Many of us in Southern Vermont love to take Amtrak to NYC. We drive to Albany and park our cars and ride the the train along the lovely Hudson River. I keep my eyes out for boats and buildings and the famous West Point school where we used to go to football games with my father. My husband and friend Amy always watch for and find Eagles. Pro tip: Ride on the right side on the way in and on the left side on the way out. Even in bad weather it is absolutely gorgeous.
The "Traveling Stitcher"
When daughter Brooke and I sat down to create my business cards I needed a title. That was easy, "traveling stitcher" summed up my dream job. I am totally an avid and dedicated Local Shop shopper. I also often find myself hours from a local shop. I like small islands and lake cottages and any type of boat .... all which happen to be far from civilization. I needed to create kits which have the same standards of quality I was used to, that could be fedexed anywhere in the world.
This photo was taken recently in the Philadelphia Airport on a layover. As you can see, daughter Brooke and I both travel with a LOT of needlepoint. A millennial daughter and a 52 year old mother do not always pick the same favorite canvases. I love that. I love that I can stitch a tropical monkey wearing an orange fez and daughter Brooke will stitch Tupac and Biggie Smalls. Although, I must confess, I am minutes away from choosing that Tupac canvas as well!
I carry all needlepoint with me in carry-on baggage. The black purse goes below the seat in front of me and contains my iPad, beloved Sony camera, wallet, two passports*, noise canceling headphones, and baggies of needlepoint. One of those baggies contains finished projects I wanted to have with me in Florida. I love to stitch on planes while listening to books on tape. For this flight I listened to The Knockoff. (Life hack. If you are a righty try to get a right side aisle seat or left side widow to avoid scaring your neighbor with your needle. Or sit next to your husband, he's used to that!)
The orange camo bag contains more projects for the trip. The other bags are Brooke's projects.
* about the passports....I travel with my passport and my husband's. Sadly, not for quick romantic get aways. Three years ago we were at the family cottage on Lake Michigan when we got a call our youngest son was being evacuated from Machu Picchu to have an emergency appendectomy in Cusco. He was 17 at the time. Our passports were safely locked up in Vermont, and thus we had no way to get to him. We currently have two children in Europe. One is studying and working there and the other is traveling. In fact, at this moment they are in a bar in Munich together! If any of our children are out of the country, you can be assured, I'm carrying my mother sanity device! :)
This one was stitched in an airport while waiting to hear whether our son Colin got his dream job in London. He did!!
PRO TIPS:
1. Bring extra needles. Put them in several spots incase you change out your bag and forget. My change part of my wallet has several. Purse pockets have needles and so does my cosmetic bag. Nothing worse than arriving at the perfect place to stitch with no needle!
2. You can bring scissors on the plane. Read the TSA guidelines. I travel with smaller blades and have never had them taken away.
3. Precut fibers before flying. You can accomplish a lot more when you aren't fussing with your skein on the plane!
4. Ornaments and belts are great in flight projects.
5. Audible is a travelers best friend. Download the app. Buy your favorite books and have a great pair of noise canceling headphones. Listen to wonderful books while stitching for a dreamy flight.
We and Ours - How This Big Blended Families Rolls
Almost 20 years ago, on the cusp of ending my first marriage I met another woman with a family larger than my own. We had both just moved to Vermont that summer and we met at our new church with our swarms of children upstairs in the Sunday school. Someone who knew we both had big families introduced us and I immediately took to this wonderful woman. While we were speaking another woman came up and introduced herself to my new mom friend. She immediately asked her about where her children came from. “Are they all yours? Are they your husband’s? Is he the father of all of them? Is your family like a yours, mine, and ours situation?”. I was shocked. My new friend, the mother of the other large family, looked at the woman and said very matter of factly “They are ours, ours and ours”. A wonderfully confusing answer which left the interloper confused and making a quick exit. I was left a little dumbfounded. While I had been on the receiving end of many weird questions myself, I had never had anyone inquire about the parentage of my children.
At the time I had 5 small children and had just moved from Houston to Vermont. Many people in Texas commented to me about the size of my family. Nine out of ten times it was an older grey haired man in the grocery story who would say something to me like “You do know where those babies come from, right?”, it was always delivered with a know it all smirk. What always surprised me about it was that that question is of a sexual nature and I was a young mom pushing a shopping cart full of children that heard them too. It never happened to their father or when he was with me. I am New Yorker enough to say something super snide or give an eye roll that makes the other person feel like the moron that they are. I most often acted like I never heard them or turned it to the truth…”I am incredibly lucky to have this beautiful family.”. Until that day in Vermont I had never heard someone say something weird to another mother about her family.
I never ask women with large families how they got their babies. I never ask women with one baby where they got it. It never occurred to be to do so. I never cared. They were moms of kids. I never saw a need to question the genetics or gestation of their babies.
I grew up in a little one square mile town in Westchester County where there were LOTS of big families. For some odd and fun reason, the babies of these big families were all in my small grade in school. I thought nothing of playing at the house with ten children or the house with 8 children. I did it regularly. More than one family had 6 or 7 kids and and several families in town had 5. It was common in my community. I never felt it was in any way odd. I did think it was fun. As the youngest in my own family, I always wanted a big family. In college my father used to tell me to stop telling boyfriends that I wanted ten children. He said it would scare them off! I remember laughing hysterically when he told me this. What he didn’t realize was that I was very serious. Somehow, some way, I was destine to have a big family. I would have found another way if it didn’t go the way it did.
Don and Tricia a couple years in to this journey, Empire, Michigan
After my divorce I thought dating with 5 children would be impossible. It wasn’t. Time after time I met men who told me they always wanted more children in their previous marriages. I found this fascinating.
Almost two years after my encounter in the church, I met and fell in love with my husband. Between us we had a 6 year old, 7 year old, 9 year old, 11 year old identical twins, and two 13 year olds. We dated for four years to make sure we had it right so we would not put our children through another divorce. We married the first day of August in the backyard of our new home combining our two families…7 children and the flower girl and ring bearer AKA Rosie the pet guinea pig and Cornelius the pet rabbit.
Our bridal party. Colin, Brooke, Jasper, Willie, and Adam in the back. Courteney and Scotty in the front.
Adam, Willie, and Scotty Captiva, Florida
We blended our new family really, really well. I have said this a million times but it was much harder for us as a couple to learn to share a household as full blown, functioning adults than it was for our kids to blend. We were each a little stuck in our own way of doing things and were each used to being in charge. We had to learn from each other and compromise. Our kids on the other hand were super enthusiastic and embraced their new siblings with complete joy. I like to joke that the conversation went like this. “How many video game controllers do you have? Great, bring yours over to my room and we can play. We can be brothers.”
Our three babies Courteney, Adam, and Scotty on Sleeping Bear Dunes very close to the Heaton summer cottage.
My collection of 7s on the kitchen mantle at Starlight Farm
The house we purchased was the big old 8 bedroom farmhouse in town that had been on the market for years. No one wanted it but the insane people with seven children. We loved it. We became a family in that house. We were home for our 7 children. We have engaged a great deal of time to make things as fair was we could for family harmony. We were the parents that did things. Did the school forms, made the doctors appointments, bought the back to school clothes and the school supplies, we delivered kids to school and went back to drop off forgotten lunches, we went to parents weekend. We dealt with all the things parents deal with, medical issues, broken teeth, upset feelings, behavior issues, and great successes. This was not about who was genetically related to each other. It was about love. Don was the sports dad and I needlepointed and filled the Christmas stockings. We had a lot of very busy years. Don took charge of all things which involved organization, order, and cleaning. He was into car maintenance, bus schedules, and school calendars. He did the dishes. He is really good at all the things I am bad at. I did the grocery shopping and managed our social calendar. I’m the blabber mouth, the communicator. I had all the really hard conversations while he cringed but was happy that I was saying the tough things. I brought up all the difficult topics at the dinner table like safe sex, birth control, drugs, friendship, dating issues, and safe driving. We learned teamwork as parents. It took us a while but the two of us managed to create a united front. Don and I became a team. Sometimes that parent team hid in the garage or in a bathroom laughing together saying “Oh my god, what do we do with these kids?”. This happened more than once when we caught kids doing things we ourselves did as teenagers.
Courteney, Willie, Colin, Scotty, and Adam in the backyard where we were married, Dorset, Vermont
The boys are amused with Don’s shenanigans at Scotty’s birthday dinner at the cottage.
A big brother greeting from the darling little sister
The crew.
We do not use the word “step” in our family. Our children do not differentiate their siblings by genetic or marital connections. They use the terms “brother” and “sister”. We have 5 boys and 2 girls in our house. They are partners in crime. They look out for each other and get into great mischief together. And they bicker. Some more than others. When one got in trouble, it was with both parents. There were times some of them got into trouble together. Two nights ago I received a text from a hotel in Maui. Two of our kids were overjoyed to discover that they had both coincidentally ended up in Hawaii, a mile away from each other, on the same weekend. I can 100% guarantee that at no point did one say to friends “This is my step sister” or “This is my step brother”. They are brother and sister, in life and in their hearts. One of them asked me to pay their bar tab. Was it a surprise to the other? Probably not. I am sure they had a big laugh about it. What they don’t realize is that I am so happy that two almost 30 year old siblings would go out of their way to spend the afternoon together thousands of miles from home. That venmo was not taking advantage of me. That venmo filled my heart by saying that my children love each other and want to be together. The next day I got a photo of them sitting out by a pool. I treasure it.
Donnie Heat making breakfast for the crew at the cottage on Lake Michigan
We use the word “ours” to describe our kids. We also use the word “mine” to describe any and all of them. I fall in love with my husband a little more every time I hear him proudly call one of the kids “mine”. He earned that title 9 million times over. And he is theirs. “He is theirs.” That sentence is 17 years of devoted love by all parties involved.
Two brothers hiking along Lake Michigan with Don
BUT… and there is a BUT… Not everyone is okay with this. We have come across a few people who can not wrap their heads around the work we have done and that we are a “real family”. I was at a social gathering at some point a couple years ago and something came up about my family. I was asked by the person sitting to my left how many children I had and I said 7. The person sitting to my right leaned across me to the one on my left who asked the question and said “Tricia has 5 children. Two of them are Don’s”. This morning I told one of my kids this story and my daughter said she hates when people do that. She questioned why someone would want to diminish her relationship with her siblings and her father as “less than”..
A long ago Christmas at my sister Puddy’s in Lyme, Ct
I have noticed this more in the past year or so. Just recently I was telling a story about one of our children who lives in Europe and the person next to me leaned over and said “Is that your child or Don’s child?”. I usually follow the lead of the friend I told you about in the beginning of our story and say “our child”…and sometimes it stops there and sometimes it goes on to “no, really, is that one of your children or Don’s?”. The other question I get is “did you give birth to all of these children?”. It makes me wonder what kind of nonsense adopting mothers and fathers have to put up with.
A family game of mini golf in Michigan.
What I have come to realize in thinking about writing this story… is that these infrequent questions given to blended families, which feels like they are trying to separate and divide really hard work is actually people attempting to label our lives in their own criteria. Don and I have spent almost two decades with the goal of nurturing and loving all the children under our roof and raise them as your own.
I was going to end this here but another thought just washed over me. There is a completely different side to this story and those are the stories of adults who were loved very deeply by parents that came into their lives. While we do attract a few detractors and labelers we also attract many, many more stories of great love and great joy. We have several people in our lives, adult friends, who share stories of great love and affection for parents who came into their lives through marriage and raised them as their own. I love when they tell us those stories because they know we get it and we know how deeply they were loved by dedicated mothers and fathers who saw beyond the labels of genetics.
The 2020 decision to sell Starlight Farm
Starlight Farm, Dorset, Vermont
Last month we sold our family home in Vermont. It was something I never thought we would ever do. I envisioned keeping our wonderful home forever and giving our children parcels of the 16 acres to build their own little individually styled guest homes. I envisioned weddings and grandchildren, Christmases, and Easter egg hunts. Maybe we would build a screened-in sleeping porch down by the waterfall. Maybe we would plant fruit trees. For sure our family would have a geographically ideal plot of land should global warming continue at the pace it is now.
Stitching near the waterfall.
My magnificent view from our master bath.
Mama bear looking to borrow a cup of sugar.
The changes the world went through with Covid-19 redirected many of my visions. In a year when we found ourselves closed in our homes I looked closely at our living situations. In a year when we stopped going to stores and stopped dressing for social events, I realized we needed so much less. In a year when I was cleaning out closets, the basement, and a large storage room, I realized we just over all, in every single way, needed less than what we had. I began to think about simplifying and purging. In the spring of 2020 when we were all quarantined at home, I began to rethink how we lived. With 6 of our 7 children very far away, quarantined in their own homes… I began to change my dreams. My dreams involved going to them rather than trying to get them to Vermont.
My favorite morning view.
My husband and I are very enthusiastic travelers. We love nothing more than setting out on adventures together and we were looking forward to taking our now adult children with us. I am a studied packer. I am one of those weirdos who has 225 pins saved on my Pinterest account with ideas on minimalist packing and traveling the world with a small suitcase. When we travel I love to challenge myself to bring as little as possible. I aim to blend in, feel comfortable, and travel light. I love it. I love living out of a suitcase with a neutral wardrobe and a few fab necklaces or scarves for a splash of joyful and chic colors. I do not love managing stuff and the reality is….I’m not good at it. In fact, I am actually really terrible at managing stuff. I may lack the “put it away” gene, and I am a master ostrich who would rather bury her head in the sand than clean out my closet or look under my bed. I am very good at putting things in piles to go upstairs or downstairs. I just really lack the fortitude to actually get those piles up the stairs.
Important words to think about as we went into lockdown. LOVE JOY HEALTH FAMILY FRIENDS PEACE MOTHER EARTH GRATITUDE
In the past year I have not been to any stores to buy clothes. I ordered one pair of fabulous Ugg slippers during the first month of lockdown when we arrived in snowy Vermont, I bought the most fabulous (and unfortunately expensive) Australian organic facial moisturizer, and a couple pairs of sneakers. For the past year my already owned beautiful clothes and shoes have gone unworn and my jewelry has not seen the light of day or left the safety deposit box. Why would I ever need more, when I don’t use what I have?
Little kitchen suppers when we were a small group.
My fabulous fine china collections have sat untouched. Tablecloths hanging in the closet, still in their dry cleaning bags from two years ago. My house felt more like a museum of a previous life, one we all hope to return to.
Chili dinner in the kitchen. Tulips from the Dorset Union Store brighten up the table.
In the meantime, there were certain items in our house that became the wonderfully loved treasures they deserved to be. I restarted my love affair with the kitchen equipment and utensils I had been collecting since my early twenties. We cooked glorious meals 3 times a day. I scoured my vast collection of cookbooks and we signed up for meals that were delivered to our doorstep. Hello Fresh and Marley’s Spoon arrived twice a week filled with ingredients and recipes. We learned how to make totally new meals while avoiding shopping while quarantined. We signed up with a fabulous food co-op that was gathering farm fresh food from our treasured Vermont farmers. We also found dog eared recipes and made long ago favorites. We each once again fell in love with favorite pots, we fought over favorite knives, and we dug out potato peelers, lemon squeezers, cheese graters, egg slicers, and meat thermometers. My egg poaching pan remains a favorite and I’m still waiting for my husband to fulfill a promise he made to bring back the soufflés he wooed me with when we were dating!
After driving from Florida to Vermont we quarantined and didn’t leave our house for fourteen days. Meals delivered to our doorstep helped make that possible.
Northshire Grown food boxes filled with specialities from Vermont Farms became our weekly treat!
We embraced “dressing down.” I said goodbye to “hard pants”; this phrase still makes me laugh hysterically and think of my niece Rachel, who was the first I heard use it. Sweatpants, tee shirt, and the boys’ discarded worn flannel shirts became the staples of my wardrobe. That pair of Ugg slippers became my all time favorite footwear and I wore old sweaters until they had so many holes in them that they were delegated to the precious pile of “nightgown sweaters”. (For those of you who don’t know what nightgown sweaters are…. they are fabulous old cashmere sweaters which are so old and holey yet still so wonderfully comfortable… completely inappropriate for public viewing yet absolutely wonderful over your nightgown.)
We also pulled out the games. We played games by the fire. No TV, just roaring fire, and family laughter, arguments, and smack talk. I loved every minute of it. Our youngest daughter got her fill of this time. We treasured having her and missed our older children dearly.
color sudoku
Frank Lloyd Wright puzzle from the wonderful Northshire Bookstore
There are only two other collections that I remained devoted to and used regularly….our library of books and my needlepoint collection. All of those design books I have been been hoarding over the years became my regular textbooks…as I studied every photo time and time again. I admired, critiqued, and learned from every square inch of each text. My needlepoint was my sanity savior. I have said this numerous times over the past many decades, there is nothing like filling in a flower, an area of background, or finishing one particular color to make you feel like you have accomplished something huge in your day. I needlepointed a great deal during 2020, finishing over 35 projects. It was my meditation and I loved every minute of it.
A belt I painted for my friend Eric Holch. I don’t usually do customs but I couldn’t resist the offer to collaborate with my favorite Nantucket artist! He designed it and I painted it for him.
As we ended a full year of living at home, our suitcases left untouched, our closets full of unworn clothes…this very important year in the history of our planet, as we coped with a global pandemic, things changed for everyone around the world. As families across the globe lost loved ones (including our own family, losing one of our most loved)…we realized we needed less, we needed less square footage to store all the things we never used, we needed less land we never walked upon. For the first time, instead of actively seeking our next adventures outside of the home…we just needed to be home. Home was safe, staying home kept others safe. We were on the team trying to help stop the spread of the virus. We needed less house, less stuff, and maybe that looked a little different than all the visions we had for so long.
A customized needlepoint pillow shows the location in which it was stitched.
So we find ourselves in a new home that checked off new boxes of things we needed and wanted, a couple thousand miles away. We have less rooms, less land, less closets, less storage areas, and less stuff. We sold two homes and the furnishings in them. We had a massive (Covid friendly) estate sale and sold all the treasures we had collected over the years. We brought with us our kitchen equipment, sweatpants, games, books, and needlepoint. There are even a few hard pants around here somewhere, which I am 99% sure I no longer fit into. We brought our favorite art, much of it made by our children. My husband brought his musical instruments and I brought my paints. Only one Ugg slipper made it in the boxes as the other has been buried in the backyard of Starlight Farm by my little furry friend. The remaining slipper will need to be disposed of soon. That’s okay, I am fairly certain I don’t need warm fuzzy slippers here amongst the palm trees.
2021 begins the year of less for us, with less material stuff and less responsibilities for stuff. With less things we don’t need….I am confident there will also be something more. What that will be, we will have to see. I will be sure to let you know!
Traveling in the time of Covid- Summer 2020
I have just arrived in Michigan and am taking an enormous, deep, breathy sigh. I have finally made it to our family summer cottage on the lake after three weeks of extensive zig-zagging cross-country travel. As luck would have it, I arrived on the eve of our eldest child’s 28th birthday, for which I am so grateful. I was delighted to be able to participate in the celebration of our family big brother!
I arrived just in time to see my crew playing lawn Yatzee!
I have found traveling during Covid both extremely stressful (real legitimate and frightening virus concerns) and extremely poignant (deeply important time with adult children). I walked away from this experience thinking every parent and their twenty-something child should do such a drive and spend so much time together talking and talking while on the road. However, I stumbled into this adventure and came to this conclusion after this unique situation presented itself with children number 6 and 7. I highly suspect children 1-5 are hugely relieved they escaped such torture!
This crazy zig-zagging extravaganza was completely unplanned. Each step was an unexpected chapter in the unfolding story of this crazy summer of Covid 2020. It began out of necessity. Our youngest daughter Birdie had transferred into CU Boulder last January after a life changing semester with NOLS in Tanzania - which included hiking across the beautiful African nation, sleeping under the stars (while at times avoiding lions!), living with a homestay family, climbing Kilimanjaro with neither a sherpa nor a guide, and a celebratory trip to Zanzibar with her now forever NOLS pals. Transferring into a winter community in January, living in an isolated dorm, and being sent home again in March due to COVID does not make for solid roots in a new University. It was absolutely not as fun and exciting as her dreamy and magical fall semester. She has been stuck with her parents since March, and like most college kids, she is excited to return to campus. Three weeks ago my youngest and I decided she needed a “do over” and we flew to Boulder to visit the now sunny, warm campus and find housing. Luck would be on our side for not only did she find wonderful housing in a great location, she magically stumbled upon fabulous housemates as well!
After flying earlier in the summer on a nearly empty Delta flight through the extremely empty Albany Airport and a deserted Detroit airport I was optimistic for a similar experience. I was very wrong. While Albany airport remains very vacant, our Southwest flight to Dever was not. Every row had 2 people per side and the stumbling around finding seats - which I usually love, felt exposing. The Denver airport was packed and unnerving. It was not the experience I hoped for or expected.
Upon our return to Vermont we packed up my car and my baby and I headed to Colorado. Two chatty gals in a vehicle for our college student and with a line up of both riveting and timely Audible books, we hit the road. My very accomplished driver gave mom many breaks and I had the time to get in some great needlepointing while listening to and discussing both best selling Untammed by Glennon Doyle and Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (Oprah’s latest riveting book club choice). We travelled state to state discussing many pertinent and timely topics including feminism, life choices, and our heartbreaking and unacceptable race problems in this country. We arrived new women, for sure! The needlepoint project I am working on is a beautiful and modern blue and white geometric design from Lycette in Palm Beach. There are 9 unique blue columns running through the canvas. The drive from Vermont to Colorado includes 9 states, a fortuitous coincidence creating a treasured heirloom to mark this particular time in our family and global history.
My wonderful canvas from Lycette. Pepperpot fibers and small scissors are kept in this fab India Amory bag for easy travel.
During this long drive Birdie and I needed breaks. Huge fans of Drew Barrymore, we searched aisles of Walmarts in Ohio and Iowa for products Drew was recommending and demonstrating on her Instagram account in celebration of Beauty Week. Drew has been a fabulous breath of fresh air for us during the pandemic with great blog posts, interesting IGTV videos, and fun little video posts. Her unsolicited demonstrations of her favorite face wash and Crest whitening toothpaste are darling, hilarious, and so humble. I laughed when she said Crest might want her to stop talking about their products! As if! These videos piqued our curiosity and started us on a hilarious beauty product hunt during our breaks from hours and hours of driving. We added a search for our favorite lip glosses to our road trip entertainment. I discovered two I am particularly fond of, they are Lancôme’s Juicy Tube in Magic Spell (found at Ulta) and Drew’s Flower -Petal Pout in Sangria (found at King Soopers in Fort Collins, Co.)
The hunt for the best lip gloss entertained us during driving breaks. My two favorites are from Lancomê and Flower!
The second drive to Colorado was also completely unplanned. While in the midst of Colorado Drive 1.0, I decided to tackle Colorado Drive 2.0.. Youngest son Scotty decided wisely to join his siblings and move to Colorado. His crazy mother hatched a plan to make this happen. My father used to call me Patton when I was a young mother moving 5 small children back and forth between Houston where we lived, and his home in Bronxville. My dearest Daddy had driven an ambulance in WWII under Patton and he meant this knickname as the highest and funniest compliment. He would say to me “You can move an an army like nobody’s business.” Ha! Well this time, I did it on steroids. I wish he was here to see it and laugh with me. This was not the act of a high achieving dedicated mother! Hell no! This was the act of a desperate frazzled gray-haired gal during a global fucking pandemic! ! I was a woman on a mission. On a mission to GO ON VACATION!! My wonderfully darling and romantic husband and I had planned a vacation to his family cottage on Lake Michigan. I wanted to sit on the deck overlooking this gorgeous Great Lake, needlepoint, drink wine and eat white fish dip from Leland for God’s sake. I was on a time table to get these kids out of my hair! (And they were determined to get away from me!! Their tolerance for quarantining with the grey haired boring parents had long expired.) I say this in jest, but damn it, the two trips were really magical! At least for me!
And thus began “Tricia’s moving company, the one that is running on pure crazy” chapter of The Summer of 2020. I flew home on another crowded plane through a crowded airport (YUCK!). Rented a minivan, drove to Vermont, did one load of laundry and repacked my suitcase, fell fast asleep, and got up the next morning to a packed minivan and hit the road again for my second drive to Colorado in 7 days. I had our barely 23 year old son, his 22 year old fiancé and their gorgeous Dr Suess-like pup Otis. While my first drive included a cooler and an expert sandwich maker by my side, this trip was fueled on gas station food, particularly candy and Diet Coke. While I will be detoxing for months from the chemicals and sugar I ingested, my heart will be full forever from the three days I had my son in the co-pilot seat. There were no books on tape or music on this trip. This will forever be known as “Mother and son do not shut up for one fricking second for three days.” (As I type this I think of my older children reading this thinking “Holy Hell!! Thank God I was not trapped in a car with mom for three days!”) Scotty’s fiancé Miranda somehow survived this blabber mouthing and at one point played a couple true crime podcasts for us.
Otis the beautiful Dr Suess like rescue waits patiently in the front seat for his parents’ to return at the rest stop.
Two child school enrollments were completed, housing was both secured and outfitted, and a few fabulous dinners were had with my gang. This whole experience filled my heart. Target has all my money. My two youngest children live half a mile apart. Two wonderful brothers are in close proximity and mama got out of dodge. It was all so damn good!
My final departure from Denver airport was complete. My wonderful spaced out seat on United was a pleasure and I made it safely to Traverse City. It is here, in a cottage built by my mother and father-in-law in the early 60s that I begin my quarantine for the umpteenth time. The turquoise waves are rolling rapidly and loudly towards the beach. The wind is blowing and I sigh. 12 days more days of quarantining until I feel like this trip was truly a success.
I’d like to share with you some non-factual and purely opinionated travel tips I have.
Some airports are deserted and feel super safe. Some airports are crowded as hell and you have to ride jammed in windowless trains to your gate. Some security lines are empty and some are like Studio 54 and have you winding through paths of people with everyone well within 6 feet of you on every side.
Some travelers are very cautious and avoid you like the plague, literally. Some do not believe in science and boundaries or covering their mouths when they cough. It’s like Lord of the Flies meets Darwinism. You try to keep yourself safe amongst people who don’t believe there is a virus. (insert eye roll.)
Some states have mask requirements. In some states you will not see a mask at all. (We found the later to be shocking and unnerving.) It’s worth doing research on state mandates if you care about this stuff before you travel.
Most restaurants in highway rest stops are closed. A cooler full of great bread and cold cuts is a dream during road travel. A creative sandwich maker like my girl Birdie will make you realize sandwiches with Thousand Island dressing and pickles really are THAT good!
We found the roadways to be rather quiet, hotels to be at minimum capacity, and precautions like no daily housekeeping comforting. With the exception of one state, all hotel workers were in masks, behind screens, wearing gloves, and really welcoming to weary travelers. A special shoutout to the Hotel Boulderado which made me feel particularly safe on all three trips to Boulder!
Outdoor dining is great. Outdoor dining where mask-less people walk by close to the table on the sidewalks, not so great. Try to choose tables that don’t border the walkways.
Many of the shops and restaurants in some airports are closed. Airlines are not serving their normal fare. Bring snacks and other comforts and entertainment with you.
Over all, I am personally more comfortable with road over air travel at the moment. I have been in 3 empty airports. I have also been in a very busy airport 3 times.
If you find yourself needing a rental car bring a variety of chargers and a phone holder that pops into the fan vents. I have found myself numerous times without CarPlay in rental cars, only cigarette lighter charger outlet, and phones with maps falling on the floor while trying to drive. I found what I needed in gas stations along the way and it made my driving long distances so much more simple.
Best wishes to your own families as you navigate the new normal!
Looking forward to a few days doing this, and doing it right here next to this beautiful lake..