Sorry that you haven’t heard from me for a while. I’ve been pretty busy. First I had to move out of my house in Oxford (sayonara roommate problems!). I am just moving across town– I’ll tell you more about my new place after I move in but think monks… Then, after all the stress of moving, I jumped on a plane and headed home for my bi- or tri- annual trip to 
the US. Being at home is always good—seeing my mom, my dogs, friends… This time, however, rather than just laze around my hometown (as is our norm) my mom and I decided to take a road trip to Yellowstone.
My mother has been mentioning on and off for years, how much she would like to take me to Yellowstone. I had never been, and she hadn’t been for maybe 25 years. So this summer, I was finally like: let’s go! You can’t stand around forever waiting for the perfect time- sometimes you just have to seize the moment.
So we did it. And now, as I type, I am in a little hotel room in West Yellowstone- we spent yesterday exploring the park and will go back in today. Tomorrow we will begin the long drive back. So yeah, it’s been fun. But travelling with your mom has its own ups and downs.
The ups are you get to stay in nicer places than I do with my friends. Not that we go super high class, but my mom wouldn’t want to stay in that dingy little hotel on the bad side of town where I would have stayed with my friends. The same goes for food- generally nicer than when I travel with friends my own age. It is nice to travel with some class for a change.
The downs: well, it takes us forever to get anywhere. My mom likes to spend two hours sitting around drinking coffee in the morning before we head out the door. So we never exactly maximize our time. Similarly, we stop ALL the time on the road. Every hour (or more often) we are stopping either for coffee, or to take a bathroom break (probably a direct result of the coffee stops). Luckily, I’ve never been a person who stresses too much about time. I figure: we’ll get there someday. It kind of sucks getting to your hotel so late every night that you are too tired to even check it out fully- although I have to admit, that my own gaff of missing our desired exit while on the freeway in Montana, did contribute to this on at least one occasion (when you have to drive 60 miles to the next town, you know you are in Montana).
So yes. It’s ten o’clock and here I am in my hotel room. Maybe it’s almost time to start getting ready for the day. Sometimes you just go with the flow. But I have to say though, at least for me, travelling with my mom has more ups than downs.