West! Part One – Events Make For an Emotional Start
First – a quick chat about the trip plans. Our itinerary was bound by a few rules: (1) we needed to get our two Boy Scouts to their trailhead in northern New Mexico by Thursday, June 30; (2) I needed to work 3-4 days of each week we were gone; (3) I wanted to make it to San Diego to see my brother and his girlfriend; (4) we needed to use hotel points for free accommodation wherever possible; and (5) we needed to be back at the Boy Scout trailhead by Tuesday, July 12 to pick them up. With that in mind, the Prof built our itineraries for between the trailhead and home, then I made all plans with the little boys from June 30-July 12. The Prof is normally our vacation planner – he has more patience for it – but I had fun taking over this time. Below is our itinerary, which we didn’t have to change much along the way.
| Date | Plans |
| 6/26/2022 | Drive home to Fort Worth (10 hours) |
| 6/27/2022 | In Fort Worth |
| 6/28/2022 | Drive Fort Worth to Taos (8.5 hours) |
| 6/29/2022 | In Taos |
| 6/30/2022 | Drive Taos to Philmont (1.5 hours), then Philmont to Moab (8 hours) |
| 7/1/2022 | Arches |
| 7/2/2022 | Canyonlands, then drive to Sedona via Monument Valley (6 hours) |
| 7/3/2022 | Slide Rock State Park |
| 7/4/2022 | Walnut Canyon, then drive to Scottsdale (2 hours) |
| 7/5/2022 | Work in hotel – kids pool |
| 7/6/2022 | Work in hotel – kids pool |
| 7/7/2022 | Work in hotel, then drive to Anaheim (5.5 hours) |
| 7/8/2022 | Disneyland |
| 7/9/2022 | Drive Anaheim to San Diego (2 hours), day in San Diego |
| 7/10/2022 | San Diego, then drive to Vegas (4.5 hours) |
| 7/11/2022 | Drive Vegas to Santa Fe (9 hours) |
| 7/12/2022 | Drive Santa Fe to Philmont to get campers, then back (2.5 hours each way) |
| 7/13/2022 | Santa Fe |
| 7/14/2022 | Drive Santa Fe to Quartz Mt, Oklahoma (6 hours) |
| 7/15/2022 | Drive Oklahoma to Home (11 hours) |
Second – because I wrote a lot of this as we went, it’s in the present tense. I started to change it and that was just taking forever – so as you read these, pretend you are going back in time with me. So if I say something happened “yesterday,” I mean the day before in the timeline of the story, NOT the day before this day the thing is being posted. If I say “I still cough at night from covid,” that’s then, not now, got it?
Third – this first day post is a bit of a bummer. It will get happier, I promise.
Day One – June 26, 2022 – Home to Fort Worth
We load the car and take off a little after 9 a.m, heading for Fort Worth, a way station on the road to Taos. With all of my bags and buckets and cases, plus our two Boy Scouts’ backpacking accoutrements, this sleigh is FULL. In terms of our diet, I begin as we mean to go on – we have packed lunches, Bubly and La Croix instead of soda, healthy trail mix and sliced cucumbers and carrot sticks. I just don’t feel well when I eat drive-thru meals with any regularity, and I want to feel good on this trip. So we load up insulated cups filled with ice water, a cooler of yogurts, sandwiches and vegetable crudites, and off we drive on our long-anticipated trip. We head West, the morning sun behind us. Crossing the Mississippi River on a bridge in Baton Rouge, it is so industrial and ugly – I cannot wait to get into a national park. Liam and Craig are playing a video game together on the Switch behind me – Jack is listening to TikToks on his phone. I have a lot of time to think.
Even with my happiness about our trip, it’s an odd and unsettling time. Roe v. Wade was just overturned two days ago, and now I live in a state where abortion is illegal without exception, unless the mother’s life is in imminent danger. It’s hard to describe just how vulnerable I feel – old as I am, I am still capable of pregnancy for a few years yet. I had a baby here, and the medical care I received was already sub-par (thank God I didn’t need much). It’s going to get much worse, as doctors decide rightly to leave for a state where their basic practice of medicine doesn’t put them at risk of criminal monetary penalties and jail time, not to mention loss of license. When I saw the Dobbs opinion come out – even though I knew it was coming – I was struck by how I was still in my same chair, in the same place, and suddenly (because of Louisiana’s trigger law), I had lost a major right of liberty and privacy and bodily autonomy.
Meanwhile, we all got covid in mid-June, and are just coming out of covid quarantine a day or two before our trip.
Ruh-roh
I still cannot smell and am afraid it won’t come back, and I am grappling the surprising emotions surrounding that and a lingering irritating dry cough that keeps me up at night. Though I am largely recovered, even now if I do too much physical or mental work (like move through a load of laundry, or solve a difficult puzzle at work, or decide how best to pack creatively for a 21 day trip), I get dizzy and need to lie down. While our infection could not have come at a better time – just in time to exit quarantine before our trip, and putting us at maximum immunity right as we were going to mingle with strangers all over the country – I am still a little weakened by my experience. And the smell thing. For real. I am so anxious about it.
And in a much more personal and tender update, two days before our trip, the same day as Roe v. Wade was overturned, Virgil took his last breath on a fluffy blue blanket on our living room floor, while Liam wept and Craig babbled nervously and Jack sobbed upstairs, unable to stay.
It was an honor and also torture for the Prof and me to be there with him through it. It took some time, because his little corgi legs were deformed through his deterioration in the last few months, and did not give the vets much runway to insert an IV. There were several failed attempts. He was nervous at the beginning, but eventually relaxed with the sedation, and we were able to pet him and whisper sweetly while he loudly snored and the vets did what they needed to do, as tenderly and kindly as possible. When he was finally still, I spread my two hands on his still-warm side and thanked him for all he’d done for our family. Liam wiped his nose and left to be alone for a bit, Jack came down to say his good-byes, and Craig finally stopped talking incessantly and burst into tears. The vets hugged us, then gathered him up in the blanket and tenderly carried his body away to be cremated. I will be thinking about that hour on our floor with Virgil and the boys and the vets for some time. It will take a while for it to fit in my mind.
So. Here we are. On our trip. I can’t believe it’s here. We’ve been anticipating and planning for so long. And it comes at this weird, awful time in the country’s history. Dobbs came out, I was still processing it, and yet – Virgil’s appointment was that afternoon, already delayed a couple of weeks because of our covid infection. This trip was planned and on the calendar – and it’s a big deal, a big event in our family history. I need to enjoy it. I need to take care of our dog. I need to make sure my plants are watered, the lizard fed while we’re gone. I need the boys to feel safe, even as I feel less and less safe in my own country. I need to be present and enjoy these moments. I gulp deep breaths of air, as the countryside goes by me.
* * *
It is now late in the evening, and we pull up at the Lake Worth TownePlace Suites. We were going to drive downtown and have dinner at a taco place lauded by Lag Liv (who has just moved away from Forth Worth after years here!), but ultimately we are too tired of the car and it is a long drive away, so we head to Spring Creek Barbecue instead. It is so good – the boys load up on rolls and turkey and brisket, we share a banana pudding. Prof and I “cheers” a couple bottles of Shiner Bock. Then we head to bed – all five of us in one room. Tomorrow, I will work in the hotel while the Prof takes the boys to the stockyard to watch the cattle drive.
