Sierra Nevada Mountains

Today we are heading to Yosemite or Sequoia National Park – we still aren’t sure. After breakfast and showers for most of us, we pack up and head out with the intention of running back to WalMart in Barstow to replace one of our camper tires that is looking too worn to go on much farther. Well, of course on this kind of trip, you are going to have to expect to have a flat tire at some point in time. So the flat tire on the camper happened on the way to WalMart. After 3 hours at WalMart getting new tires on the camper, we were finally on our way.

We finally decided to skip going to Sequoia and just drive to Yosemite. That was a hard decision, but I knew they had sequoias at Yosemite, so we decided that was just going to be good enough. We got onto US 395 and drove from about 2:15 until we got to a small town outside of Yosemite at around 8:00. Most of the trip, we were still surrounded by the desolation of the desert. I remember reading about one small town that was just non-existent anymore. It used to be a town that people would stop at while travelling on the highway to get gasoline or to spend the night. It had a nice hotel and seemed to be a popular stop. However, as that highway became less popular and cars became more fuel efficient, stops weren’t as necessary. The hotel eventually burned, the post office was closed, and now there is literally nothing but a foundation or two left, although the town is still listed on the map.

Eventually, the desert on the west of us changed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were beautiful. We passed through several nice, small towns that finally had some trees. The mountains were so rugged. We knew we would pass Mt. Whitney, which at 14,494ft is the highest peak in the continental United States. We couldn’t tell exactly which peak it was as we saw a couple that appeared to be pretty close in size, but they were all big and beautiful. I love the Blue Ridge Mountains at home, but the Sierra Nevadas have a very different beauty.

Rainbow in Bishop, CA.

We passed through some areas that were shaped by glaciers and volcanic activity where we also saw a beautiful rainbow.  It is really neat to see some of the things that we studied in Earth Science this year come to reality for us, whether it is the black rock left from volcanic activity or glacial moraines at the base of the Sierra Nevadas. Unfortunately, I left my Earth Science book at home, so I need to pick up a decent book at one of these visitor’s centers so I can review some of this with the kids.

Sunset over the Sierra Nevada Mountains

The change in altitude that we went through was totally amazing. When we left Barstow, CA we were at about 2100 ft. in elevation. When we arrived at the northeastern corner of Yosemite, we were at over 9000 ft. of elevation. 3000 ft. elevation always seems so high to me when we are in Blowing Rock, NC, so 9000 ft. elevation just blows my mind. It was a good deal cooler when we arrived than when we left Barstow’s 80 degrees or so.

We pulled into a campground, unhooked the camper, and went to find dinner at a nice barbeque place. Then back to put us all to bed. I wonder what Yosemite will have in store for us tomorrow.

Blessings,

Rebecca

Calico, CA, a former silver mine town, now a ghost town.

Written by Nathanael Whisonant.

We wake up at a Wal-Mart in Barstow, California. We left to find a place to go for the day. First we found a Desert Discovery Center. Well that wasn’t opened on Mondays. So that did not work. So then we were going to do an 8 mile loop at Rainbow Basin Natural Area. Well you can’t have a camper with you because there are sharp turns. So that did not work out either. After that we found a place called Calico.

Dominic, Damien, and Amelia on the train in Calico.

Calico has lots of silver mines and also is a ghost town. When I heard that it was a ghost town I said to my Mom, ”So it is a haunted town.” She said,” No. It is a deserted town.” We found out that there was a campground there. We dropped our camper off at the campground and went to go check out the place. We found out that there was a train and Amelia, Dominic, Damien, and Mom went on the train. After that we all looked around the town and saw a schoolhouse. It was very interesting. A sign said that it was also used for a Sunday school. After we left the schoolhouse we saw a Sheriff’s office and we were put in jail by my dad. Just kidding. It was a fake jail but my dad still locked us in. Then we found a bath house. The bath house was not only a bath house it was also a barber shop. Then we found a museum that had some tools that the miners would have used. Finally, everyone’s favorite part, shopping. Some of the little kids got recorders made out of bamboo and post cards. The big kids got post cards. After that we were walking back to the car and my mom saw a carpenter’s shop and Ryon and I went in and looked around. The carpentry was beautiful but we did not get anything. Finally we get in the car and leave.

The kids in jail – I would have liked to leave some of them there for a short time.

So after that we went and did that 8 mile loop. It was beautiful. The colors were great. I loved them. There was a greenish color rock. We all think that it is copper. We also saw sand dunes. Ryon ran up one of them. I could barely see him, although he wasn’t very high up. My Mom saw little shiny things on a sand dune.   First it was just glass but then it was a little shiny rock. We never found out what it was.

Rainbow Basin was really a rainbow of colors, not seen nearly as well here as in person.

Rebecca and Charlie at Rainbow Basin.

Ryon, on top of a giant sand dune in Rainbow Basin.

Then we went to go see my Uncle Robby, my mom’s brother. We met him at a Mexican restaurant and ate there. After that we went back to our camp site and visited with my Uncle Robby. I made a fire and we had s’mores. After a while he left and we went to bed and that was the end of the day.

“Cpt. America” and “Ironman” (Rob has successfully completed 1 Ironman race and will be running another very soon.)

I miss you all. God bless you all. Thank you for your prayers.

Nathanael

Our family overlooking Lake Mojave

We got a great night’s sleep at the cabin in Flagstaff and awoke to a bright, beautiful day. After a delicious breakfast made by Charlie of eggs, fruit, and toast, we packed the camper back up, said goodbye to our Arizona friends, and started driving again. We had had a nice couple days of not much driving, but now we needed to get back on the road. Hoover Dam was our next destination.

Desert Bighorn Sheep

On the way to Hoover Dam, we saw a great deal of desert. We stopped at an overlook on US 93 to view the Colorado River and Lake Mohave. One of the kids saw what we called a mountain goat just as we were getting out of the van. I was astonished at how good a mountain goat’s footing is. It was walking around on the side of a very steep, rocky cliff without a care in the world. We watched it for a while and read the signs at the overlook. Here we found out that these were actually called Desert Bighorn Sheep. They live on both sides of the highway and have had overpasses created especially for the sheep to travel back and forth. We had a great deal of fun watching them.

Hoover Dam from observation bridge

Rebecca with kids overlooking Hoover Dam.

We finally reached Hoover Dam where we had to go through a vehicle inspection to make sure we weren’t going to blow up the dam and cause widespread destruction to all land downstream. After that, we were able to park and walk out on a bridge to view the dam. It was amazing to see such a marvelous work of engineering. One of the attendants at the vehicle inspection station explained to me that the dam was 726 feet high and 660 feet thick at its base. After walking out on the overlook bridge, we climbed back into the van and were able to drive over the top of Hoover Dam and view the underside of the bridge and the Colorado River. Wow!

View of the Colorado River from the top of Hoover Dam

Observation bridge

We kept driving and drove to Las Vegas. After attempting some quick shopping on the outside of the city, we decided to try to see some of the outlandishness and lights of this crazy city. We drove around for a little bit and then decided to keep going. Las Vegas was not a place we wanted to WalMart camp. After driving around on the interstates and seeing some of the horrible billboards that were there, we decided that we wanted to get out of there as fast as possible and hopefully never return. I don’t know how people can even think about raising children in such a city when just driving around you see immoral signs.

We thought we would be able to drive a little farther and find a place to camp, but basically there is nothing. We found one exit that we thought may be possible, but it turned out to be just more casinos and such so we kept driving. We drove for another three hours before finding a place to stop in Barstow, CA. There is pretty much nothing between exit 1 in Primm, Nevada and Barstow, CA. You are driving through the Mojave Desert and may see a gas station every once in a while, but otherwise there is nothing. Of course, it was also pitch black while we were driving, so we weren’t able to see any of the views of the desert. We broke the “no driving at night so as not to miss the scenery” rule again.

“Cpt. America” on “Mars”

When we finally pull into the WalMart in Barstow, we got the kids to bed without any problem. It was so quiet – the kids went to sleep immediately, including AnaClaire (who has been rather fussy at night several times but has been getting better with each passing night). Tomorrow we get to meet up with my brother, Rob, who lives in Pasadena.

Blessings,

Rebecca

View of the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon – what a site to see! When we arrived in the park, I had no idea that we would be driving right by views of the Grand Canyon that we could see from the van. We were planning to go straight to our campsite and unhook the camper so that we could still have the opportunity to see some sites in the afternoon. However, when we started seeing astonishing views from the van, we had to pull into some of the overlooks. The views were breathtaking. We hopped back into the van after looking for a little bit so that we could hurry and go drop off the camper.

Charlie and the kids at an overlook of the Grand Canyon.

It was rather chilly and windy outside, so we opted to take a shuttle bus ride on the Hermit’s Rest Road that allowed us to get out at any of the shuttle stops. Each of the shuttle stops had an overlook so you could spend time gazing at the Grand Canyon. After spending time at one of the overlooks, we decided that it was really too cold to get out of the shuttle and that we could just look from the warmth of the shuttle. We did the whole shuttle tour admiring so many views that we were able to see. After departing the shuttle, we were walking back to the car when we found a bull elk (also known as a wapiti) munching on something in a parking lot. He ignored us, but of course we watched him and snapped a couple pictures. We saw quite a bit of elk while we were in Grand Canyon National Park: two bull elk and a couple different groups of cow elks (females).

Bull Elk we saw while driving around at the Grand Canyon.

We headed back to the campsite for dinner and bed. We were expecting to meet up with friends of ours from South Carolina that had moved to Arizona. We were hoping that they would make it in that evening, but they had all kinds of difficulties on the way, so we didn’t see them until the next morning. Friday morning, we awoke to cold weather and rain, which would turn to sleet and snow at times. After we all had breakfast, we headed back to the canyon to see more views, despite the weather. Well, it turned out to be just miserable in terms of the weather, so after a visit to the Visitor’s Center and another ride on the shuttle tour, we went back to the campsite for lunch in more rain. The campfire helped, but it wasn’t long before we all were ready to flee the campground in favor of someplace dry.

On the way to Flagstaff, we drove through a steady snow. It was beautiful and amazing to us who rarely see much snow to be driving through snow in May. We ended up being able to rent a cabin in Flagstaff with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms that slept a lot of people. There were a total of 25 of us in this cabin, and most of us had beds. It gave us a good opportunity to let the kids play together and for the adults to visit. We had such wonderful conversation. It was so rejuvenating to spend time with another large, Catholic family discussing our faith.

Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, AZ

On Saturday we travelled to Sedona, AZ to see the Chapel of the Holy Cross. This is a Catholic chapel that was built integrated into the red rocks of Sedona. It has a huge cross as part of the frame of the building on the outside and is also built into the inside of the chapel. It was so impressive to see the many people that were there to see a Catholic chapel. I was able to spend some time in prayer. Especially endearing to me was a statue of St. Michael the Archangel (also the name of the parish we belong to) that came from 17^th century Mexico and was hand carved, painted, and gilded.

Statue of St. Michael the Archangel in the Chapel of the Holy Cross.

Most of the areas that we have been driving through for the past couple days have been in the high desert. We haven’t seen a great deal of trees, just cacti, scrub bushes and trees, and little tufts of “grass”. Driving to Sedona we drove through Oak Creek Canyon where it looked much more like the forests of the Carolinas and southeastern United States that I am used to. There were large trees in forests beside beautiful running rivers with small waterfalls. We picnicked in one of these spots where the kids were able to jump around on the boulders and stick their feet in the cold water. I spent time trying to identify a bird that was flitting around us a lot. I never was able to identify it, but I’m going to keep trying!

Blessings,

Rebecca

From the trail we were on at Zion National Park.

We left Bryce Canyon and drove the not so long trip towards Zion with the hopes of finding an RV park to stay in for the night. When we got close, we found some signs indicating that because we were pulling the camper, we would be too long to enter Zion National Park. So, we needed a place to drop the camper. We found a nice RV resort, just a couple miles from the eastern entrance to Zion to spend the night. We got showers again and were able to recharge our batteries for the camper. I was finally able to get to a WiFi to publish a post – we’ve been having a lot of technical difficulties, so I have gotten behind in publishing the blog. Please hang in with us while I am learning. There has been a huge learning curve for me with this whole blogging thing.

Anyway, the people at the resort allowed us to park our camper at an out-of-the-way spot and leave it for the day without having to pay for a second night while we went to explore Zion. Charlie and I totally agree that each day we see sights that we think just can’t be topped. They are so beautiful. Well, Zion was no exception. We definitely thought Bryce Canyon was the most beautiful place we had ever seen, until we entered Zion. We were so glad we weren’t pulling the camper because of the tight turns and low tunnels. The sights were just astonishing. There are no words for the beauty we saw. It is so hard to believe that such a place even exists here on this earth. I keep imagining being a Native American, mountain man, or early pioneer and wandering into such a beautiful place. We finally found a place to park and took the shuttle back into the park. We hopped off the shuttle to do some hiking. We chose to do a mixture of moderate and easy hiking. I didn’t think that the hike was as great as Bryce Canyon’s hike, but we still had a marvelous time. Damien said, “Take a picture,” over and over and over again. Dominic has an active imagination. He kept talking about a volcano and how his family died in the volcano. We finally managed to convince him that it couldn’t have been his family who died, so then he changed it to his friends. We heard that over and over again too. . We finished the day with a quick trip to the museum and, of course, the gift shop. I have decided to collect pre-made fabric quilt rectangles to make into a quilt for our family to remember this trip. Kathy, I’m going to need some help with that, I’m sure. Anyone up for a weekend of quilting somewhere, just let me know!

Zion National Park

Because pictures and words don’t do Zion any justice, take my word for it and make sure you make a trip there in your lifetime. It will be beyond your wildest imagination. Being a Worley, I took lots of pictures. As I have looked through my pictures, I am so dismayed at how the pictures fail to capture the beauty and magnificence of the sights. The pictures will, however, always help to keep the vividness of Zion alive in our memories.

We wanted to make some real inroads towards the Grand Canyon, so we headed out of Zion and drove back to Page, AZ for the popular WalMart camping destination. This time we noticed that there was a whole section of parking lot lights that were out, so we were able to camp in relative darkness. We had quite a storm come through this morning with a lot of unexpected wind and rain. Praise God that it wasn’t worse.

Page, AZ is a destination itself. The Colorado River is dammed there at the Glen Canyon Dam to form a beautiful lake amongst the mesas. The bridge over the dam has beautiful views of the lake and Glen Canyon.

As a very important note, we want to send out some very special thank yous. To Big Al (Charlie’s dad), Dale, Evan, and all employees of Whisonant Electrical Services, we owe you so much. This trip would not have been possible without your generosity of filling in for Charlie while we are gone. To the people taking care of our animals and our home, we thank you. To those who are supporting us with prayers, we thank you. To those of you who generously gave various things to help us along on our trip, we thank you. You are all in our thoughts and prayers.

The kids having a snack on the trail at Zion.

By the way, travelling US 89 to the Grand Canyon is synonymous with riding a roller coaster, especially with a camper attached. Hopefully there aren’t too many typos in this post.

Tomorrow, we will be meeting friends at the Grand Canyon for a few days, so I will be taking a break from posting and will get another out on Sunday or Monday.

Blessings,

Rebecca

Charlie and the kids on the trail at Bryce Canyon, Utah.

We spent last night at another WalMart in a small town in northern Arizona. When we pulled in, we realized that camping at this particular WalMart was a popular thing to do. Charlie counted 16 campers in the parking lot when we pulled out this morning. He’s pretty sure there were some that had left earlier too. Usually we only see three or four others at the most.

We start our day nice and early because we want to get to Bryce Canyon and do some hiking. Annette has been asking us every day if we will be doing some hiking today, so she was very excited to hear that today was the day. As we head to Bryce Canyon in Utah, we find more and more trees and grass. At first we see a good deal of irrigation, but as we drive farther we even begin to see creeks with rushing water. We drive through Red Rock Canyon in Dixie National Forest. I had to wonder why in the world there is a national forest with the name Dixie all the way out in Utah. Utah isn’t exactly known for being part of Dixie, and as far as I know, Dixie is only synonymous with the South. The mystery was solved when I read in a book that St. George, Utah (which is in Dixie National Forest) has an unusually warm year round climate. It was even warm enough to grow and mill cotton during the Civil War. That explained it for me.

When we get to Bryce Canyon, we first kill some time in the gift shop while Ryon tries to find some WiFi again so that he can log in to his last history class for his oral presentation. Boy, that was a zoo trying to find him a place to use WiFi when we were on a short time frame before his class began. We let the kids look around in the gift shop (we won’t be doing that too much anymore), but a couple of them did choose to buy hiking sticks with their money, which, in the end, we decided was a good idea. We ate lunch, packed our supply backpack, and caught a shuttle to one of the trail drop off points.

Bryce Canyon, Utah

We finally get it all worked out and head off for a hike. We did a 2.9 mile hike from the canyon rim down to the canyon floor and back up. It was beautiful. The kids were all such troopers. We started out going down into the canyon with Dominic on Ryon’s back, Damien on Nicholas’ back, Charlie with the supplies backpack, and AnaClaire on my back. The hike down went well. We were hiking right along the edge of cliffs so we were holding hands of all littles that were likely to have difficulties. They all listened and obeyed so well, and we heard next to no complaints. When we reached the canyon floor, we let Dominic and Damien walk – they did great. We stopped for a snack under an overhang and enjoyed watching a ground squirrel (I believe) begging us for food. Knowing how important it is not to feed the wildlife, we resisted its begging despite its cuteness. Back up the canyon we went through lots of switchbacks. It was not an easy hike up, especially for those of us carrying kids. We eventually let Dominic walk holding a hand, so that Ryon could have a break. I, of course, was bringing up the rear, huffing and puffing my way up that canyon. Ryon hiked with me and was so sweet to offer to carry AnaClaire for me so that I could have a break. I persevered in the end, and we made it out. Yes it was tough, but I look forward to doing much more. I’ll be able to handle those hikes better at the end of this trip than I did yesterday.

On the trail at Bryce Canyon. Yes, I am constantly that far behind, usually with Dominic.

After the get back to the van and camper, we head out. I would have liked to drive around the park some to see more of the sights but it wouldn’t have been easy to drive around with the camper attached. I also had wanted to stay for a stargazing show that they had that night, but it was looking rather cloudy, so I didn’t think the stars would be very visible. On our way out, we see some mule deer as well as some prong-horn deer on the side of the road. Seeing wildlife that we are not familiar with is always a treat. I took pictures of some plants, birds and such that we wanted to identify later. I have a great app on my phone that helps to identify birds and am hoping that I get the chance to use it. We had no signal the one time I tried.

We decided to go ahead and make some headway toward Zion National Park and will see what beauty it has in store for us tomorrow. We are hoping to come across an RV campground along the way. We saw several nearby the entrance to Bryce Canyon, so we figured that finding one near Zion wouldn’t be a problem. God always provides!

Blessings,

Rebecca

Damien, Isaac, Alex, Amelia, and AnaClaire enjoying an ice cream treat.

Well, we finally got showers.  Yay!  We drove last night to Grants, NM.  We needed a place to take showers, plug in our camper to recharge its batteries, do laundry, etc.  So all of that happened.  It was great!  Our campsite was just across from the playground, so the kids were having a great time on the playground.  Of course, they had already had their showers, so they came away rather dirty.  We were still in the desert, so there wasn’t any grass – just a lot of dirt.  There was a merry-go-round on the playground, and of course Dominic had a grand time riding it, and promptly vomited up his continental breakfast that was provided at the campground.  He recovered well though.  We were late getting on the road (11:00am), so again we spent the day trying to play catch up with our schedule.

Keams Canyon, AZ

We took a very scenic highway in New Mexico that took us through the Hopi and Navaho territories.  We saw a couple canyons and many mesas.  The colors of the mesas were just gorgeous.  You could see lines of color in the rock.  We were still in the high desert areas, so there were still no trees to speak of.  I was able to see 3 wild goats on the side of the road.  There were not many gas stations, so we filled up at pretty much each area that had a gas station (those were at least an hour apart).  I was constantly surprised at how many abandoned homes there were.  The homes were mostly very small with lots of mobile homes.  We saw so many structures (homes, businesses, outbuildings) with tires on top of the roof.  There were tires everywhere we looked: hanging on fences, partially buried in the ground, etc.  I still haven’t discovered why there were tires on top of roofs, so if anyone can enlighten me, please do so!   I read in a AAA book that there are about 200,000 Native Americans who live in this area, which is about the size of the state of West Virginia.  It seemed very lonely out in some of those places.

I am hoping that when we finally stop at one of our destinations I may be able to find a good book to describe the geological features I am seeing.  The kids and I studied Earth Science this year, and I remember a little about the geology of this area, but I want to learn much more about it.  The scenery was just absolutely fascinating, which is one of the reasons that it took me so long to get yesterday’s post out.  I was mesmerized by the beauty.

Arizona

We still didn’t quite reach our destination for tonight, so we may be modifying our schedule.  It is so hard to pass interesting place after interesting place because we really want to have the time to see something particular.  I am always so curious – I just want to learn so much.  I am looking forward to slowing down some now that we have finally reached our initial destination area.  Books are always a good solution for me, but I don’t know if I will be able to find a book to explain the tires.

Until tomorrow,

Rebecca

New Mexico

We spent the night outside of Oklahoma City at yet another WalMart.  I had seen severe storms, including tornadoes, predicted for the area before we ever left home, so I was a little concerned.  However, the weather was fine when we pulled in.  We all settled in for the best night of sleep I’ve had since we started.  Thankfully, the storms waited until about 4:00 or so to start.  Thank God, it was just more thunderstorms, but boy were they loud and strong.  The power to WalMart was knocked out, which was indeed a blessing since it took out the power to the parking lot lights and we were able to sleep in darkness.  We made it through the storms without any issues and said our morning prayers thanking God for our safety.

Charlie took the kids into WalMart just before we left to pick up a couple food items.  They came back with a beautiful card and white roses for me for Mother’s Day.  I spent the day sniffing those roses.  They smelled so pretty.  It was so wonderful to smell something truly beautiful when I had stinky feet sitting just behind me.  It is time for showers for this crew!

Windmills in Texas

As we drive through Texas and Oklahoma we see much flat land.  This is what I always envision when people speak of the flat areas of Kansas.  There are wind farms everywhere.  The sky is so blue.  Every once in a while you see a house in the middle of a field.  Everything appears so flat as you can see the horizon miles away from you, but we keep noticing that we are going up in elevation.  Driving in the panhandle of Texas we are at over 4000 feet elevation.  So many of the small communities around here appear to be dead.  We see many abandoned houses and businesses.  It is sad thinking about how much these homes and businesses meant to the people that built them.  The few trees that we do see here aren’t much in the way of trees, especially when you think of the trees that we know in South Carolina, the live oaks, magnolias, maples, etc.  Although this area of the country has a beauty of its own, it definitely causes me to be thankful for the trees that I love so much in my neck of the woods.

Because we weren’t seeing many trees, Nathanael keeps asking, “When will we be in the desert?”  I told him so many times that I wasn’t sure.  The last time he asked, I told him that we would be in the desert when we began seeing cacti.  When we entered New Mexico, we stopped at the rest area.  We walked around for a while, and I went and asked one of the ladies that was working there when we would reach the desert.  She told me that we were actually already in the desert.  It is called the high desert because it is located in a high altitude.  They still get little enough rain to be classified as a desert.

High desert of New Mexico

We didn’t get nearly as far as I had hoped we would while on the road today.  Ryon needed to spend some time writing a paper for his history class, so we spent a couple hours roaming around a welcome center while Ryon used their WiFi.  Charlie made us a delicious lunch of chicken quesadillas.

Charlie and I both keep commenting on how totally amazed we are at such different landscapes than we are accustomed to in the Southeast.  What a beautiful country we live in.  We are so truly blessed!

Blessings to you all,

Rebecca

Flooding in Oklahoma

Today is Day 3 of our trip, and none of us has lost our temper with anyone yet!  I know my mother would tell me to “Knock on Wood,” but I am going to choose to say that as a celebration of how well we are doing so far.  Yay!  The only grumpiness that we have really had is AnaClaire getting tired of sitting in her seat.  She also hasn’t been getting her typical beauty sleep.  She has been waking up at 7:00a.m. with the rest of us instead of sleeping until 11:00a.m. like she usually does.  Of course, she has plenty of opportunity to sleep in the car when we are spending the majority of the day in the car, but I am sure she will get used to it at some point.

We made it all the way across Tennessee yesterday and part of the way through Arkansas, the state of my birth and a great deal of family heritage.  The kids all seemed to think that because we were going to be in Arkansas that we would be able to stop and get some Spudnuts.  (For those of you not familiar with spudnuts, they are a doughnut made of potato flour that we were able to indulge in anytime we went to visit family in El Dorado, Arkansas.)  Well, they were really let down when I explained to them that we were hours away from El Dorado, and that they didn’t have spudnuts in the other areas of Arkansas that we were driving through.  I guess we will have to make do with the homemade spudnuts Ryon has attempted for us, but that is definitely not a cooking experience for the camper.

Damien sleeping in the van.

We spent the night in a WalMart parking lot in Lonoke, Arkansas.  Fortunately the storms waited until we were all settled in bed to come through.  Charlie and I woke to some terrible thunderstorms this morning, enough to knock out power to the WalMart – another blessing: the parking lot lights went out so we were able to sleep in darkness!

After we passed through Little Rock, Charlie and I both looked at each other thinking about how we were finally on new highway that we had never travelled.  Growing up, I used to spend all of our family trips with my nose in a book.  As an adult, I can’t stop looking out the window to witness the beauty of this world that God created.  We are so blessed to live in this country.  However, I spent most of our drive from Little Rock to Oklahoma experimenting with blogging.

We stopped at the Oklahoma Welcome Center for lunch and were able to talk with a wonderfully knowledgeable woman about the Cherokee Indians and The Trail of Tears. The kids and I were just doing a study on the Cherokee not too long ago, so it was very interesting for us to see where they were forcibly relocated.

The kids at The National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague.

We had quite a wonderful experience when we made an unplanned stop at the National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague in Prague, Oklahoma.  www.shrineofinfantjesus.com  We went in for a quick visit and saw that they were having Confirmation at 5:00.  As we were walking out, retired Archbishop Beltran walked in.  He stopped and visited with the children and then urged us to stay for the Confirmation.  How can you say no to an Archbishop?  The Mass and Sacraments were beautiful, and we thoroughly enjoyed visiting with some of the congregation afterwards.  The people were wonderful, inviting us to the reception, and even giving us a place to throw away our trash and do our dishes. It was a great way to ride out the extensive rain storms in the area.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all mothers out there, especially my mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, and grandmother-in-law!

Rebecca

Nathanael in front of the Empress tree.

Today has been a great first full day of our trip of blessings.  That is what we know this trip will be for our family – blessings all the way around.  Surely there will be difficulties, but we feel so blessed to have this opportunity to travel the country with our entire family.  Even the difficulties will bring us blessings by giving us opportunities to draw closer to our Lord through our sufferings.

One thing I just have to mention from yesterday was our attempt to leave.  As soon we got to the end of the driveway, I remembered to double check that everyone had a pair of shoes in the van with us.  (I can’t tell you the number of times that we have made it all the way to a destination and discovered that someone didn’t have shoes.)  The plan had been that we would all wear our waterproof sandals on the way out because we had already packed our sturdy tennis shoes in the camper.  So, of course, we discovered that Damien (aged 2 1/2) had no shoes on his feet or in the van.  Back to the house I went.  A very typical experience in our family.  God was so good to remind me to check!  One pair of shoes would have been soaking wet very quickly with that little boy.

One of our first priorities is to make this trip educational, which is why you will see posts from Ryon – aka Cpt. America (as day 1 post was) and probably some of the other children too.  We also have children keeping track of our mileage, gas, miles/gallon, and other expenditures.  Journaling is also a goal on this trip, for all of us.

We camped at a WalMart last night in Knoxville, TN.  We got going well this morning but decided we will definitely have to modify our routine so that we can get up and out much more quickly.  We drove a couple hours and stopped at The Hermitage in Nashville.  This is Andrew Jackson’s famous home, and because we have been studying American History and have spent time on General Jackson, we thought this would be a good mid-day stop.  We had a great audio tour, movie, tour of the mansion, and walk around the garden.  I decided that audio tours are definitely not very easy for older children and adults with younger children around.  Even Dominic at 4 years old wanted an audio tour controller (of course he does – it has buttons to push), so I spent lots of time helping littles with their audio tours.  And when they tired of those, I got to carry them in the hopes that we wouldn’t lose them along the way.  Anyway, we had a great time and learned something too.

Our family in front of The Hermitage

One of the things I really enjoyed about The Hermitage was seeing the wide variety of trees planted there. Many of them were labeled, which thrilled me because I love learning to identify trees that are new to me.  One such tree that amazed me was the Empress Tree.  It was HUGE.  I spoke with a tour guide about it, and she told me that it was only 80 years old.  I also learned that it is a tree species from China and that it has beautiful flowers.  This is definitely a tree I will have to look into growing myself.  Nathanael was also enthralled with it because we could see at the bottom of the tree that it was mostly hollow on the inside.

What a wonderful time we are having.  Hopefully, I’m going to get this blogging thing down so that I can stare out the window a little more.  Thank you for all your prayers!

Rebecca