I took a short road trip vacation at the beginning of the week. This was my first overnight trip just for fun (not traveling to visit my parents or going to the choir retreat) since I came here three years ago to visit and see if I wanted to move here.

I went to the D.C. area to see Mount Vernon and then do some shopping at stores we don’t have around here. I joked about hitching up the wagon to go to town for supplies because that’s what it feels like. Mount Vernon was fascinating, both the house and the grounds. There was a lot to see and I’m not sure I got to it all because I got a bit overwhelmed and tired after a few hours and realized I was no longer absorbing information, so I decided to call it a day.

I could definitely go for a home in that setting, with the view across the river. It was incredible. It seems that living in a small, old house has given me a different perspective on historic homes. I’ve heard people say that Mount Vernon is surprisingly unimpressive, not much of a mansion because the rooms are so small. But I thought the rooms were a nice size. The house has a ballroom, two parlors, five bedrooms, and a study, which seems big enough. If you’re used to suburban McMansions I guess it wouldn’t seem too big because the ballroom is smaller than your typical McMansion great room and the parlors and dining room are smaller than modern living and dining rooms, but it was big compared to my house. If you’re heating the rooms with fireplaces, you don’t want them to be too big.

I think one other thing that affects perspectives on the house is the fact that it stopped being a residence and became a historic site/tourist attraction in the 1850s, so it was never updated much beyond the way Washington would have lived in it. It never got added onto, never got indoor plumbing (one of the guides talking to the line as we waited to go in told the kids to count the number of bathrooms), and never got an attached kitchen. It’s different from other old houses that have been updated along the way because people have been living in them.

After I got to my hotel, I did an Ikea run, had dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant that’s part of a chain based in Austin (I ate at the original before it was a chain), so that was the first real Tex-Mex I’ve had since I moved. Then I did a little more shopping, knocking out most of my list. I spent the whole evening reading, no screens and no sound other than the AC fan, which was nice. I did a little more shopping in the morning, then took the back roads home, going through a few Civil War battlefields (not stopping, just looking as I drove) and seeing a lot of nice scenery.

I need to do more trips like this, since it was one of the things on my list of reasons to move. Years ago, I came up with the idea of the perfect restful vacation, one that was a fun getaway that didn’t leave me so exhausted that I’d come home tired and needing a vacation to recover. I figured it would be something close by, under a three-hour or so drive or a very short flight so that the trip home wouldn’t be so exhausting that it undid any benefit from the vacation. There needed to be enough to do and see to make it worthwhile to be there, but not so much that I’d feel like I was missing something if I spent some time just relaxing in the hotel.

The problem was that opportunities were limited for that in Dallas because there wasn’t much worth going to within a three-hour drive, and driving through the Dallas metro area was so harrowing that the last stretch on the way home undid all the vacation benefits, even with a short trip. I was limited to flying, and that’s just not very relaxing. Here, there’s a lot I can do within three hours. I can get to Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area. There’s Richmond, Charlottesville (that’s close enough to be a day trip, but I could get indulgent and book a hotel so I could see and do a lot without having to worry about beating rush hour to get back over the mountain), Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown. I could get to the beach. Or I could go west into the mountains. Or north to Harper’s Ferry.

Surprisingly, the D.C.-area traffic isn’t too bad. I didn’t make it all the way to the Beltway, but the highways in the area are pretty nice, and they’re surrounded by trees. You don’t realize you’re in a city until you exit and get on the surface streets. It’s far easier than driving in Dallas. Then one of the easiest stretches of the trip is the last bit toward home, so I don’t get stressed by the trip home.

This trip didn’t quite work as relaxing, though, possibly because it was only one night away, so I had a lot of driving two days in a row, with a lot of walking (my phone said more than 14,000 steps) on Monday. I think I may need two nights away, at least, to have a little more unwinding and not trying to cram everything in at once. But then that’s two nights in a hotel, and I don’t generally sleep well away from home. I’m spoiled by my bed.

I think my next excursion will be to the Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown area, which will definitely require a few days, or I won’t try to do it all in one trip.