Thursday December 25th 2025

Merry Christmas

It has been a slow week. I have stayed home at my base camp whenever possible. Road traffic was terrible. Route 27 traffic in front of the park was intermittently filled with three lanes of stopped north bound traffic followed by three lanes of stopped southbound traffic. The traffic light system was clearly overwhelmed.

On Monday I had to force my way through the traffic to get groceries at Walmart. It took close to an hour to travel the approximate mile and a half that usually takes about ten minutes. Inside Walmart was busy, but the chaos was controlled. Walmart had a full complement of staff on duty and all the checkouts were open. I was able to complete my shopping and get back into the road traffic without waiting too long. My refrigerator is still overstocked four days later.

Today was another slow day by choice. I didn’t do anything special, but did leave the base camp. As expected traffic was very light. It was easy to drive to the nearby nature preserve for a leisurely walk around a pond. It has been about a month since I used the preserve for my daily exercise. Places with sparkling decorations have been getting preference. Today there were a few nice wildflower blossoms to catch my attention.