The best trip of your life

Pasque flowers finally bloomed, a month late

one of the two service berry trees. Lots of blossoms all over the place

a seed bead flower

birthday flowers from a good friend

fascinating story

kisses from big sister Allie

My friend came over the other night armed with maps and a guidebook to 'the best trip of our lives' as one of the maps was entitled. We worked well into the night to space out our stops which are surprisingly fewer as we get closer to Washington DC. One night we will have to ferry across the Potomac to stay in Leesburg, VA.. We will hit 5 states: PA,MD,WV, VA and DC on our 340 mile trip, most of it unpaved though I found a paved railtrail, the Western Maryland Bikeway that will give us 22 miles of paved relief running parallel to the C&O canal towpath. We will take the 8 hour train back to Pittsburgh which allows bikes depositing us in Downtown Pittsburgh at midnight.. We will go by lots of Civil war battle fields and will stay in Harper's Ferry one night where John Brown did his thing. This area of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia will be new territory for me.

In grade school, we had to make a report on a Civil War battle. I was given Antietam which I mispronounced throughout my presentation. I had never heard it said. In our former neighborhood, the streets were named after a mixture of Revolutionary and Civil War battles including Antietam so at least the kids in our neighborhood would not mispronounce it.

Meanwhile I am way behind my bike riding as compared to last year no thanks to March being winter, bike repairs and our vacation. I tried to make up for it this weekend getting a very late start yesterday due to my house guest. By noon, it was sunny and warm and surprisingly calm but my usually deserted roads were crawling with cars. Not relaxing so I turned off to the dirt roads which fortunately, despite all the rains, weren't too bad. Plus I better get used to them. Saw lots of hawks.

It is finally pretty out with all the flowering trees. The developer of our neighborhood favored lots of Brantford pears on every lot though the one we had was blown down before we bought the house. We did drive by our old house the other day. The quince hedge was bright red and the forsythias were out. They haven't added anything new.