When you live in a rural area sometimes the every day amenities that city folk enjoy are few and far between. For instance, the nearest mall is about an hour away, same for movie theaters and sometimes it's just not worth blowing the whole day to get there and back. One thing we do have an abundance of though is wide open spaces.
Boredom began to creep in yesterday and although there was plenty to do inside and on my desk, I couldn't find the will power to dive into those tasks. Shopping isn't one of my favorite activities so that didn't appeal to me. I didn't really need anything other than groceries and grocery shopping is a chore, not something to do just for fun. Going to the movies and sitting in a dark theater didn't interest me and besides that route would have taken me by the grocery store and I was determined not to go there.
This was a beautiful early fall Sunday and an idea popped into my head that hadn't been there for a long time, let's take a road trip! My husband must have been equally bored because I didn't get the eye roll. He takes the day of rest quite seriously, but since his beloved NASCAR race was on the night before he was up for the journey.
A road trip does not have to be a cross country jaunt. It can be as simple as not getting further than a six mile radius from home and being in the middle of farm country, there's lots of country roads in that radius. Mother was the queen of Sunday afternoon road trips. She would load up her friends in her little blue station wagon and off they would go. She always had her cell phone with her in case of an emergency, even though she didn't know how to turn it on, but she always managed to make it back home. Once she came back with the bumpers full of tall grass and swore she had never been off the road.
We set out in a south easterly direction, winding through fields of ready to harvest and harvested corn and soybeans and ended up on the edge of our county's very own wildlife preserve. No government shutdown there so in we went. The road now was nothing more than grass smashed down where a previous vehicle had made a path, probably the one Mother had been on, but we bounced along anyway. We went through a huge field of dried sunflowers and made a mental note to see them next year when they would be in full bloom.
When our grass road ended at a fallen tree we retraced our path and encountered a couple of hunters on the way out. Roaming through the wildlife preserve during deer season maybe wasn't such a good idea, but it was the middle of the afternoon and the deer usually move in the early morning hours. I figured the deer were all resting, telling stories about their own close encounters and making jokes about all the camouflage gear and bright orange vests that nobody thinks they can see.
We continued on until we came to a friends house and decided to pay them a visit. They have one of those foam deer used for target practice in their yard and it was riddled with arrows. Since they weren't home, I rearranged the arrows and we left their deer looking like a turkey with its tail feathers spread, laughing like kids who had pulled off quite a caper.
We happened on to one of our farmer friends, who was just coming in from the fields, and enjoyed his company along with the scenic view of waterfowl on his pond. Then it was time to head home.
Our road trip had taken no more than a couple of hours, but it was if we had been on a mini vacation and somehow the gas gauge showed more fuel in the tank than when we had left. I chalked that up to divine intervention, we were supposed to take that trip.
There are lots of things to see in this world and we have probably all dreamed of living or traveling to some far away exotic place. I heard a wise man once say, "grow where you are planted" and I think there is a lot of truth in that, but don't forget to appreciate and 'see' where you are planted too.
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