When does a road trip become a commute?

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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.

Springfield Yard – March 2024

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My daughter’s yard in Springfield MO is full of springtime. I visited to help get pollinator/butterfly garden seeds planted. After we got that done – I enjoyed the beauty of the yard which has been a work in progress since the house was built in the 1950s…and my daughter’s since 2021.

The oakleaf hydrangea is leaving out; the plant gets more sun this time of year before the big trees get their leaves. I noticed it as we were picking up sticks around the base of her river birch and oak tree.

The vinca, growing in a bed thick with leaves from last fall, is blooming.

Her wood hydrangea still has flowers dried from last fall…not leafing out yet in its shady location.

A Japanese quince was blooming. I hadn’t noticed this in her yard before, but I must have just missed being there at the right time.s. Would birds get ‘drunk’ from the (probably fermented) fruit?

The crabapple tree was full of buds – and some crabapples left from last season. Most of the fruits had been eaten and I wondered why there are still some on the trees. Would birds get ‘drunk’ from the (probably fermented) fruit?

There is a young cherry tree near the corner of her front yard. The blooms were everywhere.

A red bud is in the other corner also full of blooms. My daughter commented that it really is misnamed since it isn’t red.

We also observed that most of the plants damaged from a too zealous application of herbicide by a yard crew last year seem to be recovering with the new season.

What a great time to get outdoors and into a garden….

2023 at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge

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I made stops at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge on my way to and from Carrollton all during the year. On the way down, I arrived around noon; on the way home, it was just after sunrise.

Seeing/photographing birds is the big draw for my visits. I spend an hour or so moving slowly down the central wildlife tour road…sometimes taking a side road. I use my car as a blind and roll the window down when I see birds. My camera is on a monopod collapsed down to its shortest length. Most of the time I brace it in the cup holder between the front seats…tilt the head to get the image I want.

In the winter there are flocks of snow geese (and Ross’s geese) along with Northern Shovelers and Pintails. White Faced Ibis and American White Pelicans are seen during migrations. Egrets (snowy, cattle, great) are numerous in the spring and summer; I enjoyed an early morning seeing/hearing them on one of the ponds where they had obviously spent the night. Great Blue Herons are around all the time although are most numerous in the summer when the young are beginning life on their own. Red-winged blackbirds are year-round residents but murmurations of the birds are seen in the fall as they move about eating the mature seeds of the prairie plants. I saw Neotropic Cormorants for the first time this year.

Of course there are other things to photograph too – prairie type flowers, drift wood, insects, sunrise. This year I noticed a cluster of Queen butterflies in July…didn’t see many Monarchs until the fall when they were probably migrating. The butterflies were photographed in the butterfly garden near the refuge’s visitor center – along with a grasshopper! I was surprised to see a dragonfly perched on a plant so close to the car that I was able to photograph it during my drive down the wildlife loop!

Hagerman has become one of my favorite places in Texas…and I will continue to stop there as often as I can.

Daughter’s Yard

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My daughter’s house was built in the 1950s and has some very large mature trees. Even the plants that are not of that vintage, are robust. By the fall – the summer growth has often become overwhelming, so I offer to help with the grand cleanup before winter. On the day we chose – it was cloudy…warm rather than hot. The yard had been mowed the previous day so we could focus on other everything else rather than leaves. It was a good day for the project.

I noticed the holly berries on her two trees had almost all turned orange (or their way to red); those trees didn’t need any maintenance!

There was pokeweed in several places that needed to be pulled (she is still battling it…no truce or peace yet in her yard!). It was growing in the woodpile, between bricks of the patio….and other places too.

The path to the side of the house overhung by a mature redbud shading the hostas and ferns on both side of the flagstones yielded several armloads of sticks to supplement the wood pile. Hopefully they will have a cookout using their firepit (and burn a lot of the pile) when they have their annual pumpkin carving event.

There was a mimosa that had come up in one corner of the fenced area. We didn’t have a saw, so we cut the top out with big pruners and girded the trunk further down. I’ll brink my saw next time we work.

It didn’t take us long to fill a dumpster with vines and weeds (including pokeweed) that we pulled.

What I thought was a cherry tree turned out to be a crabapple (when I cut open one of the fruits). I learn something new in her yard every time I work there!

The other plant I hadn’t recognized before was (I think) a silverbell. I’ll look next spring for its flowers. It’s a small tree growing under her big oak.

Other beauties in the flower beds that I couldn’t resist: cedar, wood hydrangea, Asian hydrangea, lichen, shelf fungus, southern magnolia seed pods (another huge tree).

I took home 3 magnolia seed pods - hope to watch how the seeds pop out as the pods dry.

We had some productive hours….and we felt good about what we had accomplished!

Zooming – September 2023

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The beauty of the early morning in Texas - Hagerman and Josey Ranch and my parents’ yard….the wildness of Shaw Nature Reserve (near St. Louis MO) in the early afternoon…the joys of nature in my neighborhood (Nixa MO). These are the locations where my selections of zoomed images for September were made. The month was very much between summer and fall – starting hot and getting a bit cooler as the month progressed, still very green but the occasional beginning of fall color. Enjoy the September slideshow!

Green Heron in the Neighborhood

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I took a walk around our neighborhood ponds on a pleasantly cool morning. I noticed the redbud tree that was damaged by a storm more than a month ago. One of the cut trunks was obviously not healthy and might have been why the tree was vulnerable to the wind. A small branch from another cut surface was already a ‘fall’ color rather than green…and became the subject of the most artsy image of the morning.

There were little fish in shallow (warmer) water. They probably have reduced the mosquito population!

Just after I photographed the fish, a green heron startled - flew up and away; fortunately, it did not go too far, and I had plenty of time to enjoy photographing the bird. Their coloring helps them blend in so well that they are often hard to spot so I take full advantage photographing the birds when I happen upon them. They change their shape…sometimes with a short neck…sometimes stretching out their neck (even though their neck is still thicker than many herons).

There was also a Great Blue Heron that I didn’t see until too late to photograph well – it is on the other side of the bridge in the image below.

There were turtles on the side of the pond at one point. The morning was still cool and they were soaking up the sun.

There were plants going to seed around the pond, the willow draping over the pathway, honeysuckle blooming, very young maple trees turning red, and grasses that were not totally green!

Overall – a pleasant walk….with the Green Heron as the highlight….the other bits and pieces providing the context.

Hagerman Wildflowers – May 2023

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The wildflowers were abundant at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge in May…and the cloudy weather didn’t impact photography of them as it did for the birds. I enjoyed taking some assemblages of flowers in the roadside meadows.

Most of my images were zoomed in shots of single species – queen Anne’s lace, amaranth, coneflower, butterfly weed, milkweed….and more.

Some of the plants had insects on them too…an added attraction.

I experimented with some high key images too…the advantage of a cloudy sky.

The redbud near the visitor center is one of my favorite trees to photograph – an easy access specimen for macro photography.

I’m looking forward to seeing the changes when I visit the refuge in June. Some of the flowers will last through the summer….others will be done with their blooms for the year. Being able to visit a refuge like Hagerman every month is one of the best things about 2023 (so far)!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – April 2023

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Springtime view of our neighborhood from our backyard just after sunrise. The trees are leafing out…filling in more of the eastern horizon. The red bud is a break in the spring greens looking past the tennis courts.

Later in the morning I took some macro shots of fading daffodil blooms

And redbud flowers/leaves.

After spending time photographing the ducklings (see yesterday’s post), I made a project to photograph some of the trees in the morning like against the very clear sky. There was a little breeze but the light was bright enough to freeze the image!

The lawn around the pool was dotted with dandelions. I know that many hate the plants – wage war on them in their lawns – but I have come to appreciate them. I like their cheerful yellow flowers (and so do insects) and the puffs of seeds are always photogenic. I mow them but don’t do anything else to discourage them in my yard.

Springfield Botanical Gardens – April 2023

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The uptick in vegetation is in full swing at the Springfield Botanical Gardens this month. We went on a morning cool/breezy enough to require a jacket with a hood and gloves. The early blooming trees and bushes (cherry, magnolia, quince), spring bulbs, and some violets made it worth the walk. The magnolias appeared to have been hard hit by the cold weather of the past weeks – with wads of ruined flowers; but some buds were evidently not impacted, and the few flowers were a taste of how grand the tree would have been without the cold weather.

As usual, I couldn’t resist some macro shots. In years past, I have often contented with very active bees, but the breezy cold must have kept them away. I didn’t see a single insect on the trees. The picture of the ‘open’ redbuds (last picture) was one of my favorites.

But – my favorite of the morning was the tulips. Not all the tulips were blooming quite yet…but these very bright flowers stood out in their brown mulch bed. I liked their color and spikey shape!

I am looking forward to seeing how the gardens change by May!

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge in March 2023 – Egrets +

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The pelicans were the stars of my two visits to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge in March, but there were plenty of other things to see. The egrets came in a close second to the pelicans. The Snowy Egrets were in breeding plumage.

A cattle egret was as well.

The redbud near the visitor center was blooming and the tree was situated where I could walk up to get some macro images. The flowers are reminded me of orchids!

The trunk of the tree had yellow-orange lichen…always worth a close look.

On my first visit there were a few Snow Geese (one was smaller…probably a Ross’s). They were gone before my second visit.

The Yellowlegs was still around.

I saw two herons: a Great Blue

And a Little Blue. The Great Blue Herons are year-round residents. The Little Blue Herons are only around during the breeding season.

At the turn around point during my second visit, I noticed some vultures in a tree. The ones near the top were Turkey Vultures and there was a lone Black Vulture further down the tree!

I needed to get to Sherman by noon but still made a quick stop to photograph a Red-Winged Blackbird. I had been hearing them loud and clear but this one seemed to be posing just for me.

My visits to Hagerman are always a little rushed…I drive portions of the wildlife tour and stop for photography – using my car as a blind. Even so…it seems like the 1.5 hours I allot myself passes very quickly!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – March 2023

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The temperature has fluctuated wildly – from the teens to 70s this month. I took walks on two of the sunny days. We’ve had enough rain that the drainage into the ponds had running water on both days, and I stopped on the bridge to take pictures of leaves from last season in the rippling water. Oaks, maples, river birch, and red buds are represented.

There is almost always a pair of mallards about….and lots of robins.

Some branches from a magnolia in a nearby yard are upright in the pond. I wonder how long they will last…..or maybe someone is trying to root them (i.e. start new trees)?

The turtles are more active on warm days. They all appear to be red-eared sliders. Their snouts are usually all that is visible unless they are closer to shore or sunning on some high ground in the pond.

One day I started out in sunshine but there were more clouds than I anticipated. I took some landscape shots….experimenting with backlight and the curving walkway through the trees around our pond.

Some geese were on the walkway (and this time of year I give them space since they might be aggressive) so I went up to the street to complete the loop to my house. I noticed that the stormwater drain is labeled ‘no dumping – drains to river’ with a metal shield; in Maryland the labeling was painted onto the concrete.

The red maples are some of the earliest trees to bloom. The trees along the path don’t have low branches so my pictures of the flowers rely on my camera’s zoom.

Sometimes I photograph something because I didn’t anticipate it…the oak leaf stuck in the chain link of the tennis court is an example.

Another is the mats of algae on lower spillway between the two ponds. They had washed from the upper pond but are doomed to dry out on the spillway if another rain does not come soon. Still – they were ‘emerald isles’ at a time of year where there is still a lot brown in the natural world.

A Springfield, Missouri Yard

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My daughter hosted lunch last week at her house. While we were waiting for it to be delivered, I bundled up and walked around her yard; I hadn’t been there since she and I handled the fall leaves back in November. The day was cold, breezy, and sunny.

I enjoyed the textures and colors of the plants left from last summer: leaves of low growing plants in a protected bed with green veins, dry flowers, plants collapsed and curled by frost.

There were seed pods from redbud (a cluster still on the tree!), maple, cones, and magnolia (alas, all the red seeds were gone from all the magnolia pods).

I found myself looking for green – noticing moss and weeds on the brick/stone walkways,

Boxwood, other evergreens along the shady path on the east side of the house, and a fresh magnolia leaf wedged in a pile of leaves from last fall.

I was very pleased that the large piles of leaf mulch my daughter and I made around some of the trees stayed in place. She’ll have less to mow around the trees next summer!

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge

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The Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge field trip was our second April visit to the place (I posted about our visit back in 2017: part 1, part 2). A new visitor center was under construction and the old one no longer had feeders (where we saw goldfinches last time) and the purple martin houses had been moved to another area, so we didn’t see them either. The field trip still started with a look around the visitor center grounds. It was a cool morning. There were several spring flowering trees (dogwood and redbud)…and birds flitting from the trees to the grass to the man-made structures.

We started around the auto tour route. There had been a lot of rain in the days before our field trip and the water level in the ponds was higher that I remembered. We also learned that because the area is tidal salt marsh, the water levels are not as easy to control as in some other refuges; the refuge management is challenged to maintain the marsh as sea-level is rising.

There were plenty of birds around: northern shovelers, red-winged black birds, green-winged teal, and mallards were a few I photographed.

There were relatively large numbers of great blue herons. They don’t nest at the refuge but come here for food.

There were also great and snowy egrets in mixed groups.

I took a sequence of a great egret landing.

There were bald eagles too. I photographed a scruffy looking juvenile settling on an almost submerged log.

The big surprise of the morning was a roost of black-crowned night herons. From the place we were standing…they were on the other side of large pond; they looked like fuzzy places in the trees…

I thought tent caterpillars at first! With binoculars and big camera lens, the birds were easy to identify. My husband provided a magnified/cropped image of one of the birds. There were over 70 birds roosting!

What a thrilling finale for a Bombay Hook field trip!

Missouri to Maryland

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We made the road trip back from Missouri – having walked through the house we are buying and brief by the house inspector (the final results were still pending, but we did get to talk with the inspector about the house while he was in the house). The route was a reverse of the one we had taken from Maryland (see my post here). The weather was dry both days….much appreciated. The temperatures stayed cool even though the sun was shining most of the time. On the first day, our route started in Springfield, Missouri, crossed southern Illinois and Indiana, and ended in Lexington, Kentucky.

The part in Missouri parallels old Route 66…one of the rest stops highlights that history. Evidence of spring is easy to find at every stop.

I wondered how long the leaning tree near one of the picnic areas - caught by neighboring trees before it could reach the ground - would stay in that precarious position.

I zoomed in on the back of one of the horse sculptures at the Kentucky welcome center: Peacock feathers!

The next morning we left before sunrise and I took a picture the sunrise blush silhouetting trees on a ridge. The route the second day was from Lexington, Kentucky, through West Virginia, and ended at home in central Maryland.

More spring: dandelions already going to seed before the other plants in the bed even have buds, red buds planted along the roadway and rest stop parking lots, azaleas just beginning their bloom, daffodils still blooming in the mountains (done for the season at lower elevations). There was enough breeze to extend the flags in West Virginia…but not at the same time!

And then we reached Maryland. The scenic overlook/welcome center had good views of the lake and daffodils were still blooming there. The Sidling Hill stop had yellow tulips. And then we didn’t need to the stop at South Mountain. We were keen to be home!

Even though the weather was good for driving, my husband and I realized during our first day driving that our two days in Springfield had not been long enough to recover from the trek to Missouri. He was having lots of neck and shoulder aches and I was feeling exhausted. We agreed that short turn around trips with that much driving should be avoided from now on!

Springfield Yard – April 2022

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The stars of my daughter’s yard in mid-April are the redbud and cherry trees. She has two of each. The cherry trees are about the same size, but the redbuds are very different – a large tree in the back yard and a younger tree in the front yard.

As I was looking at the younger redbud in the front, I noticed that the huge oak in her neighbor’s yard had been cut down. I had noticed it had a crack in it and thought it needed to be seen by an arborist since it was so large that it would have taken out a house (or two) or blocked the street if it came down in an uncontrolled way. Still - it’s sad that the tree had to come down. It had probably been planted when the houses were built in the 1950s. My daughter has an oak of the same vintage in her yard. She’s already planning to have an arborist to look at that tree…and the rest of her trees.

She has an aging dogwood that is blooming right now but there are quite a few dead branches, and part of the trunk has no bark. Can it be saved? It’s small enough that it could die in place in the next few years and then be cut down.

Road Trip: Maryland to Texas

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I made the drive from where I live in Maryland to Texas in two days (best case about 21 hours of driving)…confirming that I really don’t want to do drive it in 2 days again. There were no accidents either day and I made only quick rest stops that only prolonged the original time my nav system calculated for the day by about 30 minutes each day. I was exhausted (mentally and physically) at the end of each day and beginning to ache every time I got out of the car. I had a painful back my first day in Texas! My solution is to do the trek over 3 days instead of two from now on…and take more time at rest stops to move/stretch. The pandemic strategy of having all the food I need in the car saves time and makes it easier to eat my normal diet…I will probably keep that as part of my road trip strategy.

The first day was from Maryland…through Virginia just west of Shenandoah National Park…and halfway through Tennessee. The first hour was in darkness and through the heaviest construction zone of the entire trek; it’s good to get the challenging part of the drive over with as early as possible! I only saw one sign about masks and very few people were wearing them at the rest stops; I did put a mask on when I was in buildings even though I have gotten the booster vaccine already; the whole purpose of my trip was to visit 90 year old relatives and our family is taking precautions to reduce the risk of them getting a breakthrough infection….and I don’t want to get even a mild case of COVID-19! It was a very cloudy day with a lot of mist and light rain…a few patches of heavier rain. It was weekend and there seemed to be less traffic. The fall foliage was wonderful during the short periods where the weather did not obscure it! There were several rest stops along the way that had roses blooming. I was surprised by the strong exhaust smell as several rest stops; it was a cool day, and perhaps more vehicles were keeping running than usual – or maybe the weather was holding the fumes closer to the ground; I didn’t linger. My car has a range of about 400 miles, so I don’t have to stop for gas very often; usually that is where I anticipate some vehicle smell rather than at the rest stops. The hotel was just west of Nashville. I was glad I had brought my air purifier along since the hotel room smelled of disinfectant when I first went in.

The second day route completed the trek across Tennessee, crossing the Mississippi River on the bridge that was shut down with the discovery of structural issues a few days after I crossed it last spring (evidently repairs were completed), and then across Arkansas. I’m about 200 miles to my destination when I cross into Texas. The weather started out foggy in Tennessee…then sunny in Arkansas and Texas. The temperature started out at 50 and climbed to 80. The drivers seemed to get more aggressive as the day progressed – and the speed limits were higher with more traffic! Fortunately, there were no accidents along the route to slow me down (as there had been in the spring). I learned more about the solar panels around one of the rest stops in Tennessee since there was a person at the desk (they feed the grid and the university that installed them gets the credit!). I appreciated a rest stop in Arkansas that is closed but has port-o-potties; it was perfectly placed for when I needed a stop and, of course, I had hand sanitizer in the car. The trees were still green on the second day….fewer trees along the route. The welcome center in Texarkana had its usual neatly trimmed landscaping. There some roses blooming at my last rest stop.

I acquired a TxTag for the toll roads in Texas and Oklahoma to make it a little less expensive and avoid having to stop for tolls in Oklahoma when I head back on a more northern route though Springfield.

Overall – a good trek. I did it in 2 days and made it to my destination when I wanted…but I don’t want to do it that quickly again!

Cancer Diary – Entry 2

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The appointment with my doctor was at 8 AM. I had printed out my list of questions and walked outside to see how cool it felt before I got in my car. There were two surprises near the driveway: a stalk of late season day lily buds that the deer hadn’t eaten and the Virginia Creeper on the oak beginning to turn red. I unplugged my car…and set out.

Since I was the first wave of patients at the medical building, there were still places available close the building in the ‘fuel eff low emit parking’ lane. I was a few minutes early and noted that the landscaping around the building has been transitioned to native plants.

It was so quiet with no one else around that I heard water burbling just before I went into the building and looked over the railing to see a shady rock garden with water coming from one of the larger rocks at one level down from the main entrance. I hadn’t noticed it before.

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It was a pleasant way to start the morning – noticing the beauty in the natural world. Even so – my first blood pressure reading of the appointment was a little high; I was relieved that after my conversation with the doctor (getting all my questions answered and a plan for what I should do prior to my appointment with the surgeon), my blood pressure was well within the normal range. It was an indicator that, for me, being armed with information is an important way to reduce the stress of the situation….also an indicator of the skill of my doctor which is also reassuring.

Later in the day, I called my parents to share the cancer news (made sure one of my sisters was with them when I did) and to delay my road trip to see them until at least after my appointment with the surgeon…and maybe after the surgery itself. It was not an easy conversation but necessary; there is a history of sharing health situations within the family that guided me. A part of every cancer journey is taken alone…and part is shared; for me, the shared times make the part walked alone easier.

Overall – by the end of the second day into my experience, I felt more knowledgeable and optimistic about the eventual outcome. I was also beginning a conscious effort to keep my normal positive mental attitude over what might be an extended period.

Road Trip from Maryland and Texas

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The road trip from Maryland and Texas was done in two days…stopping in Dickson TN for the night. It was done on a weekend when I thought the traffic would be lighter. It was a pretty drive with redbuds blooming along the highway. Virginia apparently plants them along the interstate. The dogwoods were beginning to bloom as well. I got through Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and half through Tennessee on the first day. I tried to take pictures at the rest stops which were all open along the route. Virginia seems to have more frequent ones that the other states.

The adaptive cruise control made the driving easy….until I got into Tennessee and there was an accident that closed the highway. Traffic was stopped for over an hour – no way to detour. It made the day longer and more exhausting. I was glad that the daylight lasted until I was at the hotel. I opted to eat food from the ice chest rather than get a takeout or drive through meal.

The second day drive started at sunrise at the Best Western and ended at my Parents house. The route was through the rest of Tennessee (some fog in the morning), then Arkansas (lots of construction around Little Rock and a huge traffic jam when the construction took the Interstate down to a single lane), and Texas. The rest stops were open except in Arkansas where several were closed.

There was another Interstate closing accident when I was only a hour away from my destination but there was a detour around it that my nav system guided me through – so it only added about 30 minutes to my arrival time.

Overall – there are some lessons learned from the road trip that I will apply on the way back:

  • I had rounded up on the food/drinks I had in the car with me and that worked well since stopping for takeout/drive through would have been stressful.

  • I drank a Gatorade on both days because I felt like my hands were going to cramp by the end of the day. I’ll do it again for the trek home.

  • Most people were masked at Interstate rest stops…but not always at the inside part of gas stations (I stopped a Love’s and Shell). On the way home, I’ll prioritize stopping at rest stops to avoid going into facilities at gas stations. Even though I am fully vaccinated – I am not comfortable being around people inside buildings that are not masked.

  • The motel worked well. Checking in was quick – with a person behind a clear barrier in the lobby – and the lobby was otherwise empty. The air conditioning/heating was on an outer wall of the room – not shared. I ran my air purifier for about 30 minutes before I took off my mask but that was probably not necessary. I’ll look for similar accommodation for the trek home.

  • Doing the drive from Maryland to Texas in two days is overwhelming if there are serious accidents that close the Interstate along the route. I arrived exhausted. Next time I make the trek, I’ll consider 3 days and plan some sight seeing along the route if there are not accidents that slow down the drive. My route home from this trip will be up to Springfield for a few days before heading back to Maryland….so a different route and shorter drive days.

Mini Road Trip: Mt Pleasant – April 2021 (2)

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Hiking back from the skunk cabbage patch at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant, I noticed the tree canopy over the trail. It was a great spring day….cool, sunny with occasional puffy clouds.

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I looked at the shelf fungus again – from the top and bottom.

The larger woodpecker holes on a high branch seemed larger than last hike but I still didn’t see or hear the bird.

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I was surprised to see a patch of daffodils in the woods. They probably started out as a few bulbs….but had proliferated over the years.

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Ranger the Barred Owl was very relaxed. He opened his eyes when I first walked up to his area but then dozed – deciding I was not a threat.

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There were bees active at one of the hives.

The redbuds are blooming. I like that they bloom all over - even on the larger branches.

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As I was eating a protein bar for my lunch, I noticed a black feather….maybe crow-sized…

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And some dandelions.

The pear tree in the orchard is blooming. I hope it makes pears this year; the past few years the flowers or small fruit have been ruined by late frosts.

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Overall – an enjoyable April hike on a familiar trail.

Mini Road Trip: Mt Pleasant – March 2021 (2)

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Continuing the sights of my mini road trip to Mt Pleasant….

I noticed 3 trees…for different reasons:

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The light on the curling bark of a river birch.

A hole that looked recent in a high branch of a large tree. I wondered if it might be a woodpecker preparing a nesting cavity although I didn’t hear or see the bird.

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The trunk of a red bud…with my regular camera

And then with my phone and a clip-on macro lens.

There were also some interesting vines around small trees and hanging from low branches…natures ropes and knots.

I always enjoy looking for shelf fungus as I walk on forest paths.

My favorite images are ones that capture the structure of the top and underside…the two pictures below are the same group…but different composition. I can’t decide which is my favorite. I didn’t realize that the tree rings were visible until I looked at the images on the bigger screen at home! The grouping was on the cut end of a tree trunk that had been cleared from the trail after it fell.

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As I headed back toward my car – I stopped to photograph the jasmine…the early bloomer near the picnic area and

Some seed pods (not sure what they are) from last season. The seeds have been dispersed but the pods catch the light…become flower-like again.

Overall – it was a very good walk around Mt Pleasant although I didn’t get down and around the meadow…. that is left for next time.