PROLOGUE
"The Grand Canyon!" Nick shouted.
"Man, that's so lame!" Warrick objected. "We get five whole days off work and you wanna go see some hole in the ground?"
"Hey, it's a work of art by mother nature!" Nick defended.
"Disneyland!" Warrick insisted.
"Disneyland?" Catherine snorted, highly amused. "Warrick, nobody over the age of twelve goes to Disneyland!"
"I do," Warrick pouted.
"Seattle," Catherine said.
"Seattle?" Warrick, Nick, and Grissom chorused in disgust.
"I like the Space Needle!" Catherine defended herself.
"Is the destination really all that matters?" Sara interrupted, looking around at her colleagues as they sat in a circle on Catherine's living room floor.
They all gaped at Sara like she had just spoken through her feet.
But Sara ignored their expressions and expanded on her thought. "I mean, haven't you ever just driven down a road simply because you wanted to, and not because of where it ended? Or turned a corner you hadn't turned before, just because it's there?"
"What are you talking about?" Nick asked with furrowed eyebrows.
"No planning involved," Sara said in plain and simple terms. "Spur-of-the-moment decisions. Are you guys afraid of a little spontaneity?"
She received four blank looks.
Sara tried a different approach. "Look, I'm saying that maybe the journey itself is more important than the destination. I'm saying maybe we should just get in the car, and see where it takes us."
Grissom, sitting next to Sara, was staring at her with a thoughtful expression. " 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And I, I took the road less traveled by. And that has made all the difference'," he quoted perfectly.
"Robert Frost was a wise man," Sara answered with a smile, nearly losing herself in Grissom's gaze.
"Um, I hate to interrupt your little mind meld here," Nick said. "But isn't that how people get lost?"
Grissom tore his stare from Sara's eyes and turned to Nick. "You get lost when you deviate from your planned path, Nick. But if you have no plan, you can't deviate from it."
Sara finished, "Therefore, you can't really get lost."
Once Nick was thoroughly confused and didn't offer any further protest, Sara continued voicing her thoughts. "Yeah...I figure, drive for a day or two, find out where we ended up, have some fun there, and use a map to find our way back."
Grissom gave her a proud smile. "I like Sara's idea."
"Of course you do," Catherine replied with a smirk. "You always go along with what Sara says."
"And what do you mean by that?" Grissom challenged. "She happens to have good ideas."
"I like her idea too," Warrick said. "It sounds like fun."
Not wanting Warrick to think she was the grump in all this, Catherine quickly amended, "Well I never said I didn't like Sara's idea. It sounds good to me."
"But...we'll get lost," Nick whined.