As May began, the boyfriend and I had just returned from a road trip to Atlanta where he was doing some teaching and I was doing some visiting with friends and remote working (is that a think when you have had a home office for over 25 years?).  On the way back, we stopped at Dancing Bear Lodge in the Smoky Mountains, using up a credit from a pandemic-cancelled trip – beautiful scenery, great on-site restaurant, iffy weather.  We also realized that we are less “nestled in the woods” people and more “wide-open vista” people.

A couple of weeks later, over in the Kate McEnroe Consulting side of my life, I had an opportunity to speak to a conference of women in econoic development in Austin, Texas in mid May.  It’s spring, we have a car now, flying in a pain in the but and unreliable, and this is a season of our live when we are experimenting with pushing at all of the voices that say we have to be in a hurry, so we decided to make a road trip of it.

We settled on a slow roll, staying in Cape Girardeau and Texarkana on the way down.  In Cape Girardeau, the Courtyard Marriott is tucked in to a few blocks of charmingly restored downtown, located in an old bank building with great architectural details.  In Texarkana, Ed has a great time smoking a cigar and drinking Walgreens wine out on the patio next to the interstate.

Austin was delightful – got to have dinner with friends I’ve known forever and haven’t seen in just about as long.

On the way back, first night was in Arkadelphia, but the treat was the next couple of nights in Paducah (see the Paperpalooza post).

It has felt like spring was a long time coming this year, but let me tell you, this route it was new green growth, bright yellow fields, and generally beautiful scenery the whole way – glad we didn’t hurry through it.