BEST VACATION EVER

HAVE COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS? TEXT THEM TO 910-710-2259

This week we look at what happens when it becomes the best vacation in your life to date. It doesn't mean there were no wrinkles, we just chose to see the story unfold and not stare at the wrinkles.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Well good morning. It's August the 17th, 2026, and straight from the Highley Caffeinated Studio, this is According to Willie B, and I, yours truly, will be your host for the next half hour. So last week we talked about the worst vacation. So I thought naturally this week we would talk about my best vacation. And we'll get into that in a moment, but I want to give you one piece of information that I think a lot of you are going to enjoy. A lot of people have written to me and say it's it kind of can cumbersome and time consuming to go to the different websites and different things to provide feedback. So what I've done is I have set up a phone number that is universal across all podcasts, and you can text me any thoughts, innuendos, suggestions, complaints, if there's a certain place that you would like me to cover. And that number is 910-710-2259. Now, if you're driving, I understand you can't write that down. And I will put it in the description of this podcast. So moving forward, any suggestions or comments or anything you want to make, you can just drop it real quick and a quick text to 910-710-2259. All right, let's jump into this week's episode. And the title of today's episode is Let the Trip Unfold because sometimes it's wrinkle-free, and sometimes you're gonna need an iron. Because last week we talked about one of my worst vacations. So naturally, this week I thought I would go in another direction and talk about the best vacation I've ever taken. Except I had a problem. I couldn't just pick one. But there are two trips that immediately came to mind, and they're separated by 10 years, but they had a lot of commonalities. So one was the big trip that we took last year to Canada and New York and Boston, Maine, and everything in between, and traveling from place to place and covering a whole lot of miles because we drove uh, I would say 90% of that vacation. So that definitely made for some planning that had to be done. And the other was wasn't even supposed to be a vacation. It started out as an overnight trip. And four days later, well, apparently Melody and I both have a very loose interpretation of what the word overnight means. But when I started thinking about these two completely different trips and 10 years apart, I realized that they actually had something very important in common. They taught us a philosophy about traveling that I think has made us better travelers. Let the trip unfold. Because sometimes your vacation unfolds perfectly and everything goes according to plan. The weather cooperates, the hotel looks like the pictures, the reservations are waiting, your flights on time, it's beautiful, it's wrinkle-free, and sometimes you're gonna need an iron. Welcome to Willie Bee. All right, so the vacation that wasn't supposed to happen. Let's go back about 11 years. Millie and I were visiting her family in North Carolina for Thanksgiving. We were going to be there for about eight days, and somewhere along the way, we decided why don't we venture out for a night? Just a little overnight getaway, nothing major. Pack a few things, get in a car, explore a little bit, stay somewhere overnight, and come right back. Four days later, we had traveled across the Blue Ridge Mountains, Maggie Valley, Cherokee, little mountain towns I'd never heard of, back roads, side roads, places we had not planned on seeing. And I think that's part of why I remember that trip so fondly. We weren't checking boxes, we weren't racing an itinerary, and we didn't have Tuesday scheduled down to 2.17 p.m. at Meyer Fountain. We just traveled. So the thing that really makes that that trip memorable for me, things that stick out was because we didn't have it planned. It was truly spontaneity, and it's the kind of trips that we love to take. Although, like I told you at last week's episode, sometimes that doesn't always work. But this time it did, and it just everything unfolded beautifully. And we went from town to town. We started out just wait, let's go up to Maggie Valley. I'd never heard of Maggie Valley, but it was in the mountains, so I was game for that. I love the mountains. And so we headed up there, explored Maggie Valley and Cherokee, and it just kept unfolding from there. It was like, well, let's get up on the Blue Ridge Parkway and ride down the Blue Ridge Parkway. And then there were little bitty towns, and we just kept exploring all day, and it would become nightfall, and we would stumble across a little town. We're like, Oh, okay, here's a a motel that looked like it was from the 1900s, and we stayed, and it was absolutely remarkable. Um, some of the best hotel stays I've I've ever had. Uh the owners were very attentive, they they know what they're doing. They they have the hospitality game down to an art, to say the least. And it was truly enjoyable. I remember when we were up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, one night it started to snow. Now, we didn't get anything crazy. It was uh probably only a couple of inches, but it made enough snow that I could form a snowman. Now, understand that this snowman, two things about this make it rememberable. One, it was about the size of a field mouse, and that's all the snow I could gather up. And then two, uh, it was the first snowman I had built since I was a child. So it made for a very memorable moment. And it's just one of those things that just it just came about. It was not something that was planned, it was not something that was on the itinerary, and that's what I tell you. You have to look for those moments in between uh the bullet points on an itinerary. Now, sometimes, uh, like the trip, the next trip we're going to talk about, you'll see where an itinerary that is bullet pointed down to nailing you to the wall is important. But this trip it wasn't. And we found some of the best little cafes and restaurants along the way, and it was just really incredible meeting all those people throughout the small towns. And I remember there was one town that we went to, and it was I I honestly don't remember the name of it, but they had these trees lining the sidewalks down the town. There were lights strung up in the trees, and all the shops were closed because it was at late at night. But we just strolled down those sidewalks, and it was uh for a uh lack of better explanation, it was almost like a Hallmark moment, if you will. I mean, it was little mountain town sidewalks, just window shopping. It was it was absolutely incredible. It was like something that was truly pulled from a movie, and I'd never experienced anything like that. And I just remember that was so cool. And then you're driving up through the mountains and and seeing the distance uh as far as you could see on a clear day, it was just most amazing thing, and that's why I've always loved the mountains. Uh, there's just something about mountain territories that have always just called to me. Even if you go to places like uh New Mexico where they have mountains, and some of those mountains are kind of bare and they don't have trees unless you get up into the ski areas, but still the same thing. I've just always loved the mountain areas in the U.S. And um so it was an absolutely incredible trip just so far, just getting to see all those little small towns. But like I said, we didn't have a schedule, we didn't have anything planned. Every motel or hotel we stayed in was last minute, and you just drove in. It's like, hey, do you have a room for the night? Yes, okay, cool. So uh it made for a really great experience. Now, somewhere, one of my favorite things is the question to ask yourself when you're traveling. What's over there? Because somewhere along the way, I think we've forgotten one of the greatest questions in travel, and that is what's over there. You see a road, you see a sign, you see a little town, you see something interesting. And instead of saying, We don't have time for that because the itinerary says we're supposed to be somewhere else, no, you say let's go see. That's how you discover things. Some of my favorite travel memories weren't things I researched for six months beforehand. They happened because we saw something and thought, well, that looks interesting. And there's something wonderfully wonderful feeling about not knowing what comes next. So I'm not saying that we've become professional vacation planners. Please don't miss on no, don't misunderstand me. Planning is good, especially today. Hotels, flights, cruises, popular attractions, restaurants, some things absolutely need reservations. But I think we've gotten to the point where some people plan every waking minute minute of a vacation. Hey, I didn't promise any words, Alice. Um, you know, 7 o'clock breakfast, 7:32, leave the hotel, 8.06, arrive at the museum. Folks, if your itinerary has scheduled bathroom breaks, you've gone too far. Leave some blank spaces because the blank spaces are where some of the best memories happen. Now, fast forward about 10 years, because this was a completely different trip. This wasn't an overnight trip that accidentally became four days. This was a big trip. And I think some of you, if you listen to the show, you know what I'm talking about. It's the big trip that we took through Canada, New York, Boston, Maine, multiple destinations, lots of moving parts, lots of opportunities for something to go wrong. And guess what? Things did go wrong. But here's where something that I've learned. Very few vacations are completely hiccup free. I don't care how carefully you plan, weather changes, flights get delayed, traffic happens, restaurants close, rest. I mean, the the list just goes on. Anybody that's traveled any amount of time at all knows knows the rest of that list. And something costs more than you expected. You miss a turn. So there's lots of things. And when and somebody can get tired, somebody can get hungry. When people get tired and hungry, now we're entering a dangerous territory. But and this is one of the trips where Kilvana had planned this trip until we had it down to the day, to the hour, I mean, to every single stop that we made. And it's really the only way that we were able to see as many states and territories and attractions that we were able to see was because we had it so planned out and it took months. I don't know, just to be honest, if there are any other people on the planet that would have spent as much time as her and I did planning that trip. It was insane. We had weekly meetings on Zoom calls, and it was just crazy. But we had it planned out, and for the most part, we only missed a f maybe two or three little attractions that we want to see. But hey, that gives us uh um a reason to go back. Uh we did have some issues on that trip. Um, funny thing is, one of them was surrounding me where I had fallen in a parking lot at night and caught my finger in a fence, wooden fence, as I fell. And today that finger is still not exactly back like it should be. That's just one of those things. That's just how the trip unfolded. Um, there were other things where we ran out of time in different places, or we had too much time, and we had to, but there was always something. But the thing is, is our thing was roll with the punches. But I think a better explanation of that or a better analogy is let's see how the trip unfolds. Because sometimes it's wrinkled, sometimes it comes out beautifully. But you know, when you talk about a trip that big and you're talking crossing borders and and food discoveries and scenery and unexpected unexpected stops, I mean, these are things that can cause a huge wrinkle. So we learned on that trip to let the trip unfold. The trip really enforced something for us. When something went wrong, instead of immediately saying vacation ruined, we started saying, Okay, what do we do now? Well, it didn't matter whether the flight was delayed, that's a little wrinkle, restaurant closed, that's a little wrinkle, wrong turn, a little wrinkle. But sometimes if you get where you get one of those wrinkles or situations where it's really gonna cause a major delay or something in the trip, then you just say somebody warm up the iron, because that's when you go with a plan B. Rental car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, forget the iron, we're gonna need a steamer. But here's the important part you can't always control the wrinkle. But here's what you can control you can control whether you spend the rest of the vacation staring at that wrinkle. The difference between a disaster and a memory, and this is where last week's episode and this week's episode come together. Last week we talked about the worst vacation. This week we're talking about the best. But here's what's interesting. Things went wrong on the best vacation, too. So what's the difference? Sometimes the difference between a vacation disaster and a vacation memory is simply how you react to what happens next. You have choices. You can spend three days complaining that something didn't go to according to plan, or you can say, Well, what's plan B? And occasionally plan B becomes a story that you tell for the next 20 years, I promise you. Sometimes the detour is the vacation. That's another lesson that those trips taught me. We think the vacation is the destination, but sometimes the detour is the vacation. You're trying to get to point A, something happened, and now you're going toward point B. And somewhere between those two places, you find the restaurant nobody told you about, the little town you never knew existed, the scenic overlook that wasn't on your itinerary, and that person that you meet that you'll never forget, the story you would not have if everything had gone perfectly. That, my friends, is traveling. All right, so here's a vacation personality test. Let's find out what kind of traveler you are. Here's the situation: you're on vacation, you're lost, it's raining. The restaurant you drove 45 minutes to visit is closed, and your hotel can't find your reservation. What do you do? Traveler A, vacation ruined. You're already composing a one-star review and you haven't even gotten inside yet. Traveler B, phone immediately comes out, Google, TripAdvisor, maps, booking sites, and within 90 seconds, you've got 17 alternatives and a spreadsheet. And then there's traveler C. Looks around and says, Well, what's around here? And starts exploring. And then there's Traveler D. Already found a bar. Traveler D doesn't even know there's a problem. Hotel lost your reservation. Really? Well, I'll be over here. Let me know how that works out. Traveler D has been training for this moment their entire life. So which traveler are you? Seriously, though, think about it. How do you react when your vacation doesn't go according to plan? Because I think your reaction can determine how you remember the entire trip. One bad dinner shouldn't ruin seven days. One rude employee shouldn't ruin a city. One rainy afternoon shouldn't run a vacation. And one change in plans might actually lead you somewhere better. So why these two trips? So why I can consider these two of the best vacations? They're completely different. One wasn't planned at all, the other involved just immense amounts of participation between multiple people to get it planned out. And the other one started with let's go somewhere tonight. And the other, a major adventure covering Canada and the northeastern United States. But I think I finally understood what connects them. I remember the places, of course. I remember the scenery, the food, the towns. But what I remember out most, what I remember about it most is us figuring it out together. What changed? We figured it out, saw something interesting. Let's go. Plans didn't work, make another plan. And somewhere along the way, traveling became less about making sure everything happened exactly the way we expected, and more about seeing what happened next. So here's my challenge for your next vacation. Plan the important stuff. Know where you're sleeping. We learned that last week. Know how you're getting there and make the reservations you absolutely need. But leave some things blank. An afternoon, a morning, maybe an entire day. And when you get there, let the trip unfold. Take the road you didn't plan on taking. Stop at that little restaurant. Walk into that little store, drive through a little local town, and ask a local. If we only have a few hours here, what should we see? What should we eat? You might discover absolutely nothing. Or you might discover the thing you talk about 11 years later. Vacations are a lot like laundry. Sometimes everything comes out beautiful, sometimes you get a couple of wrinkles, and occasionally you pull out something and think, How the heck did that happen? But the wrinkles are part of the journey. You can't control everything that's going to happen when you travel. And maybe you shouldn't want to. Because if everything always happens exactly according to plan, we'd miss an awful lot of stories. So wherever you're headed next, plan enough to keep yourself out of trouble. Or maybe leave enough room to find some. And most importantly, let the trip unfold. Sometimes it'll be wrinkle-free, and sometimes you're gonna need an iron. But either way, enjoy the journey because sometimes the detour is the vacation. I'll see you again next week right here behind this big old mic. Thank each and every one of you for listening. Have a great day. Bye bye.