Day 12: Home Sweet Home

After 12 days, 6800 miles, 21 states we have finally made it home. The final day of driving was the only time any of us felt anxious to reach our destination: it was the first time we knew what was waiting for us at the end of the day. We wanted our reward of a home cooked meal and a soft, familiar bed. And we were rewarded, not just with this, but the safety and comfort of being in our home town.

Going home, we drove down streets that I had been down a hundred times before. Now we looked upon them with fresh eyes. What was so different about these roads and the ones I had driven through in the middle of America. They were secluded more by the woods, and certainly more crowded than many of the places I had been. But now home wasn’t so different from the places we had been, it seemed just as real as all the other towns we had visited — different, but just as real.

I still don’t know the answers to the questions I asked on the first day of this road trip. I felt different and smaller than when I started, as I had guessed, but this feeling of coming home was unanticipated. Seeing the entire country made me feel more connected, not hidden away safely in my home town. Even in my house I was connected to the beating heart of the country, a citizen of a world that never stopped moving. Some day I may take the same trip across America and back and find it completely different than how I left it. That’s the beauty of it all. Nothing could ever steal adventure away from this country.