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Money well spent
April 06, 2022
Spending money on travel is something I usually don't regret.
No matter what goes wrong, there's usually some memory to savor. I even say that about the time we had to buy a new car.
We were driving from Texas to Montana. My husband was scheduled to speak at a conference near Billings and we took the opportunity to make it a family vacation.
We stopped at all kinds of sights along the way: Scott's Bluff National Park in Nebraska, the geographic center of the United States in South Dakota, and Devil's Tower in Wyoming just to mention a few.
One evening after the conference, we were driving back to the hotel on a lonely stretch of the interstate. It was getting dark. Sitting in the passenger seat, the last thing I remember seeing before the crash was the face of the deer.
Fortunately, everyone was okay. The kids in the backseat didn't even know what happened. My husband, who didn't see the deer wasn't even sure what happened (which the Highway Patrol said later was fortunate because otherwise he might have swerved and lost control).
The car was not okay. We were more than 1,300 miles from home. The story gets more complicated from here, but to sum it up: we had to buy a new car.
It was probably the most expensive vacation I've ever taken.
And because of the memories, I still don't regret it.
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