Sustaining Elder Care/Road Trip to Texas – April 2026
/I made my monthly trip to see my dad in Lewisville TX a week ago. It was a pleasant sunny day for the drive down. I bought a salad at my last stop in Oklahoma and ate it at the Texas Welcome Center on US 75. The temperature was perfect to park in the shade, roll down the window and eat my salad. There were still bluebonnet blooming and other flowers had appeared as well – I took pictures as I walked around a little after lunch.
My dad was sleeping when I arrived…but he woke up after about 20 minutes, and I was able to convince in to take a walk around the courtyard. He can’t see very well so I keep a hand on the walker to set the direction but let him set the pace. He seems to move slower than he did prior to last month’s hospitalization, but he still enjoys being outside. We sat in the shade on the patio for a while afterward.
Once I got him back to his room, he seemed exhausted, so I left to meet one of sisters. She is cleaning out her mother-in-law’s house (she moved into an assisted living apartment). I got there a little before my sister and enjoyed seeing the large trees in the front yard; one was an oak (progeny in the flowerbed) but its trunk was not nearly as large as the ones in Maryland and Missouri; the heat stress in Texas probably causes them to grow differently. I got some botanical artwork my sister’s mother-in-law had done years ago; I got several different sunflowers that will look good in my office.
Some of my plastic reduction strategies worked better than usual this trip. My tin with stainless forks worked well for my lunch salad the first day and my breakfast the next morning. I put the used forks in the ice chest so that I could easily put them in the dishwasher when I got home. Coffee filters (left over from when I switched from a coffee maker to an electric kettle (glass and stainless) work well to hold microwave popcorn for my evening snack. A Pyrex bowl that had carrots and celery in the ice chest on the way down was emptied the first evening and then used to hold my breakfast the next morning – avoiding a Styrofoam plate.
The season is warm enough now that I am realizing that I need to put my cosmetics in the ice chest since the suitcase stays in the care when I am visiting my father. It avoids melted or separated products. It takes as much room as food stuff.
I saw my dad just after he finished breakfast in the morning and he was keen to go for a walk. It was a little cooler, so we did a walk that was part inside and part outside…and he was a little tired by the time we were back in his room. It wasn’t long before an aide came to give him a shower…so I headed toward home about 30 minutes earlier than I had planned.
I got to the diner I wanted to try in McAlester OK about noon. It probably will be the place I will stop on my way home from now on. I was glad I had a good lunch since the middle of the drive was full of rain which made it a bit more challenging; the road in the small towns often has curbs but no drains so water accumulates quickly. I had expected rain closer to home but it cleared off for the last couple of hours. Still – I just wanted to relax when I got home.
