3,836 km … 9 States … 33 hours … 3 days … road trip with my 83 year old mother … priceless memories. Call me crazy but I actually enjoyed driving from London, Ontario to Mesa, Arizona with my Mother the other week.

I invited Mom to join me on a road trip to the South Western U.S. I was headed to New Mexico for a wilderness expedition and she welcomed the opportunity to visit her sister in Arizona. We both started the trip nervously driving through rain squalls wondering how this trip would turn out.

After crossing the border without incident and negotiating through Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, we had established a rhythm. In spite of my vehicle being fully equipped with a GPS based navigation system, Mom was the navigator having all of the state maps folded to the highlighted route. She reminded me of the highways and interchanges to head toward or to stay on. Then she reminded me some more about the highways and interchanges to stay away from.

We spent the first night in St. Louis, on the Mississippi River. The second day we drove 14 hours through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and into New Mexico stopping in Santa Rosa for the night. That day I noticed Mom giving me less driving instructions as we enjoyed the drastic changes in landscape, so different from what we were used to.

The landscapes varied from the hills of the Ozarks, to the badlands, to prairie grasslands and then mountains and mesas. And just as varied were our topics of conversation. We never listened to the radio; we simply talked about everything and anything that came to mind. I was amazed at how easy and enjoyable it was.

The last day I convinced Mom it would be okay to stray away from the major highways and take a lesser traveled back country route through the mountains into the Phoeniz -Mesa area. I must confess that I was nervous since at least the first section was very desolate. I was imagining what my sisters would do to me if anything happened to our dear old Mom.

But Mom was a trooper and in spite of some mild motion sickness, endured twisty turny roads full of switchbacks. Afterwards, she said that she actually enjoyed this part of the trip because the mountainous scenery was spectacular. We arrived on my Aunt Tanya’s doorstep no worse for wear and old sisters were reunited once more!

I honestly had no idea how this road trip with Mom was going to turn out. But I am glad that I had invited her to travel with me and that she had the courage to try something new. Precious memories were created through the sharing of time and doing something simple ~ taking a road trip.