Road Trips

Yesterday was the first official day of spring, according to the calendar. The weather where I live was warm, with bits of sunshine coming through. A beautiful day. In this part of the world, we could have been looking at a raging blizzard and thirty below weather (and we may still have to face that). I headed out with Brother 4 and his woman for a drive. I think many people wouldn't call a one day drive of a couple hundred kilometres a 'road trip', but we do call them that. A day on the road, looking for whatever we might find, mini-adventures in a few short hours. We didn't go anywhere different, instead we drove to places we've been before.

Three things about yesterday's road trip:

-small town second hand stores are always interesting. I wonder how they stay in business?

-there is a feeling of sadness and some kind of longing seeing small towns that used to be bustling and busy sitting almost empty. Kind of like ghost towns, but with a few hardy people there who refuse to leave for a bigger and busier centre. How can most businesses be closed on a Saturday afternoon?

-the town where my Mom grew up is getting smaller, with less and less to offer in residents in the way of amenities of any sort. There are no stores left, no hotel, and the gas station looked closed. We saw four cars in front of the town hall, but not one person on the streeets or in their yards. This was a busy town and is now an empty shell.

I wonder where the next road trip will take me, and what emotions I'll have to sort through at the end of the day?