Homesick during our vacation

Radio cranked, the family truckster humming along at 110 while the high Nevada desert passes by in a blur, I was suddenly struck by a wave of homesickness. I sure miss Montana.

Plastic grocery bags caught in the sagebrush, snapping in the wind next to the road, reminded me of home.

A week in southern California had been more than enough.

The food, always a prime motivator of our travel, was as good as it had been two years ago when we visited SoCal just before the pandemic hit. After five days though, Barb announced she’d had her fill of her favorite cuisine, Mexican. The next day she told me she’d had enough shrimp, and I knew it was time to go home.

I’d had my fill days earlier, shortly after we arrived. Not of the food, however, which I had been looking forward to for weeks, but of the traffic, the crowds, the noise.

I hadn’t said anything. I know it does me good to get out every now and then, see how other people live. We’ve certainly traveled further before, but SoCal is about as far from Malta, Mt. on the political spectrum as we could find.

Besides, it’s warm, and they have great zoos.

On the way down we had stopped for a night in Las Vegas, tempering ourselves for the weirdness of California. Barb played the slots while I took a walk down the Strip. She broke even. I reveled in the latest fashion trends, which apparently include see-through tights.

We’ve vacationed before where ours were the only white faces in a sea of color. Palm Springs offers a different type of diversity. The LGBTQ community is celebrated there like nowhere else we have been. Rainbow flags fly from most storefronts. Even the crosswalks are painted in the colors of the rainbow. Same-sex couples stroll hand in hand down the sidewalks.

More importantly, folks there seem to be happy. I heard no argumentative political discourse, nor did I see any stop this or stop that bumper stickers. No one seemed to be on the fight.

A calming peace often seems to accompany tolerance.

All that, however, doesn’t mean I wasn’t anxious to get home, back to what’s familiar to me; country and people I love.

So we piled into the truckster a day early, pointed her north, and soon found ourselves sailing through the high desert at 110, anxious to get home to Montana.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]