Taking Mama On a Road Trip

If you live in a retirement facility, no matter how nice, the days become an endless progression of sameness. Your neighbor hobbles by in a walker on her morning walk. The same faces appear across the dinner table night after night telling stories you’ve heard more times than you care to count. So, when we offered to take 89-year-old Kathryn (mom to Alan, mother-in-law to me) on a Solvang road trip, it wasn’t surprising that she jumped at the chance to escape.

Our drive began up the crowded 405 freeway from Orange County’s Irivne to Los Angeles. After following miles of cars, lined bumper-to-bumper, we exited onto Highway 1, the famous road that winds up most of California’s coastline.

The ride worked its magic on Kathryn as she spotted familiar sights and began to reminisce with the giddiness of a child on a school holiday.

“Oh, look, she said, “there’s the Malibu pier,” and another story would begin.

A life-long resident of Los Angeles, Kathryn remembered drives on country roads that have turned into busy by-ways. She recalled dinners at restaurants that disappeared long ago. Now ramshackle looking houses, costing upwards of a million dollars, crowded close to the road along the Malibu coastline, obliterating views of the Pacific Ocean.

In Ventura, workers wearing floppy straw hats and long-sleeved shirts, stooped in the fields picking strawberries. Kathryn looked longingly at the ripe berries for sale at roadside stands. More than once she said, “Oh, we should stop and buy some. If only we had a place to keep them refrigerated.

Instead, Alan continued driving. Like a man on a mission, he was focused on arriving at his destination.

In Santa Barbara, Highway 1 disappeared into hilly streets and freeways. Eventually, a left-hand turn returned us to our original route and a side-trip through grass hills and horse country on the way to Lompoc. Kathryn, sitting in her front row seat, babbled on about the past in between short snatches of naps. It was like one long conversation with many pauses.

In Danish-themed Solvang, our accommodations at the Wine Valley Inn proved to be convenient, quiet and picturesque. A garden path wove between brick and stucco buildings where a man-made creek gurgled underneath a bridge edged by irises yet to bloom. It looked like the setting for a Danish fairy tale. Adjoining rooms allowed Kathryn her privacy but offered us the security of knowing that we could check in on her. After all, Alan and I took the job of guarding this family treasure seriously.

March is off-season in Solvang so the streets lined with shops, tasting rooms and restaurants were quiet, although we weren’t the only ones peering at Royal Copenhagen China in shop windows or stopping for Danish lunches at restaurants like “A Bit O Denmark. Soon, a love for all things Danish had replaced Kathryn’s Swedish heritage.

She reveled in picturesque rides in the countryside that took us by undulating hills outlined with the white fences of horse farms. The vines in the vineyards were still bare and parking lots almost empty at imposing tasting rooms. But we wouldn’t be stopping anyway, for as Kathryn remarked, “Who drinks wine at this time of the morning?”

In Los Olivos, we stopped in the artsy town to browse the galleries as bicyclists zoomed through an intersection. My mother-in-law, a talented portrait artist herself, studied the modern paintings in one of the galleries before shaking her head, slightly. Ever the polite lady, she waited until we were outside to proclaim her true opinion.

Back in Solvang, we dined at Cafe Angelica on the recommendation of the clerk at the Wine Valley Inn who forgot to tell us that we needed reservations. Although the restaurant was packed, the hostess promised to find room for us and suggested we walk around the corner to a wine tasting bar for the thirty-minute wait. Kathryn toddled down the brick walkway with the aid of her cane. At Tastes of the Valleys Wine Bar, she lounged in front of a fire, drinking Santa Ynez Valley chardonnay until it was time for our Italian dinner in Danish Solvang.

On the return drive to Irvine, Kathryn relived each moment of her time in Solvang as if repeating the details would forge them into to her brain forever, leaving no chance to forget a single memory from the trip. It was growing late when the car neared Irvine. Kathryn looked over at Alan and asked, “Can we stop by Albertson’s on the way home? I need to buy strawberries.”

Donna L. Hull specializes in travel and human interest content for online and print publications. At her blog, My Itchy Travel Feet, she writes about active travel for baby boomers.