Road Trip!

I am RIGHT in the middle of my road trip!! I drove all by myself across the country from So. California to North Carolina for my mom's 90th birthday 🎂 I spent a week with Mom and my daughter Chrissy (who flew in rather than drive).

I did something really special for my mom's birthday: I come from a family of dedicated readers, and I'm the proud keeper of two beloved family treasures. One is my mom's from her teenage years, while the other belonged to my grandmother before being gifted to her as a Christmas present from my daughter when she was sixteen—according to the book plate still tucked inside the front cover. These gems are Dear Guest and Ghost, a friendly family ghost story set in Staten Island, and The Little Hunchback Horse (or Konyok Gorboonyak), a charming old Russian fairy tale. Both books are not only out of print, but their copyrights (from 1942 and 1950, respectively) have long since expired and were never renewed—I checked conscientiously! This means they've entered the public domain.

So I embarked on what became a massive labor of love: scanning them page by page, then painstakingly editing and formatting the text when the scans inevitably mangled words and sentences. I formatted them for both ebook and print, carefully preserving the original illustrations from The Little Hunchback Horse. I could hardly wait to surprise Mom with them. I knew she hasn't read these stories in at least fifty years, and when she opened them, there absolutely were tears, sniffles, and lots of hugs involved!

As a sad afternote, shortly after our visit, my mom went downhill very fast, and passed away in January 2026. But in those last weeks, my brother and sister-in-law sat beside her bed and read to her from these two old favorites.

...back to the Road Trip!

As I write this, I've headed north with Chrissy to spend a week in the Hudson Valley... that's right, where my Magic of Wishes & Dreams stories are set! I'm so excited about this, and I absolutely plan to go to the cannonball factory, plus just drive around. We arrived last night, and are staying in a charming colonial style motel overlooking the Hudson River. We could hear train whistles all night... so cool! It's 7:30 am right now, and I got kicked out of the room because I woke up early and wanted to get on the laptop and Chrissy was still sleeping in <snickers> So I'm sitting in the lobby, with a cup of hot cocoa from their grab-n-go breakfast area, writing all this up.

It's great timing to see the fall colors, although it's still a bit early in the season for that, but there's still some colors to be seen. Today we'll drive around looking for Troy's farm, and the Country Vet Clinic, and the West Side Inn <snickers> as well as whatever we spot that inspires me for the Magic of Wishes & Dreams series. Over the weekend we plan to take a tour at the oldest vineyard in the US, and take the train for a day trip to NY and do some sightseeing, with an open-top bus tour, a carriage ride in Central Park, etc. We also went to Sleepy Hollow (because, of course we did!) since my daughter is a weirdo who adores anything Halloween!

Yes! There really IS a Headless Horseman Bridge!

Monday Chrissy flies back to California, and I'll head west to St Louis for a 3-day mini writing retreat at a lodge (with all meals inclusive!!). And my room will have a lovely balcony overlooking the Lake of the Ozarks, where I plan to sit and write, hopefully inspired by my scenic tour of the Hudson Valley!

The view from my balcony at Trout Lodge

Afterwards... if I'm not dead by then... it's on to Las Vegas for 4 days, just because I've never been, which is a shameful thing for a southern Californian 🤣 I neither drink or gamble (which pretty much is why I've never gone), but I really would like to see what it's all about. I'm planning to take an open bus tour, a helicopter tour, see a couple of shows. I really wanted to bungee jump off the Strat, but they said it's not good for people with bad backs, so darn it, I have to cross it off my bucket list 😭

At a truck stop owned by folks from India (there was a food truck with the most amaaazing samosas and garlic naan bread in the parking lot!), they had a cool display of... OMG! Genie lamps! Is that serendipity, or what?

I got this adorable travel-size jewelry box to take with me... customized just for my trip, as you can see! Okay so that's kinda silly, I know, but hey! You gotta enjoy the small things in life too, not just wait for the big things, right?