Well, you can't plan a surprise trip for something as important as a 30th anniversary and keep it a total secret - your spouse has to know something. So it was that Dan started planning for this trip early in 2009, and so it was that Barb knew something was being planned soon after. We had been planning travel to see family, and encouraging people to come see us in DC, and in those discussions Dan had to tell Barb that we had to keep a certain amount of time (and budget) aside for the week of our anniversary. But he so dearly wanted to give her a pre-planned, romantic anniversary trip that he told her little more. Through the year, Barb was torn between the romanticism and joy about the idea of a secret trip weighed against her deep desire to know where we were going! But she was a good girl and really didn't ask too many questions .... until the days leading up to our planned departure. She at least needed to know what to pack, and that (and the 8/15 departure date) was about all he told her.
The night before, he started giving her "secret messages" in hermetically sealed envelopes - one at a time as events warranted.
These messages gave her only the minimum amount of information needed for the next step of the trip. On Friday night, it was :
"Be ready to leave at 10:17 AM tomorrow."
After parking on Saturday morning, the next envelope instructed:
"Tell the taxi driver to take us to Union Station." (At this point she knew we were going to take the train.)And so on.
We enjoyed a relaxing trip on Amtrak as it passed through Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Newark, and into New York. That alone was interesting because that trip is shorter than a drive from Seattle to Spokane but with four major cities squeezed in!
When we arrived in New York, the final "secret messages" instructed Barb of the agenda for the week and to take a taxi to the Sheraton Manhattan, just off of Broadway and Times Square.
And so the surprise was unveiled and our adventure began! Stay tuned for chapter 2, coming soon!
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