Figuring it out…Lots of stops in the next few months…

This morning, I have been busy making a dish to last through the next three dinners since we’re going out to dinner on Friday night. It’s a low-carb recipe: Mushroom Burger Scramble, made with grass-fed ground beef. It’s a favorite of ours, and we enjoy it every few months.

As a result of preparing this meal, I haven’t had a chance to walk today or do my regular yoga exercises yet. All of the ingredients are already in the baking pan in the refrigerator and ready to be baked in the oven for 40 minutes before dinner. The green salad is made, and we’ll have a little leftover chicken salad on the side. It will be a delicious dinner.

Also, this morning, we figured out when to get to Los Angeles to spend three days with my sister, Julie. We’ve yet to book a hotel for May 17 through May 20. Julie and my cousin Gayle are working on setting up a family reunion with all of our cousins who live in California. I haven’t seen most of them in 55 to 60 years.

I am the matriarch of the family, the oldest living relative on my mother’s side of the family. What a weird thought that is…me, as the oldest person in the family! It will be wonderful to see all of them and catch up after 50+ years. It will bring back a lot of memories of my childhood in California. Of course, I’ll take photos and post them.

We’ll travel to see family in many states, including Arizona, California, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and then off to Illinois to fly out of Chicago to South Africa. It’s a lot of driving, but we’ll be able to see everyone. This will be the first time we’ve ever done this long route. We’ll be driving across the country for the first time in our travels.

Once we leave California, we’ll stop in Utah for lunch or dinner with our friends Marylin and Gary, whom we met in Marloth Park (long-term readers who became such good friends). We’ll visit family and friends in seven states in the US, plus all the states we’ll drive through on our long journey.

Neither of us cares for long road trips, but driving this time makes sense. The amount we’ll save on flights and baggage will more than compensate for the hotels and meals along the way. For us, without a home, staying in hotels on our way is no big deal since we have to pay for each night anyway. We won’t book hotels for the long drive to South Dakota before heading to Minnesota.

When we reach a town with a WiFi signal, we can decide where to spend that night and book one daily. This way we’ll have a better idea of what town where we’ll be booking the hotels. We most likely will spend eight or nine hours each day driving, stopping periodically to get out, walk around, and use restrooms.

We’re enthused about this trip and looking forward to seeing everyone along the way. We’ll be able to do short posts with photos along the way. Usually, when traveling on major highways, there are few photo ops, but perhaps in some of the small towns, we’ll find points of interest worthy of taking photos.

That’s it for today. We hope you have a terrific Tuesday, and enjoy whatever you may do.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, March 19. 2014: