Mom and I took advantage of my three day Easter weekend vacation from work to head to Shenandoah National Park.  It was partly a practice trip for a possible upcoming road trip I want to take to give Mom the chance to do one last visit with some family and partly just to get us out of the city.  I was hoping for a little more springtime!

It was interesting to see Mom respond to being in a beautiful setting.  She commented on so many of the flowering trees, views, and a rather spectacular sunset on Saturday night but the highlight of the trip was absolutely seeing deer up close on the road.  Mom was delighted by every deer that we passed and talked about those moments a lot later.   I was able to snap a few photos too – one of which is below- so that we can look at them and try to remember the trip later.

 

The most stressful moment of the weekend came when we woke up in our hotel room on Sunday morning and Mom turned to me to ask, “where are we?”  Upon waking up she had no memory of driving up to the park which must have been incredibly disorienting.  We talked over breakfast then and I was able to gradually remind her of several of the highlights from the day before.   Overall, she had a lot of questions and commentary about everything that we saw and appeared happier than I have seen her recently.

I couldn’t help but think that the change of scenery had her a bit more stimulated than usual, in a very good way.  If nature trips are going to bring both of us so much satisfaction, then I see a  few more outings in our future.