Well, it has certainly been a long time since I last posted, more than two years to be exact.  We have remembered our trip west so fondly and have been anxious to make another big trip.  Now that day has come.  We headed out early this afternoon on a much-anticipated trip to Maine.  This trip won’t be as long as our trip west, but we are planning to give it a full three weeks.  As Charlie is again able to be with us for the full trip, we feel so fortunate to be able to travel for a full three weeks.  I took most of the kids on a trip to Alabama by myself last year, and while we had a wonderful time, it wasn’t the same without Charlie there. While in Alabama, I found myself with no time to blog as I was the only driver and the only adult.

At the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL – Amelia, Dominic, Nicholas, Isaac, Nathanael holding AnaClaire, Annette, and Alex. Damien didn’t want to participate 🙂

At the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL – Nicholas in front of his favorite plane, an SR-71 Blackbird.

At The Ave Maria Grotto, St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, AL – Annette, Amelia, Dominic, Isaac, and AnaClaire

Charlie wasn’t real thrilled with the idea of us travelling places without him because he wanted to be able to partake in the fun too.  We’ve talked a lot about travelling for a couple weeks and then having him fly out somewhere to meet us, so maybe we will try that someday.  For now, we just feel blessed to have him with us.

After more intense planning than we did for our six week trip west, we are finally on our way.  Because we are camping more in-season than we did in the past, I really felt like we needed to make campground reservations.  Also, because our camper is longer than most, the larger campsites are harder to come by.  After deciding on a general route, I began searching for campgrounds.  Most of the campgrounds I found were state parks, which hopefully means that we will have larger campsites than many private campgrounds offer.  On the downside, we won’t have the luxury of electricity or water within our campsite.  The kids are also two years older of course, which means they were able to be of more help.  Their help did make getting ready for this trip a little easier.  I only had about one hour of venturing into meltdown mode before we left this morning.  I have learned that everything isn’t going to be perfect.  Many people have reminded me that we can always stop and purchase whatever it was we forgot.  I guess my trip to Alabama helped me to learn that lesson last year as one child actually forgot to bring her clothes and shoes.  We made a stop at the outlets that I have stopped at countless times in Commerce, GA, and purchased her a couple outfits.  The kids and I all survived that small trip together, so I feel like I am getting a little better at this each time.

Starting out on our trip to Maine.

We were blessed to leave a little earlier than we had hoped, not because we actually finished our packing early but because Charlie got off earlier than we had thought he would.  The temperature forecast for home today was around 97 degrees, so we couldn’t wait to get out of there and up into the higher elevations.  Of course when we reached the higher elevations, it was still 91 degrees.  Hopefully it will cool down enough to make it fairly comfortable at whatever WalMart we end up at.  I am really hoping that the temperatures that we find in Maine will be a little more tolerable than South Carolina in July and August.

I have decided that the end of July is not exactly the right time to take a long summer vacation.  Our garden is producing so much better this year than it has in the last couple years.  I’ve been canning a great deal, so it is really hard to leave it.  I really had to resist the urge to put time and effort into making a batch of pickles before we pulled out today.  Our cucumbers are actually about done for the year, but we planted more cucumber seeds this week in the hopes that we can get a second cucumber harvest in September / October timeframe.  We set out some soaker hoses on our new seeds and said a prayer that they will survive to provide more vegetables for us in the coming months.  We left our garden and animals in the hands of some very capable and generous friends, so I know that everything will be well cared for.

Some of our pigs

Our lima beans

Dominic in front of our giant sunflowers.