Curiosity Packed the Suitcase

My sister's family had gone to see the Big Boy Reunion during the U.S. 250th birthday celebration. On Sunday they were telling me all about it—the crowds, the engines, the excitement. I'm not entirely sure what sparked my curiosity, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Maybe it was the word reunion. It made these giant locomotives sound almost like old friends who hadn't seen each other in fifty years.

By Monday I'd talked myself into a completely unplanned overnight trip to Scranton.

This is not how I usually travel.

Normally I make plans weeks in advance, and future me gets to deal with whatever past me thought was a brilliant idea. This time there was no past me. Present me decided we were leaving. Packing consisted of a pair of shorts, my wallet, a toothbrush, a phone charger... and apparently very little thought.

Two hours later I arrived, checked into the hotel, tossed my bag in the room, and headed off to explore. I assumed The Steamtown National Historic Site would be easy to walk to. After all, it's there all the time—Big Boy 4014 was just the special guest.

Unfortunately, I managed to miss the entrance completely.

I wandered through the mall looking for it, found a doctor's office instead, convinced myself I'd made a wrong turn, and tried following the driving directions on foot. That turned out to involve roads with no sidewalks, blind curves, and enough traffic to convince me this wasn't one of my better ideas. Sweaty, slightly defeated, and no closer to the trains, I headed back to the hotel.

That's when I discovered I'd packed exactly one shirt.

The one I was wearing.

After a hot afternoon of wandering around, wearing it again the next day wasn't an appealing option, so I washed it in the hotel sink before I had time to reconsider.

Only after I finished did I realize I'd created a new problem.

Now I had a soaking wet shirt.

Thus began the adventure inside the adventure.

I looked around the room for anything that might help and eventually decided the hair dryer was my best option. By bunching one end of the shirt around the dryer and letting the rest billow out across the bathroom counter, I'd essentially built a tiny clothes dryer. It worked... eventually.

When I grew tired of holding the hair dryer, I switched to the iron. Then back to the hair dryer. Then back to the iron. By bedtime the shirt had graduated from dripping wet to merely very damp, so I draped it over the air conditioner and hoped for the best.

The next morning it was only slightly damp.

Slightly damp seemed like a definite improvement over yesterday's version.

Coffee in hand, I wandered back toward the mall and, almost immediately, discovered the second-floor entrance I'd somehow missed the day before. If only I'd found that instead of the doctor's office.

Forty minutes later I was standing beside Big Boy in complete awe. Pictures really don't prepare you for the scale of it. The wheels were taller than I am, and even surrounded by hundreds of other visitors, it was impossible not to stop and stare for a while. I wandered through the rest of Steamtown, taking in the locomotives I'd come to see and making a mental note to return someday when things were a little quieter.

The drive home gave me time to think about how differently this trip would have gone if I'd waited until everything was perfectly planned. I probably would have packed better. I almost certainly wouldn't have been trying to dry laundry with a hair dryer in a hotel bathroom.

But I also might have talked myself out of going.

Sometimes curiosity doesn't wait for a detailed itinerary. Sometimes it simply says, "Let's go," and you find yourself making memories you never could have planned. Mine just happened to involve magnificent steam engines, a very resourceful hotel laundry operation, and the firm conviction that next time I'll pack at least one other shirt.

- Persephone Grace
Come as you are. Stay as long as you like.