O-o-o-o-o-klahoma!

     The road trip is part of the fun for me. I love the hours of relative quiet. In my world, it is a rare and precious thing to have so much uninterrupted time to think. The little ones are buckled in and (mostly) happy to color, play with their road toys, or listen to a book on CD. That was one of the pluses of leaving The Magic School Bus behind. Driving the RV while towing a vehicle behind is pretty stressful. It was nice to be able to just enjoy the ride this time. The Dirty South is both our former and future home, so there was no shortage of friends and family that were kind enough to say yes when we invited ourselves offer us a shower and a place to sleep for a few nights. Ohio still had snow on the ground just a few weeks from our planned departure date, not to mention all we would save in gas. It just made sense to travel light for this leg of the trip.
     After a quick overnight stay in St. Louis, MO, we arrived at my brother's home in Tulsa, OK. I hadn't been back to Oklahoma since I buried my Dad five years ago. The sight of red dirt was enough for me to start tearing up. My big brother is one of my favorite peoples, as are his family, and the littlest cousins had a time getting to know each other. We didn't do anything terribly exciting--well, unless you count John Thomas's Ninja Turtle pool party, where Eden almost drowned--but other than that, we just sat on the front porch, drinking tea, talking, and watching the kids play. Doesn't get much better than that, if you ask me.

Uncle Shannon praying with the littles

     Our next stop was Lawton, The L, The Shady 580 (That's Lawton's area code for those that have the pleasure of not knowing.) I grew up in Lawton, went to school there. My dear high school bestie put us up for a couple of nights. This is not the first time she let me crash at her place with all my kids, which is quite generous of her because she doesn't have kids, and I have, well, a lot of them. Plus our friend Chaka came down and stayed with her two girls, too. Poor Starr. Poor Sir William the dog. They were such good sports. We only had two days in The L. The first of which, we spent perusing the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center. We started studying Plains Indians before we left Ohio. 

We learned about daily life and about Native American culture past and present. I have a personal interest in Native American culture, and I'm always glad for the opportunity to share it with my kids. My own grandmother was half Cherokee. Her story is pretty amazing. She was a concubine/slave of sorts in the hills of Missouri. She had been bought and sold twice, once for goats, and was on her second "husband" when she and my grandfather met picking cotton and fell in love. My grandpa spent the entire summer working alongside her and saved enough to buy her freedom. They were married for over half a century.
     The museum is small, but packed with information and organized in a logical and aesthetically pleasing way. We loved the art.

Virtual buffalo hunt. You shoot arrows with your finger!

Jesse thought the Comanche Code Talkers from WWII were pretty much the coolest thing ever.

The next day we visited the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge and Mount Scott.

   That night, the big kids babysat (bless them) and the grown folks hung out at The Twisted Taco, a local restaurant owned by my childhood friend and next-door-neighbor, Kyle. Several friends happened to be in town that weekend, and we had a little mini-reunion. We closed the place down, then locked the door and hung out even longer. It was good for the soul. Reminds me of an old Brownie song. "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold." Truth. Scouts honor.

1987 and 2015

I Love New York

It's been four months since we saw NYC. We only had a few short hours--such a tease. We wound up returning home earlier than planned, and Thanksgiving and Christmas happened, and I just never got around to this post. I wish we had a week to see NYC. Or two. What a beautiful, vibrant place, so full of life and so contrary to the stereotypes I've heard all my life. I met the most helpful, warm people, people who were happy to help what was surely the 100th tourist that day who didn't know how to use the subway. I so hope I get to go back one day. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves . . .

The ferry

NYC Subway!

The School of Hard Knocks Meets Ivy League: Connecticut to Pennsylvania

  It took me a while to get settled and post about our last few weeks on the road. We have been back home in KY for a couple of weeks now. If we had stuck to our original plan we would just be getting home this week. We had a few crazy mishaps along the way. I broke off the awning trying to pull it out. A crazy gust of wind blew it up over the top of TMSB and snapped both side poles. Complete loss. We just cut it off and threw it away. We are learning about rv life as we go. When we started, we didn't realize that freezing temps can damage your rig. (Busted sewer tank, anyone?) So we decided to cut the trip short as temps began to fall to protect our investment and the rest of the trip. We also have a few very expensive repairs we need to make before our next trip. (Stuff we knew was broken before we left.) So we may just stay parked for winter, depending on if we feel like coughing up a several thousand more dollars between now and spring. I did, however, fix my hot water heater all by myself. I replaced the thermostat with a little advice from a friend and You Tube. So that evens things out right?

      We left New Hampshire November 1.  It was a little sad, as we had made friends and felt very safe and comfortable at Saddleback Campground in Northwood. Nancy and Les, the owners, treated us like family, fussing over us and making sure we had everything we needed.  I fell in love with the beautiful scenery and warm people.  We will remember it forever.
     We arrived in Connecticut pretty uneventfully. We had originally planned on boon docking in a Wal-Mart parking lot that weekend, then heading to PA, but our generator was broken, and it was too cold. For those not familiar with rv lingo, boon docking is parking overnight for free. Many Wal-Marts allow rvers to do this, as do some rest stops. You are not "plugged in," so no running water or electricity. In the summer, that is okay for a night or two. When it's 30 degrees, not so much. We were scrambling at the last minute trying to find an rv park still open, so we wouldn't freeze. I found a place, but we would have to park in one spot on Saturday, then move to an overflow spot on Sunday. Beats freezing, so we took it. We were tired from breaking down and driving and setting back up in the rain, and the park was kind of depressing after our beautiful spot on the pond in NH. It was basically a big asphalt circle, with rvs nearly touching each other, and in the rain, it was a big dirty puddle. We were grateful to have heat though--so we closed all the blinds and relaxed with Redbox. The next day we switched spots, which wasn't that big of a deal, because we had to leave to go get propane anyway. The tank is attached to rv, so you can't just run the tank over to a filling station. Because it had been cold and pouring rain the whole stay, we hadn't investigated our next spot (the "overflow" spot.) It was a few inches wider than TMSB with a shed on one side and a trailer bed on the other. Plus there was another rv parked at an angle so I couldn't just pull straight in. People. We were a sight. Jacob, my 16-year-old son--barely driving himself--was trying to ground-guide me into this crazy spot. The owner looked a little disturbed when he came to collect payment the day before and realized I was traveling alone--and, um, driving alone. He must have been nervously awaiting our switch and came tearing through the parking lot offering assistance. (Smile) He did the ground guiding, and I nailed it, first time. There was about 2-3 inches of space on either side of my rig. Boom. Take that, Haters.
     Yale University was only about 15 minutes away, so we drove up on Sunday to check it out. It was amazing, every last gold-foiled, intricately ornate architectural detail. I'm now convinced I should have gone to an Ivy League school and become--I don't know--rich and famous. Just kidding. Sort of. I was swooning the whole time.

     We especially enjoyed the beautiful Sterling Memorial Library. The work that went into this building--I can't even imagine. I don't think I could actually study here; I'd be gawking the whole time. Not sure I could ever get used to it.

     The Yale University Art Gallery was our favorite. It is free to the public, and has a huge collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture, jewelry, coins, photographs, cartoons--all kinds of fascinating stuff from just about every time period and culture. Gabby has taken an interest in art the past year, and I was excited that she was excited and interested. I was proud that she picked up on a few examples of pointillism that we had studied previously in art and have plans to add this follow up activity to our curriculum in the next few weeks.

These are tiny hand-paintings!

Very cool viewing the John Trumbull American Revolution collection after doing the Boston Freedom Trail

Andy Warhol, Eggs

Roy Lichtenstein, Blam

     The students we met were friendly and fun, and the Yale University Dueling Association even let us play foam sword fights with them. We dueled with the brightest young minds in the country, y'all, Be jealous.

   Monday we left for Pennsylvania. The trip took longer than we expected. I have an app that tells us where low bridge crossings are so we can avoid them, but 20 minutes from our destination, our GPS took us to a bridge that we were too heavy to cross. No rv's allowed. No problem. We'll just turn around and go back to the highway and find an alternate route, right? Wrong. We were towing our car behind us. You can't back up using this kind of tow bar. It will snap. It was a little mountain road, and there was no where to turn around, so my worst rv nightmare occurred. I was stuck and had to disconnect the car, turn TMSB around, and reconnect the car. Thank God there was no traffic. The workers at the bridge tried to be helpful, and gave us directions. After the bridge debacle, these guys sent us on a tiny one lane road with a mountain on one side, a cliff and river on the other, and a tiny wisp of a guardrail. Thankfully, it was only 5-6 miles. We arrived, white knuckled, but none the worse for wear. Our new parking place was lovely and quiet. We had big plans for the Mid-Atlantic region, some of which, we accomplished.  Some of it got axed, but I'll leave all those juicy details for next post.