Update (Where did those two years go?)

It has been a long time since Meg has posted in this blog so I was thinking that maybe I would take a stab at it. Since her last update we have mostly been rather tamely spending our winters in Florida and summers in Kansas, parked at my mom's old farmstead. 

We found a nice park in Florida for the last two winters, right across the river from Kennedy Space Center. We watched rocket and shuttle launches and made friends within a tight-knit community of "snowbirds" who winter there every year. We also met some local families with kids near the boys' ages.

Last fall we made an excursion to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Turns out we have family there that flies balloons, so within moments of the first event we were helping to launch and chase balloons. It is great fun being part of a chase crew and the plan is to attend every year. Meg and Billy returned to Albuquerque in March to help "our Jan" with her goats kidding. Meg got to play midwife to several deliveries and seems to have really enjoyed the experience.

The side trip to Albuquerque is an example of the "away missions" we have been taking, where a subset of the family jets off to another part of the country for a few days to a few weeks. This has helped us all pursue some of our individual interests, and gives us some necessary time outside the five-person family dynamic. Meg took all three boys to Maryland last summer, and often visits friends on her own while the boys and I hold down the fort.

The boys are growing and generally doing well. The summers in Kansas are some of their favorite times. Who can complain about playing at the pool with your friends for hours a day? I really like the pool as a social activity. The kids get lots of exercise and social interaction. They end up playing games that, while competitive, are much more about everyone just having fun. While they still play together most of the time, they also have a chance to spend time with their own special friends. 

Meg and I are still really enjoying our RV lifestyle, although the last couple of years have been a lot more sitting still than traveling. We have managed to visit our friends in Mississippi (who we met on the road back in 2008), helped with my mom's move to Houston, and seen and done lots more than all the fun stuff I already mentioned. 

Meg and I have taken up walking. We try to get in several miles every day and it has made a lot of difference in our overall health. We are both a lot happier when we are keeping up with our walking goals.

I have had kind of a slow summer as in mid-April I managed to smash off the end of my left pinkie. That put me on bed rest for a couple of weeks and made it hard to do much of anything all summer. It was all I could do to drive a grain truck for a friend during harvest.

Right now we are visiting (without our RV) in Maryland. Meg's expatriate brothers were both in town and there was a small family reunion event. We kept finding reasons to extend our visit, and we have now stayed over a month! It will be nice to be back "home" soon.

Three reunions

The boys have been in Kansas through July, while Meg went east to visit a brother and nephews in Mississippi, then still farther east to visit friends and attend her 20th high school reunion.

By coincidence, Joe's high school reunion was the same day. It wasn't a round anniversary for his graduating class, but various movers and shakers had gotten together and planned a reunion for all years. So, while he graduated with a tiny class of 30-some students, the reunion swamped the tiny town of Spearville with hundreds of alumni and their families. They had a huge festival, dinner and dance, with smaller side events for individual classes.

Meanwhile, back in Maryland, less than 100 of the over 500 graduates of Eleanor Roosevelt High School Class of 1990 met at a bar for an evening of drinks, snacks, and lots of laughs and hugs. Ours was a Facebook-based meetup, with only a few people attending who don't use Facebook and had learned about the event from friends.

Joe's reunion was organized primarily through mailings, word-of-mouth, and old-fashioned networks of written and telephone correspondence with friends and relatives. There were some e-mails and even Facebook communication, so the broadcast signal was across all traditional correspondence and modern networking bands.

The contrast in attendance between the reunions wasn't solely an effect of the information channels used, but it does suggest that social networking sites aren't anywhere close to replicating the value and effectiveness of our real-life networks. And it really shows the power of virtual networks to practically exclude large segments of our communities from the social reinforcement of rituals and other shared experiences.


The third reunion is tomorrow, when Meg flies back to Kansas to meet the boys who were so much younger at the beginning of the month.

Kinsley, KS

Now that we have no house near Spearville, we were challenged to find somewhere to park our home while we're visiting for the summer. There aren't any state park campgrounds close enough to be practical.

As summertime temperatures are regularly over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Western Kansas, we needed to be hooked up to electricity so we could use the air conditioning. For a month-long visit I prefer to hook up to a spigot, instead of filling and re-filling the fresh water tank. And when we're using more than a tankful of water, a sewer hookup keeps us from having to pack and move just to flush the tanks. So it's just as well that we had little choice but to stay at a commercial RV park. (Commercial campgrounds more consistently offer "full" electric/water/sewer hookups).

The nearest RV parks are about 15 miles west, in Dodge City, and about 20 miles east, in Kinsley. Since Kinsley is a much smaller town, and we'd passed the RV park and thought it looked nice, we went east. Four Aces RV park is grassy and has a few nice, shady back-in spots as well as ten pull-throughs with concrete pads. The folks there are friendly as all get-out, and the rates are reasonable, with weekly and monthly discounts. Yes, we had to drive some 20 miles to Spearville to meet up with friends, but we combined all errands into no more than one daily trip (as we usually did when living in the country).

Kinsley is about twice the size of Spearville and well under one-tenth the population of Dodge. You can walk around most of the town in half an hour. The grocery store is open seven days a week and has a bit more of a food selection that the Merc in Spearville [though it is primarily a food store, without the "little bit of everything" department store half that distinguishes the Merc].

We enjoyed the Kinsley library and appreciated the town's always-open recycling drop-off point. They accept a variety of cardboard, paper, plastics, glass and metal. Dodge City also has a drop-off recycling program, and Spearville has a once-a-month drop-off. It's nice to see rural communities addressing the problems of resource depletion and waste and with programs like this.

Like many of the old towns on the railroad, downtown Kinsley is a mix of empty storefronts and active businesses. One rather crumbly but lovable little treasure we discovered is the Palace movie theater, where they show current movies for a reasonable price, on a tiny screen. The seats are terribly worn and the decor is vintage, if a bit sad. It's pretty sweet all the same.

Spearville, Kansas

Joe grew up in the country a few miles outside of Spearville, Kansas. We lived for a few years on a nearby farmstead that had been in his family a hundred years ago. And Billy started kindergarten at the grade school in Spearville.

When we became full-time RVers, the kids were anxious to know how they would keep up their relationships with friends in Spearville. We decided we should return for a couple of months a year to the closest thing they have to a hometown.

Summer in western Kansas doesn't really fit our overall travel scheme of following the fine weather. It's hella hot at harvest time (June-July). But other considerations make summertime in Spearville the logical choice. The town kids are available for play in all the hours they'd normally be in school or doing homework. Harvest is kind of exciting. And the pool is open.

The boys learned to swim at the Spearville pool, and their love of the water is a big part of what makes beaches and warm springs so fun to visit all winter long. There are same-age kids that Billy, Leo, and Karl can each relate to and have fun with, and all the kids drift into and out of mixed-age groups in their play. It's a great scene for informal acquisition of social skills and interpersonal awareness. Joe gets in some relaxation and socializing, bringing the kids for at least a few hours almost every day. Sometimes Meg comes along, though she usually opts for walking around town, visiting the library, or just staying home. (The place we're calling "home" for these weeks is the subject of the next blog entry.)

Spearville has a handful of businesses and services, including our beloved Windmill Restaurant, two sole branch community banks, the township Library and the Spearville Mercantile ("The Merc"), which serves as our primary source of groceries when we're in town. The Merc is half grocery, half old-fashioned department store, with toys, hardware, fabrics, and jewelry. I've often been surprised at the arcane items they carry -- we once needed a replacement weight for an older-model pressure cooker, and there we found it, neatly filed with the other pressure cooker parts.

Spearville is also home to a wind farm, built in 2006. Joe was so absorbed in the construction and start-up of this project that anytime we were in town (almost every day of the week, that is), he insisted on driving a wide circuit to the various sites where the turbines were being anticipated, stored, assembled, and tested. He still can't take his eyes off the windmills for long -- our game on the way to town is always "Guess how many windmills are turning!" (Usually at least 2 or 3 are being serviced.)

With alternative energy the hot topic it is these days, little towns like Spearville are popping into the spotlight, becoming the subjects of board meetings, hosting community information sessions, and spawning activists for and against the boon or curse of proposed wind farms. The towns that succeed in attracting wind farms earn grants and income from the companies that harvest the rural wind to power the urban machine back east.

It was rather disappointing this year to see that no progress has been made on the second phase of the project, which would double the size of the wind farm. Sadly, the windmill towers, generators, and blades were delivered over a year ago, and here they sit, a huge investment in materials awaiting funding and scheduling to become productive.

Kansas State Parks

We spent a few weeks in May at Crawford Lake State Park. The campground was shady, grassy and spacious, and there were lots of places to throw in a line. There was a good road all the way around the lake, with nice farm and lake views, deer grazing, frogs croaking - perfect for riding bikes or walking every day. Since school was still in session across the state, and the park is out-of-the-way, it was fairly empty and extremely peaceful. It's our new favorite Kansas campground.

Crawford is proud of its CCC heritage, and has a nice memorial and interpretive stations with grand statistics and amusing slice-of-life accounts of the community that built the dam. A lot of the state parks we've stayed in were originally CCC camps. We always enjoy reading about the lives of the men who lived and worked there, and seeing the architecture that remains.

There were loads of birds, too. Most prized were the scissor-tailed flycatchers, first in what turned out to be the "spring of scissor-taileds" -- we saw more than we've ever seen this year, while roving around eastern Kansas. Here's a list of most of the birds we saw at Crawford, with apologies for any non-standard nomenclature:

Loon
Canada goose
Bald eagle
Red-tailed hawk
Great blue heron
Ducks (no idea)
Common nighthawk
Orchard oriole
Northern oriole
Red-bellied woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker
Red-headed woodpecker
Swifts and swallows
Scissor-tailed flycatcher
Eastern kingbird
Blue-gray gnatcatcher
Eastern wood-peewee
Pheobe
Eastern bluebird
Blue grosbeak
Yellow warbler
Yellow-rumped warbler
Black and white warbler
Black-capped chickadee
Tufted titmouse
Goldfinch
Robin
Bluejay
Cardinal
Brown thrasher
Mockingbird
Starling
Wood thrush
Summer tanager
Grasshopper sparrow
Tree sparrow
Carolina wren

We also spent a few nights each at Hillsdale Lake State Park, and Clinton Lake State Park. We met up with friends for a camping weekend at Clinton Lake Recreation Area (Corps of Engineers side). Mostly we just relaxed and enjoyed the beautiful spring.

Frugal tip: If you camp in Kansas more than a few weeks out of the year, it's worth buying an annual camping pass for Kansas State Parks (in addition to the annual state parks vehicle entrance pass). It pays for the basic camping fee, so that you only pay campsite premiums (for season and/or prime location) and electric/water premiums. This means that after the first twenty nights or so, we were camping for free, or for a few dollars a night when we got crazy and wanted to use the vacuum cleaner.

Fast Forward to Kansas

A friend recently remarked that he couldn't travel all the time like we do, always on the road, always driving. But we really cover very few miles, and spend very little time literally on the road. We'd rather be playing outdoors or cozy in our home in a temporary location than en route to another. So we move slowly, and probably spend less time in our vehicle than the average commuter or "stay-at-home" parent.

March and April found us heading to Kansas. From Florida, we marched steadily through Alabama to Mississippi. When we don't particularly want to linger in an area, we'll drive a few hours, stay just one or two nights, then move on. Especially if the drives are longer and the stays are shorter, we are soon ready to stop and feel "at home" again before moving on. In Alabama we stayed a couple of nights in Oak Mountain State Park. In Mississippi, we stayed in Lake Lowndes State Park and had a visit from a relative before moving on to a longer stay at Great River Road State Park in Rosedale, Mississippi.

Well, technically only the boys made it to Rosedale. From Columbus, Mississippi, Meg took off with her brother on a whirlwind road trip through South Carolina to Maryland and back again. Joe doesn't often get a break from the whole family, but Meg takes side trips every few months, to help someone out, to attend an event, to visit, or just to get away for a few days. People often tell me they'd go crazy spending so much time in close quarters with their families. Well, I do go a little crazy. So I balance it with time away. (Other people could spend all hours with their family through all seasons, and some might even be slightly offended by my admission that there's such thing as "too much" family time. Oh, well.)

What about Joe? Does he get vacations? The mechanical demands of the trailer aren't completely outside Meg's abilities, but it's true that she hasn't ever driven the entire rig. She's never dumped the tanks, hooked or unhooked, or dealt with any plumbing, electricity, or mechanical/chassis issues. That said, there are places Joe could leave us comfortably set up for a few days or a couple of weeks. So far he hasn't taken advantage of the possibility. Maybe he'll get some time alone one of these days -- we'll try not to drive him crazy in the meantime.

While Meg was road-tripping, Joe and the boys visited our Rosedale friends, a homeschooling family we met at a state park in Florida a few years ago. Back then, they were living in their motorhome and we were on the road only part-time. They've now built a beautiful home on an old plantation homesite, tucked into a grove of ancient pecan trees, right next to the levee. I was sorry to miss the visit, and can't wait to get back by there and see the new house.

Meg caught back up with the boys in El Dorado, Kansas the day after Easter, and we've been roving the state ever since. Kansas in the springtime is absolutely beautiful, and it's a great time to visit the family we have in the eastern part of the state.

Kansas in the summer is a bit less friendly, but that's the best season for the kids to spend a little time with the friends we left behind in their "hometown" near Dodge City. The town kids are out of school, and the public pool is the center of our social life. It's where the boys learned to swim, without which we would hardly enjoy our beach stays as much as we do. The two weeks around wheat harvest are all a-bustle, but otherwise things have been nice and slow.

So now that I've caught up our story to the present, I'm going to try (again) to give more frequent updates and little stories from the road. Check back in a week or two and see how I'm doing!


[If you were looking forward to a post about our extended stay at Walt Disney World last winter, I'm going to hold off writing about Disney until the fall, when we're going back to get in a few more weeks of fun on our annual passes.]

Florida State Parks - home for the winter

It's been about five months since I did an update about where we've been staying. And the quick summary is that we spent the winter in Florida, mostly in the state parks, averaging a little over a week in each.

Most park systems have rules that limit a camper's stay at any one park to a couple of weeks, either consecutive (as with Florida State Parks) or cumulative within a calendar year (as with National Parks). Some retiree "snowbirds" find ways around the limits, such as volunteering in exchange for an all-season slot, or making reservations under multiple names. When the parks aren't booked full, park managers will sometimes approve an extended stay.

We prefer to stay on a site for at least a continuous week. This allows us to relax, unpack, and put things out on shelves. When we only stay a day or two, it can be a toss-up whether to leave a bicycle on the couch or finagle it through the door and down the steps, then back up and in after not even riding it.

But because we didn't make detailed plans months ahead this year, there were some days (especially weekends and holidays) that were booked tight in the more popular coastal parks. This meant some hopping back and forth between inland and beach parks, or among sites within a single park, sometimes staying only a day or two. Our itinerary also included some time at the Disney resort campground (look for a later post on this), so we mixed in shorter stays at state parks to recuperate from the intensity (and "expensity") of mouse-centered vacationing.

I wrote about Fort Clinch State Park (SP)  and Faver-Dykes SP in December. We ended up spending several weeks in Faver-Dykes SP, which offers fishing, paddling, and nature trails through piney woods. It's remote enough to be quiet, but is only a short car trip to Flagler Beach.

Also on the east coast, Tomoka SP was a bike ride or a short car trip from Ormond Beach. It was too chilly when we were there, but there was a good waterway for kayaking/canoeing in other weather.

The campground at Gamble Rogers State Recreation Area is right on beach, and we could walk a block along the beach to High Tides at Snack Jack - a cute little restaurant/bar that makes the most of its quaint history and its great view.

Florida has more than a few freshwater springs, and the warm spring runs play host to manatees in the winter. In prior years we've stayed at Manatee Springs SP, which has a great boardwalk along the bank of the spring run, through the cypress woods. It was out of our path this year, but we will be back there someday.

This year we did most of our manatee (and gator) watching at Blue Spring SP, which is similar to Manatee Springs, but near the east coast. We happened to be there for the Manatee festival, and the boys spent hours watching (and chatting up) a blacksmith working on the grounds of a historical house which is maintained as a museum in the park. The birds there were great, too, especially the red-shouldered hawks (mating season?), an osprey, and a reliable bald eagle. A couple of nights, I walked alone down to the spring run to listen to the scores of manatees gently splishing and breathing in the dark. Some experiences are truly unique.

At Wekiwa Springs SP we went swimming in a rock-lined pool at the headspring. It was chilly, but really fun to feel the current push us around, and to watch the fish do their fishy things in the clear water. Hillsborough River SP has nice wooded trails along a blackwater river.

After some time at Disney and visiting with friends, we headed to the Gulf Coast. A few years ago we adopted Henderson Beach SP as our Florida home. We started visiting Destin when my brother lived in Navarre, and we've come back almost every year to stay at this campground. There's a boardwalk trail through a pristine dune landscape, fragrant with rosemary, to the best beach we know. The boasts of "white sugar sand" and "emerald green waters" are not exaggerations.

Just inland a bit is Rocky Bayou SP which has several short walking trails, water for paddling, and is also a base for day trips to Henderson Beach when that campground is full.

The last Florida park we stayed in this year was Grayton Beach SP with a beach almost as nice as in Destin. We usually ride our bikes over to Seaside, which is sort of the polar opposite of the campground life - a planned and polished gingerbread resort town, worth seeing once or twice.

Well, this was a long post, and glossed over so many great experiences. I'll come back soon and write about our extended and friend-filled experience at Walt Disney World. Otherwise I think I've caught us up to ... March?

Here are some photos ... winter solstice in Ormond Beach and manatees at Blue Spring. We don't take many photos, so these are just iPhone quickies -- better than nothing, eh?

  

   

  

Getting a little space, part 3

We originally had no plan to visit Kennedy Space Center this year. Much as we love space, it was expense and travel that we were willing to put off. The launch viewings changed our plans, and we ended up glad that we'd found a reason to make the trip (or four) out to KSC. So here's a little more about Kennedy Space Center as a destination.

My shuttle launch ticket functioned as a regular admission ticket for 2 days within a 7-day period, but technically I burned both days on the launch. We all needed KSC admission tickets for the SDO launch, which, unlike a shuttle launch, required a regular admission ticket (some rocket launches are open to the public, and are included with admission). I bought annual passes for all five of us, as we plan to be in the area later in the year. An annual pass costs less than twice buying 2-day passes, and there is plenty there to occupy us long enough each day to make it worth it.

Admission includes all attractions at the main visitor center, including the two IMAX films, the Shuttle Launch Experience ride, and indoor and outdoor exhibits. Also included are bus tours of the center, where the guides identify various facilities and their place in the history of space exploration. Fancier tours are available for additional cost.

The buses stop at the Apollo/Saturn V Center, a museum all about the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo program. The introductory movie and simulated launch presentation in the mission control center are pretty neat. There's also a Saturn V rocket, fixed up, staged out, and completely explained, as well as exhibits on Apollo program training and technology. The second bus stop is the International Space Station Center, where you can walk through models of Space Station segments, and look down into the actual cleanroom where new nodes are prepared for flight and operation. (Or will be for a short time longer, I guess.)

Also included in a KSC admission ticket is admission to the Astronaut Hall of Fame, which I expected would be rather boring and "memorial", but which was actually quite interactive and educational. The boys enjoyed the "g-force trainer" centrifuge, and all three of us landed the shuttle with the flight simulator game. We climbed into a model of a Mercury capsule and flipped switches, and we tried on space suit helmets and did motion experiments. We could have spent an entire museum day (3-4 hours) in the Astronaut Hall of Fame, which is a few miles from the KSC visitor complex.

Very soon I'll post a list of all the Florida State Parks we stayed in this season, and a little something about the empire of the mouse.

Getting a little space, part 2

As luck would have it, there was an Atlas V rocket launch scheduled just two days after the STS-130 launch, at a more reasonable hour of the day. The rocket was carrying NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) into orbit. SDO is designed to give us a better-than-ever view of the star that is the engine of life on earth (the only life we've yet encountered in the universe). See? The romance of it! I was sure the SDO launch couldn't match the wow factor of Endeavour's night launch, but I knew I would love it, and I hoped the kids wouldn't yawn at it.

All five of us went to Kennedy for the scheduled launch, which was scrubbed with less than 4 minutes to go because of winds >20mph. The next day I brought just the two older boys out for the second try, and we had our rocket launch. As expected, there was the drama of the countdown, and the glory of a giant fancy pencil with a flare for an eraser, driving itself into the sky. By chance, there was a layer of clouds that produced a nice sun dog effect in the path of the rocket. And best of all, we witnessed a stunning atmospheric effect that looked like ripples on a pond as the rocket went supersonic on its way up, up, and away. The sundog blew away in the wake of the rocket. It was just so neat. Videos of the launch tend to impress even veteran rocket watchers. Explanations of the effect are also neat to read.

Just two hours later, as the boys and I toured the Space Center, we were amazed to read (@NASA) that SDO was orbiting on her own. Our newest satellite, silently (as things are done in space) unfolded her mechanical leaves to collect solar power, and prepared to stare at the sun for years, to send back to the inhabitants of this little blue planet all sorts of data that we can't detect with any of our ground-based eyes. And we had just watched her launch! Don't you ever just say "Wow!"?

Getting a little space, part 1

Growing up in a NASA household, and in my generation, I have a certain romantic relationship with space and with the space shuttle. My dad worked at NASA for 27 years, and the whole family reflected the NASA spirit. We celebrated Moon Day (July 20). We played with Enterprise space shuttle models when the shuttle program was just beginning. We wore NASA t-shirts!

As a family, we watched Columbia's first launch and landing on live TV in 1981. We tuned in for many launches and landings in the months and years that followed, occasionally missing an hour or two of school for the events. I was watching on TV in the library of my middle school when Challenger exploded on ascent, and we suddenly appreciated the risk and heroism inherent in advancing the frontiers of our knowledge. Years later, on a whim of my latent space love, I tuned in at the last minute to watch a shuttle landing -- just in time to share the nation's confusion and distress as Columbia didn't appear when and where she was expected, and reports poured in of smoke trails and debris fields. It was like losing a distant family member I'd admired from afar my whole life.


Joe worked at NASA Kennedy Space Center as a college intern, and was later hired at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which is how he came to Maryland. He worked on Hubble (source of so many images that fuel my sense of wonder at our brilliant universe), and we eventually met through one of his co-workers whom I'd known for years through one of my brothers. His circle of friends in those early years were mainly NASA folk, and I grooved on their smart and science-y goodness. Yeah, NASA has figured in my life. I'm a space child.


Despite all that NASA love, I had never seen a shuttle launch. Joe saw two as an intern, and another when Hubble (out of favor at the time because of its mirror flaw) was being serviced. When I heard in January that we could be near enough to see the launch of Endeavour on STS-130, one of the last scheduled launches, I arranged to get as close as possible. My dad came down for the launch as well, having never seen a launch in all his NASA years. I knew it would be a grueling all-nighter, with the payoff of a beautiful lightshow not at all guaranteed, so I chose not to put any of the kids through it.


The lines to get into Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex were unbelievable, and there was little time for anything but waiting in lines, waiting on a bus, and then waiting on the causeway in the cold wind off the water. Because I'd come alone on a tour bus from Orlando, I wasn't with Dad or my other friend who was at the launch. But I was so excited, I didn't much mind anything that night. After the scheduled 45-minute hold at T-9 minutes the countdown was unable to continue because of clouds, and the launch was scrubbed for 24 hours.

On the second night (oh, yes, I bought a ticket for the second night on the bus ride back to Orlando) the lines were much shorter, and the crowd much smaller. I hung out with Dad at the Visitor Center until my bus left for the causeway, and I wrapped myself in a blanket and chatted with my new bus mates during the 2-hour wait in the chilly air. And for all that trouble I was I treated to a spectacle I can't begin to describe in words, and that I will probably never see again. The brightness was starlike (as in the Sun, not the faraway ones), and the impact of that brilliance on my psyche was something like seeing the vastness of the Grand Canyon the first time.

When my dad called me after the launch, I told him I was so happy he'd seen it, too. And then I cried, because, well … he knows why, and maybe some of you do, too. Because I'm a space child.

I followed the news of the mission on NASA's website and on Twitter (@NASA), feeling like I'd sent a kid off to school that morning. Japanese Astronaut Soichi Noguchi (@Astro_Soichi) has been tweeting beautiful pictures of earth taken through the windows of the cupola that Endeavour delivered to the International Space Station. Geography, geology, and space buffs alike will enjoy Soichi's photos. He also caught Endeavour re-entering the atmosphere at the end of the STS-130 mission.

I wasn't near enough to KSC to see or hear any aspect of the landing. I followed the play-by-play on Twitter (@BAnews). Dad called when Endeavour made its de-orbit burn. He knew -- he'd sent that kid to school, too. And then I found myself sprinting out to the beach so I could look out across the Gulf and imagine her gliding home. Alone on the beach, my thoughts on our returning explorers, I felt an ancient and modern connectedness to the rest of humanity. We are all space children, after all.

Home, sweet Florida!

For the first time since choosing this as our state of legal domicile, we are here in Florida. We have registered our vehicles and picked up new drivers' licenses. We still need to transfer our health insurance, register as voters, and enroll in our chosen umbrella school for homeschooling. A few more hoops, but nothing difficult.

We spent the first nights in our new home state at Fort Clinch State Park, which is just across an inlet from Georgia. Our campsite was just a few feet from a beach with shells, nifty marine life (we found a tiny pipefish!), and a long fishing pier. A dredging operation was setting up and moving up and down the beach, and fishing boats motored by, dropping and hauling nets. For kids who love Dirty Jobs, dredging prep and fishing are good entertainment!

We didn't go see the fort, but there is one. And we also didn't take a native's suggestion to visit Big Talbot Island State Park on the way south. And that's okay. We're not out to "do it all" or to see everything possible -- we're just living.

After a few days there, we had to move on, as Fort Clinch had a full dance card for the weekend. We moved south to Faver-Dykes State Park where we booked a full two weeks. So far, we've spent time canoeing, playing computer games, bicycling, practicing math and reading, walking the nature trail, and "just" playing. We drove to Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, and enjoyed the contrast of planned rose gardens and spring-fed carp ponds with nature trails through the wild hammock.

We've enjoyed learning the history of the parks we visit. I'll post a bit about that soon.

South Carolina

The state parks in South Carolina have been a good value for the money. We started out at Sesquicentennial State Park in Columbia, where the campsites were laid deep with fragrant pinestraw, and there was a pretty lake with good trails. The rangers in this park were always about and were uniformly friendly.

Next we moved to Givhans Ferry State Park, which is on the Edisto River (the longest freeflowing blackwater river in North America). We had family join us there for some weekend camping and visiting. Givhans has nice trails, but Joe and the boys (and their uncles and cousins) spent more time just off trail collecting firewood than doing anything else.

Edisto Beach State Park is in a higher fee tier, but still only $25/night with standard hookups. The water has been warm enough for my polar bears, who enjoyed their first taste of ocean since February in Southern California. The beach is a short hike or ride from the inland (Live Oak) campground, through quickly changing live oak forest, palmetto hammock, and reedy salt marsh habitats. Joe was scouting for firewood when he surprised a venomous snake, so we stuck to the path after the first day.

Almost as good as the scenery in the park was the beauty of the drive to get there. Ancient live oaks reaching out across the road turned some bits of highway into romantic tunnels, with dramatic curtains of Spanish moss.

And now we're tucked in at my brother's for Thanksgiving week. The weather has gone from sunny and warm (shorts and sunblock) to grey and just chilly enough to enjoy a fire in the fireplace. It's a pleasant time of year to be here, and the South has its own special loveliness. Happy holidays, everyone!

North Carolina

In North Carolina we stayed in the driveway at Donna and Stony's house and played lots of video games, table games, and Legos! Donna made spider shirts with the boys. Aunt Jean was also visiting, and we took daytrips to Hanging Rock State Park, Sciworks (with our ASTC passport), and Pilot Mountain State Park. Here are some photos:

Hanging Rock State Park -- see if you can spot the northern water snake we saw!

SciWorks: Karl with the Van de Graaf generator, Billy and Karl getting hands-on with an argon tube, Leo in the air chair, and me inside a Kaleidoscope.

The rest of our Maryland visit

One of the reasons we raced to Maryland was to make a trip to The National Aquarium in Baltimore before our annual membership expired. We went the day after we arrived, and we applauded the dolphin show, stared at drifting jellies, and fed crickets to the archerfish.

The National Aquarium offers an independent membership, unaffiliated with any other zoos or aquariums. Normally this exclusivity would discourage us from purchasing a membership, but we make exceptions for the National Aquarium and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which I'm hoping we'll visit again early next year. These institutions do what they do extremely well, and they have enough exhibits that we usually take the time to visit them on consecutive days. If we manage to arrange our schedule to get back there just within the year we get even more out of the membership. Our NAIB card expired the day after this visit.

After all the stuff in Greenbelt that I already wrote about, we suddenly had only a week left in Maryland! We moved the camper north to Patapsco Valley State Park and tightly scheduled our last few days.

When I was a kid, my mom would take us car-and-tent camping in both Greenbelt and Patapsco parks, so I love them both. Patapsco has electrical hookups, nice trails and a river, although once again we spent little time in the park, what with all the visiting. One other difference between them is that Patapsco's campground closes for the winter, while Greenbelt remains open year-round.

While at Patapsco, we used one precious afternoon for a family bike ride on part of the BWI Trail, and we spent a little time with some relatives who live in nearby Catonsville.

This past Friday we met still more family in downtown Washington, DC and enjoyed very selective peeks into the National Archives, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Lincoln Memorial.


Saturday we enjoyed a festive family Oktoberfest with about 30 of my closest relatives. We filled up on weisswurst, sauerkraut, potatoes, beer and homemade pies, and we cooed at the new baby in the family. Sunday we enjoyed what felt like a very short day at the Maryland Renaissance Festival - the weather was perfect for wandering about munching turkey legs and drinking cider, laughing our heads off at the outdoor shows, and watching the thrilling action in the jousting arena.

We're exhausted, and we know we missed so much in Maryland this time around. But we'll be back next year, if we keep to our rough plans. For now we're heading south for the winter!

Greenbelt

I'm finally getting around to writing about our four-week stay stay in my home state, and we've already moved on. We know so many people and have so many favorite places in Maryland that we were busy most days. We were also grounded by the flu as four out of five of us grappled with it (Joe was the lucky one).

Here's what greeted us when we pulled into Greenbelt National Park at the end of September:

Needless to say, we didn't use the hiking trails. But that was okay -- the days we stayed home were perfect for campfires or (on rainier days) games, reading, and drawing. Greenbelt doesn't have hookups of any kind, so Joe worked out a practical battery use-and-charging cycle for the new rig.

Joe and I bought new bicycles at Proteus Bicycles in College Park, and he rode his in the biking leg of the 4th Annual International Greenbelt Triathlon. This event involves running twice around Greenbelt Lake (2.6 miles total), riding 8 miles to Franklin's Brewery, and quaffing two pints of any carbonated beverage. We all cheered the participants and I got a t-shirt, because I loved them so.

If anyone's wondering, in the end Karl was the only one of us who fed the notorious chiggers and he also briefly hosted one nymphal deer tick. He has recovered.

Illinois to Maryland

(back to the trip journal)

The rest of the way to Maryland was relatively uneventful. We motored up a mountain in Kentucky to stay at Carter Caves State Resort Park. It was pouring down rain when we got there, and we buzzed past the visitor center. There seems to be plenty to do there if the weather's nice and you're in the mood for exploring.

We're still learning how the new rig combination works, as far as backing into campsites. We can't just drive up and park at any old campsite, unless we happen to find a long, unoccupied pull-through site (this hasn't happened yet -- these might be imaginary). The trailer itself is as long as our old motorhome, plus we have the long-bed crew-cab truck that pulls it. Only the longest sites accommodate the combination *and* leave a spot for the minivan. Reducing our selection still further is the maneuverability of the rig around pavement corners, trees and other obstacles.

This park was our biggest challenge yet, with the added quirk of water and electrical hookups being unpredictably placed among the campsites. Aside from the random setup, it was a well-groomed campground with very nicely graveled sites (the paved pull-throughs were all full).

Somehow we managed to keep from arguing through this difficult parking job in the cold rain. As soon as we were parked, connected, and ready to get cozy inside, the rain stopped. We congratulated ourselves, took a walk, and crashed for the night.

In the morning, the sun was shining through the trees, and we couldn't really ask for a more beautiful mountain forest to wake up in. But this time our eagerness to get back on the road trumped the tug of nature. We left this park relatively unexplored and made a beeline for Maryland, stopping overnight at a Wal*mart in Virginia.

Kansas to Illinois

Our first stop outside of Kansas was a disappointment. Katy Roundhouse Campground and RV park in New Franklin, Missouri is a private accommodation on the Katy Trail, which is part of the Missouri State Park system.

While we highly recommend the Katy Trail for hiking and biking (we've hiked on it before), we don't recommend this private campground. It's better than nothing for people on the trail who just need a place to pitch tent for the night, and aren't particular about the condition of the bathhouses. Half the sites were overgrown and poorly identified, and rampant poison ivy in the open space made it off-limits for play. In our experience it was overpriced and under-maintained. We've had much better luck with state parks in Missouri and surrounding states. We didn't stay long in the morning.

Karl, Leo, and I took off for the St. Louis Zoo, and Joe and Billy, at their slower pace with the trailer, headed straight for our next campground.

The St. Louis Zoo is a gem. There's no entry fee, which makes it worthwhile even for a short break from driving. Parking is steep -- $11 -- but the zoo is located at the end of a road that winds through a public park, and there is free parking along that road. Visiting on a cloudy afternoon, we found nearby parking and had perfect zoo weather.

We were treated to a much larger version of the snake-eats-a-rodent show, as a Dumeril's boa was just starting on a huge white rat when we arrived in the reptile house. We wandered about one-third of the zoo, then got back on the road with time to get to our destination before dark.


Joe found Washington County Conservation Area in Nashville, Illinois by centering the iPhone Google maps search window in his target area and typing "camping" (sometimes there's nowhere else to start). He and Billy were ahead of us with the rig and had started a campfire by the time we got there.

As we pulled into the campground, Leo exclaimed "Oh, it's beautiful!" Our loop was well-shaded with oak and hickory, and had a groundcover of grass, moss, leaf mould and wood chips. Our two days and nights here were rather drippy and damp, but the place didn't run with mud as some campgrounds do. There was plenty of fallen wood not too distant from the campsites, and the menfolk made firewood with the pruning saw.

For other entertainment there was a nice playground, as well as fishing a short walk through the woods at the swampy little lake. The kids caught and threw back a few too-small bass, and watched strange "footprints" move across the water. They later reported that they saw a muskrat jump into the water, so perhaps that was the source of the surface ripples.

The general state of things was quiet, as campgrounds in the woods often are. There were no highway or airplane noises, and any little noise made by campers sort of echoed around the relatively cleared space of the loop. Cozy. We heard great nature noises here, too … red-bellied woodpeckers, plenty of other birds, and some unidentified bigger animals.

Nashville is a nice town, pop. 3200, with a little Kroger grocery, a worn but serviceable laundromat (we hear there is another in town), and the lovely little Coffeehouse Cafe, where we had coffee and nosh while the laundry finished.

We'll visit Nashville and Washington County Conservation Area again.


Next post … things start breaking on the way.

A trip to the fair

So, off we went to the Kansas State Fair on Monday -- a regional grocery store chain was sponsoring a freebie special.  We decided to focus on rides for an hour or so, then check out exhibits, food, and whatever else we could find on the cheap end of the scale. Joe took the older two boys to the far end of the midway and the bigger rides, while I watched Karl ride everything that interested him in kiddie land.

Something in me doesn't love a midway. We go to state and county ag fairs every year, but I prefer the events that omit the traveling rides and booths. The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is a perennial favorite, as is the expensive but very entertaining Maryland Renaissance Festival.

Carnival rides are always fun for the kids, but I am secretly suspicious of the soundness of their fly-by-night erection. I realize that the worry isn't completely rational, considering how we ride around on highways in cars all day long. So we do the rides. Well, they do.

I'm usually ambivalent about the hawkers trying to attract patrons with salutations, wolf whistles, and snarky comments aimed at passersby. Some are annoying, some are amusing. Some are entertaining for their sheer energy or the creativity of their spiel. 

This day there was one who stood out for us. His voice was slightly higher-pitched than Eeyore's, but the inflection and excitement was a great impression of the sawdust donkey, as the carnie intoned this unenthusiastic dirge: "whaaack-a-mole….. whaaack-a-mole……"

I saw a woman with the most delicious looking potato-chips, which actually looked like they were all connected. Suddenly starving, I asked her where she had bought the beautiful thing. She pointed me to the gator-on-a-stick shack, where they were selling this lovely, brown-edged, deep-fried potato ribbon, all curled back in upon itself. 

I bought a large one, bigger than my head, and offered to share it with the guys. But they were saving their stomachs for more rides and ultimately shared a funnelcake among the four of them. I ate most of the crispy, helical potato cloud, rushing to finish it before it got cold. It was being marketed as "gator taters". I don't think that name is adequately reflective of its glorious goodness, so I shall always think of it as The Tanglechip. 

We didn't end up spending much time at the animal exhibits. The poultry house, as usual, housed long rows of cages full of birds at kid's-eye level, sawdust and feathers in the air. It's neat to see all the breeds, from bantams to turkeys. But I might be happier perusing a poster from the hatchery.

The petting zoo (with dixie cups of feed for sale) was mostly exotic animals:  a kangaroo and a cavy, a young giraffe and a zebra foal, a lumbering giant tortoise. At least at the zoo they usually have some room and a bit of appropriate landscaping, maybe something to play with. It was equally exciting and depressing.

Bored with the animals, and noticing the after-school swell of visitors starting, we quickly used up the last of our tickets and ended our short fair day. We made some lovely memories, and every once in a while, we break out in a singsong drone: "whaaack-a-mole…."

Science fandom

We were thrilled tonight to see scientists we recognized from The Sternberg and The McWane Center talking about mosasaurs on the Discovery Channel's Mega-Beasts: T-Rex of the Deep. I wrote about the the ASTC Passport Program just a couple of weeks ago, and these were two of the museums I mentioned among our favorites. 

We have spoken with these guys, and we love the institutions that they are an essential part of! They bring us so much, from a general appreciation of science to an ever-increasing body of knowledge about our world.

We're science fans! 

A morning at the zoo

On Sunday morning we visited the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas. We're members of another zoo that has a reciprocal agreement with them, but on Sunday they were having a corporate-sponsored drive to recycle phone books. Joe's sister (at whose home our home is currently parked) planned the trip and provided our admission, as well as increasing the adult-to-child ratio to one.

One adult for each child is an advantage on any outing, particularly when there are so many ways to go, and we're satisfied to go at their pace. Even when we all head in the same direction, we spread ourselves along a series of exhibits like a slinky, the tail catching up periodically, but sometimes leap-frogging past the head to become the advance party. No hurry, no waiting. A good way to do the zoo.

The boys each grabbed a map and started pointing out the animals they most wanted to see. Karl (the youngest, five years old) appointed himself leader and guide and showed us, on the map and by pointing, exactly how we were going to go to the petting zoo to feed the goats. I had no idea Karl could read a map, and at first I thought he was working completely from memory of the zoo's layout. But he seemed to be able to relate the map to the real world whenever we had a choice to make. Neat.

Our kids have always had a lot of interest in animals. I credit The Kratt Brothers with planting the seed of animal adventure. Drawn in by the Kratts' engaging personalities and informal style, the boys have watched hours of VHS and DVD copies of their PBS and National Geographic shows. Besides learning a respectful and curious attitude about animals, they've learned loads of facts about wild animals and pets, common species and endangered ones, and some animals I had never heard of. A stuffed genet in the Smithsonian was instantly recognizable to a then six-year-old Billy, while I struggled to classify it among animals I could name. My boys, they love the animals.

We were lucky to see two relatively rare sights on this zoo visit, both in the North American Prairie area. A beautiful white-tail buck was coming out of velvet, his antlers covered in blood with tatters of the nourishing skin still hanging off of them. I had never seen this phase of the antler cycle. Another patron told us that we were lucky to catch it because it takes only a day or two. It was an opportunity to note to the kids that bleeding isn't always a sign of weakness or trauma, and that vessels can be grown for a specific purpose then shut off when no longer needed. A specific bit of wonder illustrating a general concept. Double-neat.

Nearby in the reptile exhibit, we saw that the massasauga had an inert white rodent in its cage. We stalled there a few minutes, hoping this fresh kill was about to be eaten. Sure enough, after a false start on the wrong end, the snake worked its jaws around the rat's head and began to encase the rat, rather the way you would pull on a snug sweater. If you had no arms. And you were the sweater. I didn't take pictures -- I rarely do when I'm really interested in what's going on.

We contrasted how we get food into our bellies with how this snake was doing it. We speculated about how eating might affect the snake's breathing. (I just realized I'd forgotten to look this up.) Other patrons came, gaped, exclaimed, chatted, and went on as the meal progressed (maybe ten minutes). Billy and Leo had seen enough by the time the mammal was halfway inside the reptile, and ran on to the next exhibit. But Karl insisted on watching to the end.

Eventually the tip of the tail poked out like a long pink tongue alongside the narrower, flicking black tongue. Karl loved telling the folks just arriving exactly what that wormlike thing was! And then it was gone, the bolus a barely noticeable anomaly between the head and the thick body. I admired Karl's patience and I enjoyed watching the entire process. I probably would not have taken the time without his insistence. Sometimes, oftentimes, the kids are the teachers. Triple-neat.

The best thing about having a zoo membership is that you don't have to do the whole thing in one day. When tempers get short and appetites grow teeth ... you can be done with it. Even if it's only been a couple of hours, and you've only seen a third of the zoo. There's always next time. And there's always another zoo, or a movie, or a tidepool, or a forest ...