After several years of staying close to home and establishing a Covid-induced weekly routine, what do you do when that regimen has become a rut, but spending time in clogged airports and tourist-choked cities doesn’t sound like fun?

Three months after recovering from Covid—my husband and I got it after everyone else–I decided it was time to change things up. No long trips, nothing thrilling, just something different.

We started easy. Instead of walking in our peaceful neighborhood, we took a walk through downtown. Getting dizzy at having to look up at so many skyscrapers, we threw out questions neither of us could answer. “How long has that building been here?” “Is the construction in that huge pit going to lead to housing or office space?” “Hey, I see the bakery someone recommended, but until now I didn’t know where it was.” 

After that short outing, we responded to a notice that our city was sponsoring several staff-led walks to other parts of town that had changed in the past few years. I signed us up for one walk to a former warehouse district that was becoming an expanded community of businesses–largely a Meta-opolis–plus housing. There, we saw more new construction we didn’t know existed and it was only a few miles from our house.

The next outing was to see friends who moved to a nearby island five years ago and who we were planning to visit in 2020 about the time Covid hit. This month, we invited ourselves to their house before learning that they were coping with serious illnesses among their adult children. They said we could come, but we struggled for a few days to decide whether the timing for an intrusion was right. We thought if we could do nothing else, we could provide them with a few hours’ distraction. The drive, wait for the ferry, and the boat ride took all of a day and evening, but we had a great visit and were glad we’d made the trip.

Last week, we went to a “Dino lecture” called, “Living Large: Life as a Sauropod,” not our usual Friday night fare and not a topic we’d been craving more information about, but we enjoyed the presentation and came away much better informed about this long-necked dinosaur formerly known as “brontosaurus.”

We’re also varying the settings for our regular walks, moving occasionally from a forest to a lake, which leads to a big change in scenery from flowers, trees, and deer to turtles, carp, and ducks.

We ended June with a lunch with friends in a waterside restaurant with a beautiful view.

What’s ahead for July?  We’re starting the month attending a music performance in one park and an hour-long tai chi class in another.

Nothing daring, nothing unusual,  just reminding ourselves there’s much to do close to home for which we are grateful. Maybe next year we’ll move farther afield after everyone else has gotten the travel bug out of their systems.