Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Our country home is about 8 miles from the nearest town, off the main highway that runs east-west, and then off a secondary road that winds through the countryside for about 3 miles until our third turn-off which runs an additional 3 miles. This last road was paved for the first two miles and then the pavement runs out and the gravel was what you drove on the rest of the way. They have been working on our road, the gravel section, for several months now, widening it and installing new culverts.

Then two weeks ago I discovered when driving out to the country that it has been paved.



This is looking from our private road to where our trashcans sit at the end of our road. This junction is also where any school buses stop when we have school-age kids living on our road. Now I wonder if they'll feel like they are half-country, half-city kids? At least they won't be "eating dust" now while waiting in the morning.



Looking towards town.



Looking to the west.

It was a little strange, not hitting the gravel at a certain point. For 9 years, we hit gravel at that same spot and exhaled "we're in the country now."

It thoroughly confused Snoopy on our drive. She always gets a little more wiggly when she hears us hit the gravel---almost there!

I'm torn about this "improvement" on our country road. It's good in that it cuts down on the dust and in the winter, that road will get the snow plowed from it now. But that's my walking "route" as well. I've yet to take a walk down the new paved road.

Actually, I'm a little wary of walking on it now as the cars go flying down that road and without the gravel crunching under the tires, I won't be able to hear one coming my way.

Snoopy roams at will on our walks, off her leash, and when I would hear the tires crunching on the road from afar, I was able to yell to her to come to me and then keep her out of the road until the car passed. I surely won't hear a car coming now and the road is so windy, you don't get far vision of anything approaching, so it's gotten to be a dangerous endeavor.

So I'm not sure if we would even be safe walking on that road and definitely Snoopy will have to be leashed on it. To keep ourselves safe now, we walk repeatedly up and down our private road which is about 1/8th of a mile.



It's still gravel and we feel safe.



The scenery doesn't change much....going back and forth....but so far Snoopy hasn't noticed, she has plenty to check out along the road no matter how many times we walk it.

Still in the country.....Grammy