I should have known better than to promise a report on a road trip, especially when it consisted mostly of I-5 and exits like this one, with Nothing on either side of the road.

Road 27: No one wanted to bother thinking up a name for these exits off I-5?

Don’t get me wrong — I loved traveling with the expert road tripper, Ann Parker, who knows all the nice, clean rest areas, and how to get to the Olive Pit where the shelves are filled with the best in olives, oils, nuts, and jams. It was the long stretches between the Olive Pit and the Safeway gas pump, that had nothing to hold my attention. Good thing we never lacked for great conversation and fine snacks.

Now and then, there would be a single house, far off the road, nothing but dried grass and hills around it. I wondered who lived there. A family? How far was it to the nearest school? church? doctor? Starbucks? Maybe a single cowboy lived there, or a female rancher. (Is it ranchers who take care of cows? I saw a few cows here and there.) Maybe an old couple were running a tulip farm that I couldn’t see.

I was nearly 40 the first time I lived in a single, unattached house, and over 50 when I first owned one. There’s something comforting about hearing neighbors next to me, above me, a stone’s throw away.

I’d never make it in the land of rom-coms when the career woman in a big city “sees the light” and returns to the family farm/ranch/homestead in a flyover state.

I love having cut flowers available to grace my table. I’m grateful that someone else plants them and digs them up for me.