Teaser image from our 2023 road trip miniseries. Photo by a slightly younger traveler/stranger.

It’s that time again! Another year of blessed bliss married to the amazing Anne, another “Happy Anniversary to Us!” entry, another dinner to celebrate, and another completely unrelated lead image.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Speaking of mountains: our lead photo captures one of our favorite moments from this year’s vacation. For our first visit to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we checked out Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the park and in all of Tennessee. It’s a 20-mile winding mountainside drive from the Sugarlands Visitor Center, the closest one to the main park entrance; after you reach the Dome’s parking lot you face a half-mile uphill walk to the top of the mountain. After you’ve passed four or five benches, as well as a few gasping pedestrians like us who need to take things at their own pace, just as the ground levels out you then reach a concrete ramp that corkscrews around an observation tower a few stories tall. If you can eye-of-the-tiger your way up those last few hundred feet to the platform, your reward is a 360° view of some of the prettiest, mistiest American mountains east of the Mississippi, plus bragging rights.

Sure, maybe it’s not as heroic as climbing an unpaved mountain unmodified by park rangers, using only your athletic bod and your expensive gear and the friends you brought along. If that’s your thing, kudos! Our shapes differ. Your Instagram stats can beat up my blog stats. And you’re probably hotter. That’s cool. For us, in that moment, it was a triumph of sorts over the physical challenges we’ve been working through lately. This is the kind of feat we could never accomplish without each other around.

As we finished reveling in the moment, I may have teared up a little as Shonen Knife’s cover of the Carpenters’ “Top of the World” power-popped into my head and mentally soundtracked our descent from the tower and the easier downhill jaunt back to the rental car a half-mile away. Still buoyant, Anne kept saying encouraging things to the next few dozen people we passed as each one neared the end of their own Smoky Mountain challenge. Some huffed and puffed more than others, just like us.

We’ll have more pics to share of our Smoky Mountains experience and the rest of our vacation in the days and months ahead. As it stands, I’m running two travelogues behind in this busy year we’re having, so it might be a while. If you’re interested in seeing them sooner, here’s a tip for You, The Viewers at Home: the more I think people are genuinely interested in what I do on this site and actually reading it, the more motivated I am to make time for it. I live for creative incentives and validation.

Speaking of long trips: if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! Your reward is sugar. Longtime MCC readers may recall the annual “Happy Anniversary to Us!” entry usually doubles as an excuse to post pics of our anniversary dinner. This year we tried Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant, an odd choice considering neither of us can stand alcohol. It also isn’t as independent a choice as we normally lean toward. They have 59 locations in 11 states, one of which opened in our area last year (five more are in the works as of this writing). Whether or not that has any amateur-foodie value is debatable, but friends and family kept mentioning the place to us, so we figured we’d check it out at least once. And now we have! Everyone there was very nice to us and we have no major complaints. Now our friends and family have to find someplace else to keep mentioning to us.

Rather than post the entire meal as usual, please enjoy glimpses of our two (!!) desserts: the one we ordered, and the smaller one they gave us as an anniversary present gratis. Finagling freebies wasn’t our Plan A, but the OpenTable app asked me to mention if it was a special occasion. I answered, yadda yadda yadda, bonus snacks. Happy Anniversary, indeed!

The S’More Budino! Caramel custard on the bottom, then a layer of crushed and toasted graham cracker crumbs, topped with a ton of marshmallow and cocoa powder.

And for our anniversary, a pair of chocolate truffles, one white and one dark, plus a berry arc and a dollop of whipped cream.

…and, again, this is the sort of thing we could’ve managed if our paths had remained separate and alone. It’s weird to me how far we’ve come since the days of eating Banquet pot pies on Aldi rice while watching episodes of Deep Space Nine that Anne timer-recorded on VHS from our local Fox affiliate, at grainy tape-conserving EP speed. That kind of seemingly simple, dedicated hobby-work laid the foundation for other works in the years that followed and, Lord willing, our years yet to come.