fly into Pittsburgh and rent a car and still have plenty of back roads.  Yet Tripadvisor is not showing me a lot I want to see in Pittsburgh. Any decent art museum will show you things you can't get elsewhere, which makes them good secondary stops wherever you go. Ditto small specialty museums. But even though the National Lighter Museum, the National 4-string Banjo Museum, and the Frontier Drugstore Museum are all only a half-hour outside of Oklahoma City in Guthrie, the only other draw would be to watch the Oklahoma City Thunder play basketball. Which they do in Boston once a year anyway. If I were in OKC for some other reason, those would be good add-ons.

I could see the Red Sox minor league stadiums in Salem VA and Greenville SC, and if I were driving that, I would be passing through Grim's territory and add him to the adventure.  But Grim has talked about his own adventure coming here, and we read each other enough to be in frequent contact anyway. Plus, that doesn't connect that well to the West Virginia visits, unless I decided to do an entire 10-day Appalachian tour. Which I might.  I have friends in the Shenandoah Valley as well. 

So these are separated half-adventures and quarter adventures that don't add up to a whole reason to go, but hover in the background in case some other half-adventure comes along to attach to them. But for the moment, they look like a lot of money to spend for an uncertain payback.

We will drive up to Quebec City next month.  That's a whole adventure for my wife and a half one for me.