When does a road trip become a commute?

The road trips to Carrollton/Dallas TX have been going on for years – increasing in frequency in recent years as my parents got older. Until recently their duration as been for at least a week; from Maryland it was a 2-day road trip in each direction which was reduced to 7 hours once we moved to Missouri. Sometimes I stayed longer – for hospitalizations/recuperation primarily. There were no trips at the beginning of COVID, but they started up again as soon as we were vaccinated. They are almost always on my own and my parents’ house became almost like a second home since I was spending at least 25% of my time there.

Since my mother’s death and the sale of their house, things are changing. I drive down one day and come back on the next – visiting with my dad for a few hours and staying in a hotel overnight. I’ve done it 3 times and am beginning to realize that the road trip feels more like a long commute.

The route is becoming very familiar. I set the navigation system but really don’t need it. The places I stop (usually Loves or Pilot….sometimes Choctaw Travel Centers) are familiar. There was a Stuckeys that I stopped at occasionally, but it was always a bit grungy and I noticed on the last trek that I had closed. My route is not on Interstate for the most part and I am very aware of the speed limits going though towns.

Music helps keep me alert…and variety helps. Apple Music on my phone playing via Bluetooth on the car speakers is the way to go!

There are several assignments I give myself to stay focused on the road and surroundings. Some of my favorites are:

• Observing birds (particularly hawks in treetops, great blue herons or great egrets flying, soaring vultures, murmurations of smaller birds….hoping to see a bald eagle). It’s depressing to notice hawk or owl roadkill, but it happens.

• Noticing the trees – particularly in the spring and fall. Recently I have been paying particular attention to red buds which are scattered among the roadside trees….not thrilled about the escaped Bradford Pears (Callery Pears) that are also there.

• License plates, particularly in Oklahoma, are more varied than in most states because the Oklahoma tribes have their own plates! Most of my observing of plates is during the times I’ve slowed down for a town and there is more traffic.

• There is plenty of time to plan what I need to do when I get to Dallas…or when I get home. On the way down, I think about topics that might interest my dad and whatever estate actions I need to take. On the way home, I think about blog posts and, this time of year, what I need to do in the yard.

Phone calls generally factor into the time I am in the car – hands free of course. I call my husband to let him know when I will get home, and my daughter usually calls me for a longer chat when she knows I am driving. It helps pass the time.

More focused purpose. I am realizing that the trips have one overwhelming purpose – to see and visit with my dad. It’s a few hours rather than 24/7 for a week like it was before. There is not much time for anything else although brief times out in nature might still happen…although not on every trip.

And that is how my road trips to Texas have become more like a commute.

Walk in the Carrollton Neighborhood

Getting out for a walk in the neighborhood was a treat during the routine of being with my parent in the hospital for 24 hours and then catching up on everything else (including sleep) for 24 hours…repeating. Even though I was exhausted, being outdoors in the crisp air was exhilarating; as always, I had my camera in hand to document what I noticed.

I didn’t get away from the house before I noticed the mini-mums in the front flowerbed and the oak leaves on the ground but held upright by the groundcover.

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There was a flowerbed near the sidewalk a few blocks away that was full of ceramic yard art tucked into the plantings. The frog was my favorite.

I noticed that the city of Carrollton (Texas) has marked the drains along the street…indicating that the drains go straight to waterways (i.e. not treatment for contaminates).

There was a confused pear tree along the way – blooming in late November rather than waiting until the spring!

Refreshed and feeling less stressed…I returned to my parents’ house for a nap.

Bradford Pear

The Callery (Bradford) Pear trees near the entrance of our neighborhood are blooming. It was cold and windy when I went out to photograph the flowers. Supposedly the trees have value as early season food for pollinators – but I didn’t see any – probably because it was so cold.

Their trunks are heavy with lichen…which I like to photograph….magnified with my phone. On the day I was out, lichen was one of the few macro opportunities since everything else was moving too much with the wind. The textures (crevices of the bark, delicate lobes or nets of lichen, ovoid shapes on the top of the larger lichens) and colors (brown and black of the bark; orange and greenish gray lichen) are nature’s abstracts.

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My house was built near the end of the 90s so the Callery Pear trees in the community space at the entrance might be nearing the end of their lifespan which is typically less than 25 years if they were planted about the same time as my house was built. The trees appear to have been radically trimmed not that many years ago and that might have prolonged their life since the trees tend to be damaged by wind (big branches or trunks breaking). Hopefully another species of tree will replace them since most conservation agencies view the trees as invasive and not as appealing as they were decades ago. I know I have a Callery Pear hybrid that came up very close to a crepe myrtle. I cut it down as soon as I discovered it…and punctured myself as I was hauling it out before I realized that it had thorns! I am still cutting all the leaves that sprout from the stump since I don’t think I can dig deep enough to get it out without also digging up the crepe myrtle.

But – they do have pretty blooms in the spring.

30 Years Ago – January 1990

30 years ago this month – my daughter was 4 months old and I was still taking unpaid leave from my career at IBM. We visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on the first day of the year. My husband took pictures of me and the baby near the elephant in the rotunda! She probably couldn’t really see the whole elephant clearly, but she was wide awake for most of the museum (napping in the car on and from).

That January had enough snow and ice that we didn’t get out very much. I had a scary fall on an icy driveway early in the month. It was icy. I thought it was just wet when I headed out to get the mail. My feet slid forward; I fell backward and hit my head. I lay on the driveway for a few seconds assessing….then crawled back up/to the side to the grass…kept to the grass to get the mail before I went back inside.

The view from the front of our house shows a newly planted Bradford Pear near the street (still has stakes on both sides). The neighborhood had organized to plant the trees along the street, and we went along with the idea. Now Bradford Pears have become invasive in our area – coming up everywhere as Callery Pear. Aargh!

In the back of the house we had some larger evergreens. One leaned way over the woodpile. We were using our fireplace more that January than before or since.

Our one PC and keyboards were in the basement. We had a full house upstairs with a bedroom and sitting room for my mother-in-law, a room for the baby, and the master bedroom.

There were two baby milestones during the month: she started eating baby cereals and rolling over. At the beginning of the month the rolling over was occasional and took a lot of extreme effort on her part. By the end of the month it was so easy for her that she rolled until something stopped her…and then figured out that she could roll away in the other direction.