Tuesday, October 18, 2022
(written by Kathi)
Today we were up at 7:30 and spent the morning journaling and listening to music. Lori always brings her Alexa and we take turns asking for music genres. This morning the choices were Motown, 1960s music, 1980s R&B, and Cat Stevens. We clearly seek variety in our listening! Breakfast was yogurt, granola, and fruit—we ran out of eggs and it’s too late in the week to buy more because we won’t be able to eat them all before we leave. After a while we started the “ok, time to get ready” routine of showering, dressing, and making lunch. Megan, our new friend, arrived before noon and parked in our driveway. She joined us in our car, and we were off on today’s adventure.
It’s Maryland day! At first we thought we would go to Baltimore for the day, but we decided not to deal with any traffic, and we knew we would spend hours and hours there. As we age, we have definitely had to acknowledge that spending a 10- or 12-hour day out and about constantly moving means that my ankle and Lori’s knee will be very angry the next day. So, we decided to rethink our plan. We always enjoy gardens (and you can usually sit down somewhere and take a break in them when you get tired, and Lori had found what appeared to be an interesting spot—Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton, Maryland.
I was driving and Lori was navigating. Megan was in the back seat. Lori and I had a great time grilling Megan about her life as a dresser on Broadway, and also about her many travels. We learned that Megan, who is also trying to get to all fifty states, has a wee bit different outlook than we do on what criteria is required to cross off a state. Lori and I will call a state done as long as we spend a good number of hours . . . say, five or more.. . . in it experiencing something unique to that state. Like driving through beautiful countryside to spend a few hours in a topiary garden, you know, something like that. However, Megan—who is apparently a severely overachieving millennial—does not cross a state off her list until she has done or seen everything in it that appeals to her. Yikes! And when we thought about how she was a rock star in the Escape Room last night, we definitely could have felt inferior. Instead, we’re just happy there are people with that much energy and drive left in the world. It gives us hope! Go, Megan! Meanwhile, we are definitely crossing off Maryland today.
The drive was supposed to be less than 90 minutes, but a series of events conspired to add a bit of extra time. First of all, we were talking a mile a minute as soon as we set off. Siri got ignored a couple of times, turns were missed, and she had to reroute. This happened more than once; I would even say it happened a few times. When we missed some direction or another, we never turned around to go back, we just let Siri do some rerouting. It’s a great feeling to not have to rush to be somewhere, and just go with the flow. This strategy, combined with deciding to stop at a gas station to go to the bathroom and get some snacks and drinks, resulted in adding slightly over an hour to our drive.
We weren’t worried about any of these things, because Lori had informed us the gardens were open until 9:00 pm (we figured they must be really well lit or something.) We did not arrive at Ladew until 2:30 pm. No matter, we had all kinds of time. So, we got out of the car and were walking up to buy our tickets when we saw the sign that said the gardens would close at 4:00 pm. And it was a permanent sign, it wasn’t like there was a wedding or something and they had to close early. Poor Lori was so confused. She was positive the website said 9:00. God clearly wanted us to have that great time in the car, and we weren’t supposed to have a lot of time to enjoy the topiary. This was proven when, after we had found a beautiful little area with some benches where we ate our lunch, the sun went away for good, and the day turned very chilly.
We very much enjoyed exploring the gardens; there were still many flowers in bloom and there were some wonderfully fun topiary art pieces. As we walked around we saw so many clever bush carvings of animals, people, and geometric shape groupings. The gardens also had beautiful mature trees, fountains, and a quaint little wooden tea house the owner had brought back from London (not a miniature, a full sized tea house. Think large backyard shed sized.) By 4:00 we were downright cold and could not have stayed outside another minute. We gratefully piled back into the car and headed home . . . directly home this time, not the circuitous route.
Back at our Airbnb we bid Megan goodbye and safe travels (she had to drive back to NYC the next day) and went inside. I cooked dinner (chicken breasts, carrots, and more couscous) and we ate while watching some TV. Oops! We forgot to toss the states tonight. Actually, the real story is that since Lori fell asleep on the sofa and then got up only long enough to stagger off to bed, there was not really an opportunity to toss them. We’ll just do it tomorrow morning.
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