Readers Want to Know What is Happening... Road Trip

Hello to all my readers.  Many of you have been wondering what has been happening.  I have not posted in quite a couple of weeks.  I have been traveling.  We received word that my husband's sister was in hospice.  We drove from Virginia to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  We stayed in northern New Jersey with his brother and sister-in-law, then drove to Pennsylvania where my husband's sister was in a hospice hospital room.  We visited for a day with her then drove back to New Jersey to spend the night.  The next day we drove home.  This was a trip of about 300 miles each way.  (480.82 kilometers)  So about 600 miles up and back with a side trip to Pennsylvania which was about an hour each way.  So as a guess, I would say that was about another 100 miles round trip.  So, 700 miles (1126.54 km) by the time we returned home.

I can't say that the trip had a lot of interesting scenery.  We were taking the fastest route, which meant we were going by Interstate instead of the back roads.  Along the interstate and on the New Jersey Turnpike, there is not a whole lot to see but trees for the most part, unless we were going through a city.  I did manage to capture a (far away) photo of the Washington Monument and I think the Lincoln Memorial as we drove by.  The traffic in northern Virginia was horrible, despite a highway system where the flyovers were stacked up as many as four deep.  The problem was that sooner or later all these lanes merged into just a few lanes.  It was miserable traveling through that area.

A word to those who might plan to travel in that area.  On the way up and back, our GPS kept giving us directions to go into the express lanes.  The express lanes are for Easy Pass users only.  There is no cash option.  It was stressful to have the GPS give us directions we could not follow.  We just had to take it on faith that if we kept heading up Interstate 95 we would hit New Jersey sooner or later.  By the way, in that area 95 is a toll road.  It was about $45.00 dollars in tolls round trip.  The other thing our GPS did was take us on route 395 that was shorter by a few miles, but took us through part of the city.  If you don't need to go into the city, take 495 around the city.  It is faster because there is not as much congestion.  Sometimes a GPS will get you there, but it is not always the best way to go.

Along the way around Washington D.C. we saw so many apartment buildings.  Thousands of them.  It reminded me that most people are not so fortunate as to see anything green and growing or even have so much as a slice of yard.  I suppose they get used to it, but it does seem to me to be a very stressful way to live. 

Frost crystals.

I had not been on the New Jersey Turnpike in about thirty years.  My memory of it from then was a few lanes in each direction and that there were a lot of some type of fir trees planted along the road.  The trees all had signs next to them saying they had been sprayed (with something noxious) in order to prevent people cutting them down for Christmas trees.  Well, what a difference thirty years can make.  The turnpike is a huge super-highway now.  There aren't any fir trees along the way anymore. 

Since we were traveling from south to north, we were also able to see how spring was developing in different states.  In the lower elevations of Virginia and D.C., the grass is green, the dogwoods and cherry trees are blooming, and pollen is everywhere.  Once we we passed into Maryland, it was a different story.  By the time we reached a place called Rising Sun, which is about ten to fifteen minutes from the Delaware border, the trees had not yet started to leaf out.  Everything was bare.  Nothing was really blooming yet in New Jersey.

We returned home and spent a day at there.  Spring has arrived in Mechanicsville and the grass needed mowing.  While my husband mowed the grass and weed whacked, I packed for a trip to the cabin.  The next morning we left for the cabin.  In case you had not guessed from so many of our previous trips, it was raining when we left Mechanicsville.  I am beginning to think that is some sort of prerequisite.  Fortunately, we drove out of it.  Unfortunately, it followed us to the cabin. 
The trip is about 150 miles up. (241.40 km.)

That night is rained very hard.  It was a scary storm.  Where we were at a high elevation we had torrential rain.  Down below there were tornadoes and flash floods.   We lost power for twelve hours.  The electricity went out at about 8:30 pm and did not come on until just after 7:00 am.  We lit a candle and tried to read on our tablets for a few minutes, but we were so tired from traveling we decided to call it a night and went to bed.  We woke up the next morning when the electricity came on again.  We lit the wood stove for warmth, but it goes out overnight.  In the morning it was a chilly 43 degrees Fahrenheit ((6.11C.) inside.  Needless to say, we were wearing our sleep hats.  It was just above freezing outside.

The next morning after breakfast, we drove over the mountain to see my mother.  It is about 20 miles
(6.l1 km.) each way, so 40 miles total (12.22 km).  We spent the day with my mom.  We don't have any cell service at the cabin.  The mountains block the signal.  When we stopped in a small town, there was some cell service and we stopped to check messages.  We learned that my husband's sister had passed away.  We drove back to the cabin, and spent the next day working on the cabin.  Then we packed up and drove home.  So round trip for that about 340 miles. (547.17 km.)

In the higher elevation of the mountains, it is still pretty much winter.  We even had some hoar frost overnight.  Spring is just beginning to put out some daffodils and forsythia.  The apple trees, which bloom early, are just beginning to put out the first little bit of leaf.  The birch and maple trees have started to form buds, but they have not opened yet.  Coming down from the mountains into the lower areas is something like the difference of the black and white pictures from the movie The Wizard of Oz turning into the color picture.  The greys, siennas, browns, and rusts of bare trees and dry leaves burst into a technicolor of bright greens, pinks, and yellows.  It does not happen gradually.  It is like you suddenly cross a line and everything is blooming.  It is absolutely amazing.  It is however, the bane of my allergies.  One minute it is winter, the next minute it is early spring, and as we go lower in elevation, spring has moved further along.  We move through three or four different growing seasons in just a few hours.  And of course, farmers have started planting hay. 

We arrived home, unpacked from the cabin trip and rested for a day.  The next day we set off for New Jersey and Pennsylvania to repeat the trip so we could attend the memorial service.  We drove up, spent the night, went to the service, spent the night, then drove home, so another 700 miles (1126.54 km.).  The drive home was worse than the previous trip.  The turnpike was at a complete standstill for over an hour.  When we finally drove past the problem area, we found that a passenger bus had been completely burned up.  There was nothing left but the frame.  We did not see any passengers, so we don't know if the bus was empty or whether they had been evacuated while traffic was stopped.  Further on, we were stopped again for about twenty-five minutes while firefighters  battled a blaze in a wooded area.  Then we crawled through and area in northern Virginia where there was an accident at one of those areas where the lanes were merging.  It took us a lot longer to get home. 

We had snacks with us in the car, so we made a rest stop, but did not stop for lunch.  By the time we got home we were really hungry, but I was so tired I could not tell you what we had for dinner that night.  By the way, I would like to say that the rest stops in Maryland are really nice.  Plenty of dining options and clean restrooms.  By comparison, Virginia rest stops are small (but clean) and if you are lucky, you have a vending machine.  Virginia should take a hint. 

Anyway, the next morning, Monday, my husband headed out to work.  I started working on the laundry.  On Tuesday morning my husband quipped, "We have been home for a day, shouldn't we be going on a long drive somewhere?"  The rest of the week we spent just trying to catch up on all the normal things that need doing:  groceries, the lawn needed mowing again, the house needed vacuuming and dusting, returning phone calls, and deleting junk emails.  After driving about 1,740 miles (2800.25 km) in a few days, we are finally just beginning to feel normal again.

Hopefully, in the next few days I will be able to start getting back into the studio.