Our drive to San Antonio and back started on the morning of July 12 and ended a few hours ago. I actually remembered to set to trip meter as we were leaving, so I know that between backing out of the driveway and returning to it, the car had been driven 2,952 miles and change. Except for when my brother Jay used the car in San Antonio, I drove all those miles. Ann was in the back seat almost all of the time.

Our route southward wasn’t as direct as it could have been, passing from metro Chicago to Des Moines to St. Joseph, Mo., the first day; to Hutchinson, Kan., by way of Topeka the second; and Dallas by way of Wichita and Oklahoma City on the third. After some days in Dallas, travel resumed: to San Antonio via the most direct route, which turned out to be a mistake (more about which later).

Our return northward was more straightforward: San Antonio to Dallas to Lebanon, Mo., and then home, three days’ driving spread out over four days, with a jag into extreme northwestern Arkansas. More about that later as well.

We were caught in two storms so intense that we waited them out beside the road. I saw two suitcases broken open, and their contents spread on the road, on two different Interstates. I’m pretty sure I saw a guy pulled over on the shoulder of yet another Interstate, changing his pants outside his car. We listened to a lot of radio. As hard as corporate interests try, terrestrial radio isn’t quite homogenized.

When I wasn’t driving, I was working (that’s the self-employed life). Or visiting with family members and friends: my mother, two brothers, two nephews and one’s wife, my aunt, first cousin and his family, two friends from high school. Or eating. Some chains, of course, but I did my best to support independent eateries in places like Wichita, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Mt. Olive, Ill.

Besides all that, we squeezed in visits to three museums, the outside of two capitols (closed, unfortunately), a mall, an enormous bookstore, a couple of wooden bridges, and a cemetery with an historic figure buried in it. I also watched a number of early episodes of Treme, an addictively good show.

And I saw the Blue Hole.

I lived within 10 minutes’ drive of the Blue Hole for more than a decade, and every time I visited San Antonio after that for 35 years, I was equally close. Yet I never saw it before this visit. All I can say is, it was about time.