Our trip out west in January 2021
We left our Ithaca bubble on January 21, 2021 (a palindrome date!) in a blue rental car, i dubbed “the blue bubble”. We were blessed with perfect weather the whole way out, and very smooth travels. It was such a relief to get off the main highways, away from the trucks! At times we were the only car around…the beginning of the feeling of “smallness” that this western landscape does to me – which i consider to be a good thing.
The first two days of our trip, the most stressful thing was finding a place to use a bathroom! There were so many unmasked people in the gas stations, it felt perilous to enter, and using the “side of the road” just wasn’t possible some times. We would pause outside a gas station/rest stop and watch folks go in and out to get a feel for the safety practices there, then make our decision to enter or not. Looking back i realize this was such an entrance into the outside of the Ithaca Circle……..where i have become fairly comfortable in other’s COVID safety practices. Yesterday, I listened to this NPR recording about how our black/brown friends feel when they go hiking, and had a good dose of Feeling My Privilege. The unsafe feeling while on the road was something that many of our fellow earth passengers feel on a daily basis……*sigh*……
https://www.lakeshorepublicradio.org/post/hiking-while-black#stream/0
OK, now for some pictures! Not sure where some of these photos were shot, but i noted when i remembered!
So Green, so Wet, must be in Washington!
