I’ve spent the last week gearing up for an extended road trip my husband and I embarked on yesterday. We’ll be away from home for 12 days, and our time in Portland and central and eastern Washington includes taking part in gatherings with friends and family who share our love of good food and wine. That means we’re packing not only our clothes and toiletries but also wine and ingredients and tools to help prepare our share of dishes at potlucks and shared meals. In addition, we  are expecting company the day after we return.  It’s one of those situations where I was thankful to finally fall into the car to start our journey, exhausted at all the preparations this vacation demanded. My husband loves to plot out menus, pour over his wine lists and research recipes, so most of that side of the planning he cheerfully shouldered. That left me to “only” deal with getting the garden squared away, ensuring sprinklers and timers would adequately water everything; get the house in spic-and-span order so I could welcome our guests without a mad scramble of cleaning the minute we returned from our trip;  suspend mail and newspaper delivery; and, certainly not least, tie up work obligations before trying to ignore email for a week. While I fret that we may have baseball-bat-sized zucchini on the vines when we get home, I can fairly confidently report that all of the pre-vacation chores got crossed off my list (or at least the ones that, around 1 a.m. Friday morning, I decided were the truly essential ones).  I think we managed to pack pretty much everything we needed to bring (and, if not, they DO have stores where we’re going!) and still left home only an hour later than we wanted to. I don’t know how things are at your house, but that’s pretty good for us! Here’s hoping your summer is going well and you have smooth sailing, wherever your vacations take you this year. — Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor