I love back roads! This penchant usually drives my passengers crazy. So when going on one of my discovery drives it is usually solo.
Houston is where I call home for the 23 years with one small stint in Seattle. It was not long after arrival the realization hit about this large city, most all of the suburban housewives and husbands knew little or nothing about getting around! Houston is spread out with major highways, byways, etc looking like a wagon wheel with Downtown being the hub. Not long ago when asked about Houston, an intern where I worked answered, “It is just a slab of cement.”
But it is NOT! Oh sure, if you stay on the major highways it seems all cement, car dealerships and malls. Yet just a few 100 feet from all that you will alternately run into subdivisions of housing, golf courses, trailer parks, arboretums, acres of pasture with cows and/or horses next to ritzy hotels and high dollar living abodes, streams and shopping centers. If the interstate is jammed I take back roads all about this city. I have been called ‘daring’ but I rather think of it as ‘adventurous’!
Then there are the trips away from the city. If time is an issue, I take the highways. Even then, given a few minutes of spare time will find this adventurer pulling into towns a scant 5 miles off the cement/asphalt slabs for lunch or breaks. This has habit has had lucky finds such as festivals at churches, fund raisers serving local cooked food and once a local parade complete with red wagons decorated, children within waving flags and parent pulling! Of course the local horse patrol came last. Even without such lucky finds the local fooderies can be alternately fantabulous or give one sever digestive distress. Either way, it is all in the adventure!
Lately the roads taken both by car or backseat on my friend’s motorcycle when traveling are back roads! The air is not stifling as the trees line the roads, bogs hosting wildlife, sniffles from pollens, a stop to feel the soil, look at local grasses and even at time pick a few seeds from wildflowers which brings on other adventures in gardening, but that is a story for another time! The new hobby of Geocaching helps as well. The task of the find forces someone out of their car and to be aware of their surroundings. Hence, my car now always has plastic bags for trash pickup, cotton gloves, a flashlight and soon will host a utility knife to assist in this hobby.
I encourage everyone to take the adventure of rolling down your windows, turn off the radio, use your senses to feel an area. Adventure is not synonymous with the word danger. Travel to enjoy the trip! As the plaque on my headboard says:
The journey is the destination!
