Can't recall the last time I laughed so hard, for so many hours as I did last weekend. This is what happens when you put three women in a car for a good long road trip and throw in a few matching rainbow T-shirts.

My friend Tracy came out to Oregon for a quick spin through the state and lucky me, I got to ride along for the tour with her and another of our good friends.

The thing about travel is what it does to the soul, my soul anyway. There just is no quicker or more efficient therapy than driving away from life for a few days, for just long enough to fully appreciate everything you're coming back to.

Okay, of course there were a couple moments of "Hmmm, I could just keep going and never look back." Except, I couldn't. In every shop something took me home. Some little thing I couldn't resist buying for my girls, and for their dad, too. And then all the happy rush of waiting to see their faces when they opened the packages.

When we took a wrong turn, or more precisely, when we — slaves to technology that we are — mindlessly followed the GPS along a three-hour stretch of one-lane, shoulder-less forest service roads, all hairpin turns and death drop cliffs, straight up and over the Siskiyou Mountains instead of cutting down across the Redwood Highway through Northern California as we had planned, I just kept laughing. White knuckles and all. It's like that on the road. You take the adventure as is comes and let go of everything else. The plans we're so attached to.

I kept thinking on that drive, "This, this is the souvenir I want to bring home from the trip. Home to my relationship."

Every time my vision is jacked by an unfortunate turn into the wilderness, let me remember to drive slow, hold tight, and laugh myself all the way up and back down again.

If I can bring these things back, this re-marriage of my first marriage just might make it through anything.