Road Trip to Dallas – April 2024

/

Last week I made a 2-day road trip down to Dallas to visit with my dad. It’s about 7 hours of driving in each direction. When I left my house in Missouri on the first day it was dark. Just as the horizon was beginning to brighten behind me, I saw a large bird fly over the interstate – higher than my car but not that far in front of me. I wondered if it was a barn owl although I didn’t get a good enoug look other than to realize the bird had a lot of white.

After my first rest stop the sun was up and more birds were moving about. I saw a large one fly across the highway…a little lower than was safe and then just above my car there was another of the same kind. It was a turkey! I was close enough to see the eye glinting.

I saw a great blue heron flying along or over the road twice…and a murmuration of smaller birds that spilt in two over the highway.

The highlight of the drive down was the rest stop on US 75 just after crossing from Oklahoma to Texas. The berm between the highway and the rest stop parking was full of wildflowers!

Closer to the building there were beds of wildflowers…including the Texas state flower: bluebonnets.

I enjoyed trying my new iPhone 15 Pro Max phone to take some macro pictures of some of the flowers.

Heading home the next day, I left the hotel about 6 AM and got to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge about 20 minutes after sunrise. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy and sprinkling so there was not a lot of bird activity, and the light was not great for photography.

The surprise of the morning came when I saw something on the road in my left peripheral vision as I moved slowly along Hagerman’s wildlife road…..as I turned to see it better I realized it was a hub cap. I got out of the car to see if it belonged to my car…and it did! It was the first time anything like that has happened to me in 55 years of driving! I put the hub cap in the car opting to not try to put it back on until I got home.

I saw two flocks of cattle egrets as I was driving back toward the highway from Hagerman.

As I drove through Oklahoma, I was driving thorough moving cloud shadows. They were moving in the same direction as I was, and I was moving faster than they were!

The drive was very routine until my route direction shifted from north to east. The wind buffeted the car and the big trucks on the interstate were even more impacted. The last 3 hours were exhausting – requiring both hands on the steering wheel and hyper awareness of the vehicles (particularly trucks) around me.

I made it home in a reasonable time but was very tired.

Zooming – October 2023

/

The optics of my camera allow me to capture images that are better than I can see with my eyes – flowers, insects, birds, cave formations and seed pods that fill the frame…driftwood isolated from the noise of other things around it….sculpture, glass, and fall gourds specially arranged….sunrises and a sunset….the beauty of a fall morning. Every picture is a memory moment – a visual that also serves as a reminder of a place and mood and relationship with the people that experienced it with me. The places were mostly close to home in southwest Missouri (art museum, meadow, caverns) but also St. Louis and along the route between home and Carrollton TX.

Sequoyah State Park (2)

/

There was a hill on the other side of the lake – darkening the horizon. We were on a boat dock that jutted out into the lake a short distance (identified on our walk the previous day as the ‘sunrise spot’). There were two pelicans on the water when we arrived! They flew off to start their day elsewhere before the sun was up.

The park is a mix of developed and natural; there is a golf course and communication towers along with the cabins and lodge.

But the forest and native plants seem to be holding their own.

A fisherman was also enjoying the morning on a neighboring dock.

A heron was still (or preening) in the shallows of a nearby cove.

The sun lit a nearby hilltop…

And waves of cormorants (and maybe some gulls too) began coming around the point flying northward.

The vegetation lit up with morning light.

Two killdeer flew into the nearby shore. They continued their conversation with each other while we took pictures.

As we packed up the car – the last picture of our visit: starlings on the wire.

Road trip to/from Carrollton TX

/

I made my monthly trip to Carrollton in the last week of September. It was very hot on the drive down. When I stopped at the Texas Welcome Center after crossing the Red River from Oklahoma it was already in the 90s. I had been listening to a wider variety of music during the drive down – relying on other sources than my usual USB stick; it kept me more alert during the drive.

The usual check of the beautyberry at the welcome center revealed that the berries are almost all turned purple. I also realized that there seemed to be a lot more plants than last year. Hurray for the beautyberry surviving and thriving the extra hot days this past summer!

The trip home started a week later – a little before 6 AM. The color before sunrise dominated the horizon as I made my first stop about 7 at a truck stop north of Denison TX.

The completion of asphalt work on several stretches of my route through Oklahoma made the drive the smoothest I can remember….and my husband had barbeque ready when I got home. As usual – it was good to be home again.

August Road Trip

/

My monthly trip to Carrollton TX was warped because it was so hot. I took the shortest possible rest stops on the drive down – didn’t make the usual stop at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge because the temperature was already over 100 degrees. I did stop to buy some barbeque brisket to enjoy the next day with my parents (reheating rather than needing to cook).

Since I didn’t stop at the Texas Welcome Center – my sister’s picture of her beautyberry had to suffice as the documentation for what the plants look like in August.

On the way home the temperature was a little milder. It was in the low 70s when I left to drive back home at 6 AM! There was a full moon that I photographed when I got out of the car to close the garage door using the keypad.

The day was great for soaring birds. I saw two large kettles of turkey vultures– swirling around and around…upward and then gliding down – along the highway between McAlester and Tulsa OK.

Zooming – August 2023

/

Even though August was very hot, my photography was still dominated by outdoors locations:

  • At home in Nixa MO

  • At the Dickerson Park Zoo and Lake Springfield Boathouse in Springfield MO

  • At the OSU Botanical Garden in Stillwater OK

  • At Josey Ranch and my parents’ yard in Carrollton TX

  • At Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge near Sherman TX

Birds and insects are more prevalent this month than previously. Enjoy the August slide show!

A Funeral and a Garden (2)

/

Funerals offer a sense of closure…the end of a relationship. They are thought provoking too. I found myself savoring memories – thinking:

  • Of his career as it happened and then as I learned more about it over the years,

  • Of his role as a father to his daughter that was my age as well as his other children, a husband (and later caregiver) to his wife,

  • Of his growing tomatoes and catching huge catfish,

  • Of trips to state parks, amusement parks, and church camp, and

  • Of assistance making bug catching nets.

At the funeral I learned more about his love of golf and table games (dominos and cards) than I had witnessed in my growing up years.

The OSU Botanical Garden was a good place to continue my reflections on the lives of my father and his friend over the past 70 years – how the relationship was sustained.

There were unique ornaments in the garden. I wondered if the university’s art department had created some of them – the large metal botanical sculptures, the plates/bowls ‘flowers,’ and the standing frames that held pots or boxes of flowers. There was a garden chess set and a child sized table with chairs. There was a Japanese garden area with stone lanterns/frog house, large rocks, and small red bridge.

There were frequent water sounds from burbling fountains (sometimes rocks). Even the hose containers were decorated.

There were insects in the garden too – sometimes two in the same flower!

There were quite a few white-lined sphinx moths in the salvia. They were moving too fast for good pictures – although good-enough for identification!

My early morning hour in the garden was a good ending to the funeral thoughts before I started the 4-hour drive home.

A Funeral and a Garden (1)

/

My father’s best friend in college died a few weeks ago and I made the 4-hour drive to attend his funeral – representing our family since my father is too frail to travel now. The two men were born within a few weeks of each other and spent their early years on farms in western Oklahoma before becoming the first generation of their families to go off to college. They were too young to have participated in World War II but benefited from the influx of veterans using the GI Bill that had caused many universities to expand. They both married and graduated and had their first children at about the same time – didn’t get drafted for the Korean War. They never lived in the same town after college, but they and their families continued to exchange visits and telephone calls for almost 70 years!

The next morning, I got up early and went to the Oklahoma State University Botanical Garden before I headed for home. A garden visit is always a good start to the day. This one is not large and, unlike many botanical gardens, does not include identifying signage for most of the plants. It was a cloudy morning…before the heat of the day began ramping up. The garden smells were a rich mix!

Road Trip to/from Carrollton – February 2023

/

My trip to Carrollton the last week of February started at dawn…getting earlier as we move toward spring and before Daylight Savings Time. I took a picture from the window of my car as I left. I like the early start. I head west and then south so the morning sun is not in my eyes at all!

The drive down was easy, and I indulged in my usual tangential thinking as I drove. As I passed through Muskogee, OK, I remembered that my parents had lived there briefly in the mid-1950s when I was a toddler. I wondered where they had lived. I asked my mother when I got to Carrollton; she remembered it was a well-built small house in an upscale neighborhood.

I stopped at the Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge on the way down; more about that next week.

The drive back from Texas to Missouri started out foggy and then turned drizzly. A little over an hour into the drive, I stopped at the Pilot in Denison (just south of the Texas/Oklahoma border on my route); it was the most interesting stop of the drive toward home complete with Texas flag table tops for the food concessions and swirls of leaves cut out of the trash receptacle covers.

The sign over the entrance to the restroom area was the high point of the stop!

A 70th Wedding Anniversary

/

My parents have been married 70 years this month. We’re celebrating on a smaller scale than their 50th in keeping with the types of gatherings they enjoy now. We’ll be having mini-celebrations spread over several days around one big meal with most of the immediate family. I’m thinking about various perspectives of their 70 years together.

There are contrasts between their growing up  years and personalities:

  • He was an only child of 1 generation US citizens and didn’t speak English until he started school; she had 8 brothers/sisters and many in her family had been in the US since the Revolutionary War (or before).

  • She was gregarious, he was more introverted. That aspect of their personalities has continued with her doing most of the talking!

  • He grew up on a farm and she grew up in town.

  • She had part time work at the drug store in town while she was in high school; at the same time, he was using farm profits to buy land, cars, and an airplane.

  • Going to Stillwater for college was the farthest she’d been from home; he had made road trips to Tennessee and other places.

But some aspects were similar:

  • They went to small town schools where there was only a small group of students at each grade level (she in northeastern Oklahoma and he in western Oklahoma).

  • Their parents had elementary educations, except for my maternal grandmother who had graduated from high school.

  • They were the first in their families to go to college.

  • They were close to their families and sustained relationships with them after marriage.

They spent their first few years of married life in Oklahoma: Stillwater for my dad to finish college, back to the farm in Willow where my dad had grown up, and then to Muskogee for my dad’s job. The following 67-68 years were in Texas: 15 years in Wichita Falls, 21 years in Dallas, and the rest in Carrollton. There were 7 houses during the Texas years. My mother returned to college and got her first degree when they were living in Wichita Falls…her masters after they moved to Dallas.

They started out their life together with a single income but by the 1970s they were a 2-income family to support their 4 daughters through K-12 and then undergraduate degrees.  They retired in their 60s – enjoying grandchildren and travel and participating in various home improvement/maintenance projects.

They are still living independently (with increasing support from their children and grandchildren) in the house they purchased shortly after they retired.

The whole family is benefiting from their example of aging gracefully together!

Unique Aspects of Days – November 2022

/

I had a hard time picking the top 10 unique aspects of my November days. There seemed to be a lot of firsts happening during the month!

New electric lawn mower. I made a few turns around the yard with my early Christmas present before our yard crew showed up. Next year I will be doing the yard. I will probably do some spot mowing on a warmer afternoon as soon as all the leaves are off the trees – mulch the leaves into the grass for the winter). What a luxury to have clean air (i.e. no gasoline motor fumes) while I mow!

Cooking a big pumpkin. I’ve always bought pumpkins small enough to fit in my oven previously but the one this year was a left over from my son-in-law’s pumpkin carving event and it was large. I had to cut it in half and then cook each piece separately! I baked and made soup with some of the puree but most of it went into the freezer.

A gaggle of Greater White-fronted Geese. The group was migrating through Hagerman on the day that I stopped on my way down to Carrollton. It was my first time seeing this species.

Pumpkin Custard Quiche. I used some of the pumpkin puree from the large pumpkin to experiment with a high protein dessert/breakfast. I used 2 cups of puree, 8 eggs, pumpkin pie spices, sugar, milk, 8 ounces of Swiss cheese and walnuts on top. Each of the 6 servings were about 21 grams of protein….and my parents ate their whole serving! This is an experiment that will likely become a favorite recipe.

1st snow at our Missouri home. It happened while I was in Carrollton, but I enjoyed it vicariously through pictures my husband sent.

2 Bald Eagles soaring above the highway in Oklahoma. What a great sight driving home from Texas. One was an adult and the other a juvenile. No fighting….just graceful flying back and forth above the highway.

Learning to use a blower to create a pile of leaves. I’m very adept making leaf piles with a rake…but was overwhelmed with the leaves in my daughter’s front yard. She had a new battery powered blower. There was a trial-and-error period but then I managed to move leaves around trees and under bushes…and into piles for her to vacuum up with the mulcher. I depleted 2 batteries (good thing she had 3 that worked with the blower).

Rice Pudding Quiche. After the success of the pumpkin custard quiche – my next experiment was with rice pudding. I used the small carton of rice left over after having Chinese takeout to make rice pudding (with milk, eggs, raisins, drizzle of molasses) with Swiss Cheese (making it more quiche like). Next time I will use a bit more milk since it was a little too dense…but it was still tasty (I drizzled some honey over it to make it sweeter). It’s a good way to use up rice!

Cranberry and tomatillo salsa sauce for Impossible Burger meatballs. Our appetizers for Thanksgiving were Impossible Burger meatballs (purchased frozen…heated in oven). I had barbeque sauce and marinara for dipping…then made a third sauce with chopped cranberries (heated in microwave) and tomatillo salsa. All the sauces were warmed just before we tried them. Everyone agreed that the cranberry and tomatillo salsa was a great flavor with the meatballs – and it looked festive too.

Experimenting with Christmas tree decorations. The kittens are changing our thinking about decorating this year. We put our artificial tree up in the center of our living room using an outdoor umbrella stand for the base (to keep them from knocking over the tree). Right now, we are letting them get bored with the tree, but they’ve managed to dislodge lower and middle branches (they climb up around the center of the tree). We don’t want to use hooks to attach ornaments. I experimented putting Beanie babies on the branches and the kittens knocked them all off as they move around the inside of the tree. So – a series of unique experiences that isn’t over yet!

Road trip to Carrollton TX – October 2022

/

Every month I go to Carrollton TX for a week…and become more familiar with the road trip down from my home in Nixa MO and back again. These are the highlights of the August trek.

The sun was not quite up when I left Nixa. There were some clouds that made it colorful. My route is north for a few minutes then turning west (and slightly south) to Tulsa OK so I didn’t have sun in my eyes.

The drive was easy – very little weekend traffic and no active work zones. The Texas Welcome center after I crossed the Red River has a great native plant garden. This time the plants were surrounded with grass (shortage of staff, plants not quite as vigorous?) but the American Beautyberry was robust…so much so that the grass didn’t seem to be invading that area as much. I have added this plant to my list to consider for around my house in Nixa.

I stopped for gas north of McKinney TX and had a pleasant conversation with a man hauling a substantial load of hay…a little serendipity socializing along the way. It doesn’t happen every trip (usually I just nod or greet the people I walk by…just a few words) but conversations are often something unique about the trip…particularly if the person is not someone I would normally meet.

A week later, I again was starting out before sunrise. I took a sunrise picture framed by a mulberry tree. It was the only morning of the week to have clouds to catch the color.

My route heads east for the 1st 10 minutes and my timing was perfect. The color changed from red/pink to orange….and a few minutes after my route turned north, the sun popped above the horizon. The week had been full of 90-degree afternoons but the day I drove home, the temperate stayed in the low 80s for the whole day!

The OK Welcome Center after I crossed the red river was just opening when I arrived. There was a cicada on the sidewalk that sat for portraits. Perhaps it was a little too cool for the insect to be singing/looking for a mate in the trees.

It was good to be home by mid-afternoon….another relatively easy road trip.

Reflecting the world when my grandparents were born

/

I recently browsed 12 books by Clifton Johnson in Internet Archive and realized that the years when they were published (1893 to 1915) were just prior and during the years my grandparents were born (1901-1912). My grandparents were born in Oklahoma and Texas; these places were not direct subjects of any of the books, but I thought my grandfather born in 1901 might have walked down a dusty road in Texas kicking up dust…dressed in overalls and a hat…just as pictured in The Farmer’s Boy. I couldn’t tell whether the boy in the picture had shoes or not; my grandfather talked about not wearing shoes when he was a child if it was warm enough because they always fit poorly and there was never enough money to buy new ones that fit. In the picture of “a schoolgirl at home” in Highways and Byways of the South – the bonnet reminds me of the type one of my grandmother’s wore when she was working outdoors for the duration of her long life.  

Johnson used both drawings and photographs to illustrate his books. The majority on this list are travel type books…but there are some fairy tale books too! According to the Wikipedia entry about him, he treated photographic prints as a “rough draft” – a challenging decision in pre-Photoshop days! He lived most of his life in the northeast of the US but travelled broadly…recording what he saw.

The Oak-Tree Fairy Book

The Farmer's Boy

New England and Its Neighbors

Highways and Byways of California

The New England Country

Highways and Byways of the Great Lakes

Highways and Byways of the Rocky Mountains

The Country School in New England

The book of country clouds and sunshine

Highways and Byways of the South

The Land of Heather

A book of fairy-tale bears; selections from favorite folk-lore stories

 

Enjoy the sample images (one from each book)!

Road Trip Back to Missouri

/

I’m becoming more familiar with the route between my parents’ home in Texas and my home in Missouri. This time I remembered that there was only one non-commercial highway rest stop along my route – the welcome center between Oklahoma and Texas. I was early enough that the main part of the building was not open yet but there were external doors directly to rest rooms that were unlocked (unlike the configuration of the welcome center from Missouri to Oklahoma). What a relief! There were no plants blooming in the heat of summer but the beds near the porch of the building were lush with foliage. The external walls of the building could be used for a geology lesson for that area of Oklahoma!

All the other stops were commercial – either toll road service centers or MacDonalds. I noticed that the MacDonalds’ décor incorporated a lot of familiar (Zentangle-like) patterns!

I was traveling on a Sunday so there were no active construction sites and traffic was light. No accidents slowed me down! I made it home in about 45 minutes less time than my nav system predicted when I first started. My Prius Prime got me all the way home on a full charge and 7/8 tank of gas!

Lesson learned: The Will Rogers Service Center along the toll road always seems crowded and not very clean…next time I’ll pass it by and stop at the Missouri Welcome Center that is not very much further!

Road trip: Missouri to Texas

/

It is a 6.5-hour drive from my house in Missouri to my Parents’ in Texas. Only the first few hours are interstate so there are not the typical highway rest stops along the way. I left early enough that the Oklahoma welcome center on I44 was not open yet (doesn’t open until 8:30 AM) so my first rest stop was the Will Rodgers rest stop along the turnpike; I also bought gas there (thrilled that it was below $4/gallon). It is not my favorite place since the rest rooms always seem crowded and not very clean.

The second stop was a McDonalds for a breakfast burrito – my favorite road trip breakfast – which I ate rather clumsily going down the road (cheese dribbled on my lap!).

The third stop was another toll road plaza. None of the three rest stops were visually appealing. Fortunately, the Texas Welcome Center on US 75 just across the Red River has some interesting plantings. I did some macro photography.

I noticed that Oklahoma was greener than Missouri. They must have gotten more rain recently than we have in Southwestern Missouri. The day got hotter and hotter as I drove…passing 100 degrees at 11:42 PM.

A lesson learned from this trip: the back of my car with the slopped hatchback is not cooled very much by the air conditioner; I’ll place my luggage in the back seat rather than the far back when I am driving on a hot day.

Road Trip to Texas

/

My trek from Springfield MO to Carrollton TX was on a blustery March day. I wanted to leave a bit before 7 AM…the recent switch to daylight savings time meant it was very dark at that time!

The only picture of the travel day was from the sun room of my daughter’s house as I ate my small breakfast and noticed that the moon was very bright in the tangle of trees.

My route was west at first, so the moon was in my view as long as it was dark, and a colorful sunrise developed in my rear-view mirror…then a very bright day (I was glad when the sun got a little higher and wasn’t shining straight through from the back of the car).

The driving was easy….all interstate this time because of a stretch of construction and a missed exit in Tulsa for US 75. Instead of turning me around to get on the usual US 75 south, my navigation system recalculated to keep me on the interstate to Oklahoma City and then down I35 to Carrollton TX. At first all was well, and I noticed lots of new calves in the fields (and an amorous pair of adults), soaring birds (mostly vultures but there were some hawks as well).

The challenge began after I passed Oklahoma City and was heading south on I35. There were still lots of calves in the fields to notice, but the road had multiple active construction sites that narrowed the highway to one lane in each direction. The wind had picked up as well so between construction zones when the speeds picked up again, I didn’t want to be anywhere near a truck; the wind was causing the big rigs to move around a lot in the lane. I had to consciously relax my hands rather than gripping the steering wheel!

The delay was not too bad. I arrived in Carrollton about 30 minutes later than the original projection. Without the construction zones, that route will be my preferred one between Springfield and Carrollton because it is all interstate…no speed traps going through towns like on US 75. The Oklahoma interstates don’t have as many rest stops (West Virginia is the best state for rest stops on my recent road trips) so most of the stops are at fast food places or truck stops…not very scenic. The road itself is not bad…through farmland and then the Arbuckle Mountains which make for curving highway…fun to drive when it isn’t too windy. Once we move to Springfield…I might leave even earlier to make some stops in places I experienced as a child (like Travertine Creek)!

This time I was glad when the drive was over…primarily because the wind was so strong. There was a wind advisory for the whole area that extended into the next day too. Fortunately my parents trees have been pruned professionally….do downed limbs. I was glad to not be on the road for more than a week when I head for home (Maryland).

Texas to Springfield, MO

/

I got up early on my last day in Texas – starting a load of sheets and towels before I loaded up the ice chest…got everything in the car; early enough to step outside in the cold morning to photograph the sunrise.

I was away by about 7:30 AM thinking I was going to experience a lot of Dallas rush hour traffic but most of it was going in the other direction; I was heading north – away from the city. My first stop was the ‘Welcome to Oklahoma’ rest stop provided by the Choctaw nation.  It was the first of two highway rest stops along my 6 hour route.

The other stops along the way were commercial gas/travel stops. The one at Atoka was nice. My daughter commented that she had good experiences at facilities owned/operated by the Indian tribes (cleaner…employees more likely to be wearing masks (and wearing them correctly)); I’ll try more of those next time I drive the route.

The last stop of the drive was at the Welcome Center in Missouri on I-44. The trees there were still full of fall leaves and I anticipated that my time in Springfield might be the best fall foliage of the trip!

The drive was easier than the previous ones along the route because 1) it was sunny (rather than raining) and 2) I had my new TxTag that worked for the Oklahoma tolls as well!

90 Years

/

Both of my parents are 90 years old this year. I’ve been thinking about the events of their lives and what has happened in the world during their lifetimes.

Their lives began during the Great Depression. They were both born at home; both families were living in rural Oklahoma and grew most of their own food. They were too young to fully realize the stress around the country…secure with their family and small rural community.

Their school memories are from the 1940s --- the World War II era. Their fathers were too old to go to war so the impact of the war on their families was indirect…primarily the rationing programs. Both went to schools where there was only a small cohort at each grade level. Later in their lives they attended high school reunions occassionally – keeping in touch with that small group that had mostly scattered across the country.

They were in college in the early 1950s – the boom years with the GI Bill funding returning veterans and college being encouraged for those just graduating from high school. My parents were ‘first generation’ to college for their families. They married, left the farm, and had 3 of their 4 children during the decade. My dad’s career stayed related to agriculture initially – at first requiring a lot of traveling and then into management of grain storage.

By the 1960s, they were in Texas living in a small city…children in public schools, living in an air-conditioned house (an important thing in the Texas summer). The big health improvement was the availability of the polio vaccine (we all got the vaccine via sugar cubes at school) and the waning of smallpox around the world even though we were still required to get updated vaccines when we traveled to Mexico.  In the mid-60s my mother returned to college for a degree in education…a career she started in the 1970s. My dad’s parents moved from Oklahoma to the same small city in Texas.

In the early 1970s, they moved to a suburb of a big city. They bought a house that accommodated the whole family, including my dad’s parents. My dad had transitioned completely from an agriculture related career to financial management and planning. My mother was teaching. All 4 of their daughters graduated from high school and went to Texas colleges (the last one just starting at the end of the decade). One daughter got married. My parents’ fathers died during the decade. Somehow everyone managed to stay ahead of inflation and pay mortgages that were high interest compared to today.

The 1980s were a very busy decade with careers of the whole family in high gear. My father was coming adept at digital spreadsheets…my mother was focused on reading for students in upper elementary and middle school. The youngest daughter graduated from college. One daughter (me) moved halfway across the country to the east coast and two others got married. My maternal grandmother died. Toward the end of the decade, the first two grandchildren were born.

In the 1990’s, my parents retired from their careers; they travelled and took care of grandchildren and helped with home maintenance (a total of 5 houses in the family!). Three more grandchildren were born, and the older ones started school.

Similar activities continued in the 2000s changing as the grandchildren got older…the oldest ones starting college.

In the 2010s, travel and engagement with family continued in a similar way for the first part of the decade; by the middle of the decade someone else was doing the driving on road trips and they stopped driving completely by the end of the decade. My paternal grandmother died; she had been living in the same house with my parents since the 1970s. Health challenges began to emerge for both parents…intermittent at first and then slowing them down in the last years of the decade. They both benefited from cataract surgery. Other surgeries and injuries required more recovery time…and sometimes recovery was not complete.

The last road trip was for Thanksgiving in 2019…to be with a grandchild. Not long afterward the COVID-19 pandemic locked down travel and they discovered the comfort of ‘stay at home as much as possible.’ Recently they have transitioned to primary care practice that comes to their home for checkups, blood work and most other health needs. Their children and grandchildren come to them now. If they leave their home, it is a very special event. Four of their five grandchildren have college degrees – one has an MD…another a PhD. There aren’t any great-grandchildren – yet.

So many changes have occurred since they were born. Electricity and indoor plumbing were just beginning to be available on farms when they were born. They bought their first air-conditioned home in the early 1960s. Computers came along in the 1980s.

And now – my sisters and I are thankful they are still with us – still enjoying living independently in their home with support from the family, neighbors, doctors, and house cleaners – getting close to celebrating 70 years of married life.

Road Trip Home

/

I break the road trip between where my parents live in Texas and where I live in Maryland into 3 8-hour chunks…seeing my daughter in Missouri along the way.  There is still some tweaking I want to make to the route, but it is much better than trying to do the drive in 2 days through Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

The first day of my preferred route from Texas to Maryland is from Carrollton, Texas to Springfield, Missouri through Oklahoma. It is the most difficult day of trek because 1) most of the miles are not on Interstate (so very few ‘rest stops’) and 2) I don’t have a toll tag for the turnpikes in Oklahoma. On the plus side, there are improvements being made along the route – particularly the part through the Choctaw area of Oklahoma and I will probably get a Texas toll tag which will work in Texas and on the Oklahoma turnpikes before I do the drive again. I also realized that there is a state park in Oklahoma just off the highway where my husband and I camped on a fall foliage trip about 40 years ago…well positioned for a picnic/rest stop. I took a few pictures along the road the first day – the Oklahoma Welcome Center, a stop along the turnpike (I was surprised that I had my feet in the frame….and that my feet looked so narrow), and the Missouri welcome center.

The next morning, I left Springfield, Missouri shortly after 7…heading for Frankfort, Kentucky.  There was a lot of traffic on I-44; the traffic (particularly trucks) was reduced after I passed St. Louis. The highway through Illinois and Indiana is rural but there are plenty of rest stops. And then the highway is very scenic in Kentucky. The first part of the day was somewhat challenging because of the traffic but the highway was good and the scenery in the second half of the day made the drive enjoyable. I had originally planned to get takeout for my dinner but opted to eat what I had in the ice chest and a protein bar; it was disconcerting that all during the day – through areas with low vaccination rates and high infection rates with the delta variant of COVID-19 – that no one was wearing masks. And the hotel was back to business as usual. I didn’t want to risk a breakthrough infection (I am vaccinated) and bring in home to my husband so I was putting on a mask any time I was indoors and running my air purifier in the hotel room.

The last day of the trek – from Frankfort, Kentucky to my home in Maryland – is my favorite. The route is scenic and fun to drive – lots of curving Interstate through Kentucky, West Virginia and into Maryland. It also has the highest density of highway rest stops of the whole 3 days. It was helpful to stop a little more frequently and move around – otherwise I get achy and stiff on these long road trips. The traffic picked up the closer I got to home…but, like the other two days, I arrived at about the time my nav system had predicted when I stated out in the morning!

This route works very well for me although I realize that the curvy Interstate in the second half of the trek will not work for winter road trips. I hope the COVID-19 cases will not still be at a high level along the route in October because I would like to make at least one more road trip to Texas this year.

Road Trip from Dallas to Springfield

/

The car was mostly packed the night before; I got up and made mushroom and ham quiche for the family breakfast and left about 9:30 AM – hoping that the morning rush hour north of Dallas was over. The drive was estimated (by Google) to be about 7 hours but the day was misty and there was a chance of thunderstorms.

The rest stops along the way were much as I expected – fewer people wearing masks than when I drove from Maryland to Texas back in April. The rest stops were not crowded and were clean. All were quick and comfortable stops.

The same cannot be said for fast food places, truck stops and the travel plazas (turnpike). They were crowded and not as clean. And virtually no one was wearing a mask. Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri do not have high vaccination rates, so it was disconcerting.

I made the drive in 7.5 hours slowed a little by the wet weather and construction zones that required reduced speed. There were no accidents that slowed down traffic – fortunately. It was a bother to stop and pay tolls the old-fashioned way going through Oklahoma. I researched getting a toll tag and discovered that the Oklahoma system apparently does not integrate with any others. The ideal toll tag for me would be one that worked for Texas and Oklahoma toll roads (as long as it didn’t interfere with the tag I have that works along most of the east coast).