Today was another travel day.  Charlie and the kids cleaned up the campsite and played games while Ryon and I made our requisite run to Dunkin Donuts for wifi access.  Ryon is finishing the second draft of his paper, so he will hopefully turn it in by the end of the weekend.  Then we will be done with having to worry about class deadlines!  However, all these runs to Dunkin Donuts are helping me to stay on top of publishing the blog.  Just in case you are wondering, we discovered that Dunkin Donuts was started just outside Boston, so there is at least one Dunkin Donuts in every small town.  I prefer going there over McDonald’s many times.  They definitely make a better iced coffee than McDonalds.

When we returned, Charlie had everything completely ready to go, so I backed right up to the camper, Charlie hooked us up, and off we went.  We didn’t have a long day of riding in front of us, so we took our time.  As our fridge doesn’t hold a lot of food, we stopped again at Sams Club to pick up more bread, veggies, canned goods, etc.  We thought we had a tail light out, so Charlie walked down to WalMart to buy more bulbs while I took the kids into Sams.  As it turned out, it wasn’t the bulb; evidently we blew a fuse, but we decided to pick that up later.

We drove along seeing beautiful views of Maine’s coastline.  The kids saw a large bridge that they wanted to drive over, so we were fortunate that our route was taking us that way.

On the bridge going over Penobscot Narrows

As we got closer to our destination, we thought the silly kayak racks were coming loose, so we stopped to check them.  Nope they were fine, but there was a funny smell of burning wood.  We couldn’t find anything wrong, so after yet another bathroom stop, off we went again.  A little later, I was sure that I heard a noise that sounded like something was loose or dragging.  We found a place to pull over, and sure enough, Charlie found that we had a broken leaf spring on the camper.  We hobbled along to a mechanic who referred us to another mechanic, who made a phone call to another mechanic to make sure the 3^rd one could fix it for us.  Sure enough, the 3^rd gentleman could fix it, but he would need to go to the nearest city to pick up the part and wouldn’t be able to fix it until tomorrow.  Fortunately, his shop was also at his house, so he was happy to let us sleep in our camper for the night.  As it turned out, his shop was on the same road we needed to be on to go to our campground, and we were only 8 minutes away.  Oh well, we’ll make it there tomorrow.

We left our camper at the shop to go find some dinner.  We managed to find a great restaurant for BBQ and had some really tender shredded pork, ribs, bbq chicken, and Italian sausage along with potato salad, coleslaw, and baked beans.

Nicholas and Amelia waiting for dinner. This is as close to a smile as I can get Nicholas to give me when a camera is pointed at him 🙂

Isaac and Nathanael enjoying their dinner.

It was delicious.  It was a place where you eat outside at various tables (we ended up taking up 4 tables), and they had a playground where the little ones were able to play after we ate.

It was a blessing that we were able to hobble to his shop and not have to have a tow, and most importantly, we made it there safely.  We were also very grateful that we were able to sleep in the camper for the night.  It was a nice cool evening, so opening the windows really cooled the camper down well for us; however, as it turned out, one of the screens opened when we opened the windows and boy did we get a ton of mosquitoes in the camper.  Charlie and I spent an hour or so playing a card game and killing mosquitoes all over the place. Thankfully, it was cool enough in the camper that we wanted to be under the blankets which helped protect us from the mosquitoes, and we still managed to kill enough to get a good night’s sleep!

Blessings,

Rebecca

Today was a day to sleep in.  We had a lot of tired people, and of course I woke up at the horrible hour of 4:00am and didn’t get back to sleep. Ryon and I had been at the Dunkin Donuts the night before for wifi, and as they were getting ready to close, they asked us if we would like to take home any of their remaining donuts, bagels, or muffins.  They were going to be throwing it all away, so we took home muffins for breakfast the next morning.  Everyone was very excited about the muffins for breakfast in the morning, and it meant that I didn’t have to cook.  Yay!  We took some showers (that was the nicest campground shower I have ever used) and headed out to the LL Bean outlets in Freeport, ME.

We all walked around and looked at the various outlets, and in the end we bought absolutely nothing.  We all saw lots that we would like to buy, but nothing that we needed or needed to spend that much money on.  Oh well.  Back to the campground for a lunch of leftovers and a nap for me.  After my much-needed nap, we left to go back into town.  Nicholas wanted a new book (for some odd reason he didn’t bring his Kindle and has already read all of the books he brought – I don’t know what he is going to do for the next 2+ weeks), so we dropped he and Alex at the bookstore while we went to drive around for a little bit.  The little ones were in desperate need of a nap, so they slept in the car.  After we picked Nicholas and Alex up, we drove to find some views of the bay.  When we finally found it, the views were beautiful.

Our AAA tour book for Maine that we brought listed something in the area called the Desert of Maine, so we decided to check and see what that was.  We got there in time for the last tour, paid our money, and hopped on the tram.  A tour guide took us around an area and told us how a family had purchased this land in the late 1700s.  The family began farming the 300 acres of land, but they really used poor land management techniques and over time their topsoil began to erode away leaving patches of silt exposed.  The silt had been left behind by the glacial eras.  The patches expanded over time until pretty much the entire area of land was covered in the sand-like silt.  At one point in time, a spring was discovered and a spring house was built over the top of the spring.  Well, eventually even the spring house was entirely buried under the silt by another 8 feet of silt on top of it.  Some of the sand dunes are over 70 feet tall.  Many of the trees have been largely buried in the silt but have adapted to continue to live and grow.  Today, because the land is no longer being mismanaged, acorns and pines are beginning to establish roots in the silt and grow.  Reforestation is taking place, and maybe hundreds of years from now, topsoil will again exist and the land may again be arable.  This was a very interesting stop for us and really helped to drive home how important the management of your soil is when you are farming.  They also had the oldest known barn in Maine on this one-time farm as well as gem-hunting for the kids and a butterfly house.  The kids really enjoyed playing in the “sand” and hunting for the gems.  For once, the older kids were wishing they were younger as the gem hunting was for kids ages 12 and younger.

After the Desert of Maine, we drove to Wolfe Neck State Park which is a peninsula into the bay.  We were able to walk down to the bay, climb around on the rocks and just enjoy nature’s beauty.

Dinner was a treat of Italian (again) for the family and ice cream afterward.  We were able to eat outside and enjoy the cool temps.

The high was in the low 70s today, such a treat.  Charlie wore long sleeves all day and was comfortable.  We pulled out jackets for dinner as it was getting chilly.  What a wonderful break from SC temps.

Blessings,

Rebecca

PS  Alex has something to say about our day in Boston.  The passage below was written by her.

Tuesday, Ryon locked the keys in the car, so it took a little longer before we could leave.  We finally got on the road to go to Boston, which was over a 2 hour drive.  When we got there it took a little while to find parking, but we finally found some.  After we parked, we walked the Freedom Trail, and on that trail we stopped and looked at a lot of historical sites. The Freedom Trail was pretty cool.  1 of the things we saw was Paul Revere’s house, and we got to go in there and see what it was like.  After we finished following the trail we went to this AMAZINGLY GOOD ITALIAN RESTAURANT and got 3 amazingly good pizzas for us kids and 2 salads and 1 french fries plate for mom and dad.

Love

Alex

This morning, fortunately, wasn’t nearly as adventurous as yesterday morning.  We were leaving Campton Campground today and heading to Maine, so we had the typical morning of getting ready to leave and head for a new place.  That also involved getting laundry done too.  There were no laundry facilities at our campground, so I drove into town.  On the way, I decided to take the scenic route instead of the interstate (I’m sure that doesn’t really surprise anyone who knows how I like to travel 🙂 ).  Ryon and I came across a covered bridge, so we had to stop and take pictures.

Blair Bridge

Ryon in front of Blair Bridge

We didn’t actually drive across it because there was too long of a line, and we were in a hurry, but it was a beautiful bridge.  I then dropped Ryon off at Dunkin Donuts to get more work done on his paper and went to a laundrymat.  That was the nicest laundrymat I’ve ever been in!  They even had wifi, so I was able to get a couple blogs finished up and posted while the laundry was going.  After we finished, we quickly headed back to the campground to get hooked up and out of there.  The campsite across from us was reserved for today, so we were praying that no one would move in there before we had a chance to pull out.  Charlie certainly did end up using that spot to get our camper out.  What a blessing that no one was in there when we left.

We drove through quaint New England town after quaint New England town.  I saw antique store after antique store that I would have liked to go into.  These aren’t stores full of beautiful, formal, expensive antiques.  These are more hole-in-the-wall kinds of stores that have all kinds of old miscellaneous stuff.  Maybe I will be able to traipse into one or two on this trip, but that will have to be minus young children.  As we travelled on, we saw a couple of farm stands on the side of the road.  Charlie finally stopped at one for me where I was able to pick up some organic produce.  I was really wishing we hadn’t just gone grocery shopping last night because we filled up the fridge in the camper, but I managed to buy some goat-milk cheese, cucumbers, and a bunch of red potatoes.  We then stopped at a little park on the side of the road where people were climbing around on the rocks in a river.  That was a great little break for all of us.  The kids had a great time climbing around, 1 or 2 accidentally taking a little swim in their clothes.

Climbing around on the rocks

Damien pondering how to get down without falling.

Isaac opting to carry his shoes

We finally made our way back to the van, having really enjoyed our little adventure on the rocks.  We weren’t too far from the campground and made it there with no problem.  This time, I had picked the perfect site as Charlie was able to just make a turn in the campground and back directly into the spot – no turns or adjustments, just perfect on the first try.  We finally had a little time to just play around in the campground, pulling out our new KanJam game.  Even I took a couple turns in the game after making dinner.  The kids had fun just goofing off for a while.

AnaClaire wearing Nathanael’s jacket.

Dominic being his usual goofy self.

What a blessed day we had arriving safely at our campground, getting blogs caught up, finding awesome organic produce, and laundry done too!  You can’t ask for much more!

Blessings,

Rebecca

Today, of course, turned out nothing like we thought it would.  First of all, we had NO plans to visit a big city, but after some begging from several children, we decided to take a day and go to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail.  We made that decision Monday night, so Tuesday we were going to get up, have breakfast, and head out around 8:00 for the 2+ hour drive that would get us to Boston after rush hour.  Well, no one could find the keys to the van – until someone finally looked on the front seat of the van, which of course was LOCKED.  Hopefully the guilty party learned a small lesson about keeping track of keys – I’ll be nice and not mention names.  We called AAA, and someone showed up probably 1 ½ hours later to open the van.

AAA person unlocking the van. He needed to use our stool because the van was too tall 🙂

The kids all decided that we must have that tool.  We decided that despite the late start, we would give Boston a try for the day anyway.

The drive to Boston was uneventful, fortunately.  It took quite a while, but we finally found a place to park the van.  That was the blessing of the day.  Finding a place with enough clearance to park a van is a challenge, but we saw one that listed a tall enough clearance and pulled in.  Then we discovered that all the tall parking seemed to be reserved for valet parking.  We pulled into one space just to take the kayak racks off the top of the van (we had been smart enough to leave the kayaks at the campsite, but not the racks), when we saw a parking attendant coming toward us.  He told us that it was fine for us to park there and then explained the procedure as to what to do about oversize vehicles.  All the attendants that we dealt with were so nice.  They explained to us how to get to the Freedom Trail.  We had even managed to park near Boston Common where the trail starts, so we found the beginning of the trail, picked up a trail map, and off we went.

Boston Common

The Freedom Trail has a red brick line that you follow to each and every of the 16 sites along the trail.  Along the trail you can see The Old North Church where a lantern was hung to signal to Paul Revere.  This is the oldest church building in Boston.

The Old North Church

The kids sitting inside one of the pew boxes in the Old North Church

The site of the Boston Massacre, the Granary Burying Ground where several famous Bostonians are buried, the site of the first public school in the US, and Boston Common (the oldest public park in the US) were all locations along the Freedom Trail.

The Old State House Museum where the Boston Massacre took place.

Disappointedly, the one thing that I really wanted to see along the trail was closed – The USS Constitution a.k.a. Old Ironsides.  Evidently it is closed due to ongoing restoration.  I thought the kids would really enjoy seeing Old Ironsides, so that was very disappointing.  Since Old Ironsides was closed and the kids were already tired, we also decided to skip going to Bunker Hill.  I really enjoyed seeing Paul Revere’s house.

Some of us outside Paul Revere’s house

It really drove home to me how old the house actually was when I heard that the house was almost 100 years old when Paul Revere bought it.  I also enjoyed reading that he had 16 children – 8 with his first wife and 8 with his second wife.  Sadly, 5 died in infancy.  We saw one room where they believe most of the children would have slept, but there was also a note that due to the various ages of the children, only 5 to 9 children would have lived in the house at one time.  The room was larger than the room where my 6 boys sleep, so I had to smile seeing that. 

Walking the end of the trail on our way to Paul Revere’s house and Old North Church, we walked through the Little Italy portion of Boston.  Wow did that smell good.  None of us had a big lunch and it was around 4:00, so we were all starving while we were walking past delicious-smelling Italian restaurant after delicious-smelling Italian restaurant.  We waited until after we retraced our steps along the trail to get dinner, but we did end up at a pizza joint where the kids took no time to gobble down 3 large pizzas.  Charlie and I both had huge, tasty salads.  After getting some nourishment, we climbed back into the van.  It was a little after 6:00 when we were trying to pull out of Boston, so I was rather worried that we would spend a great deal of time sitting in traffic.  However, the traffic was much lighter than I expected.  What a blessing!  Charlotte and Atlanta traffic would have been much worse at that time of day.   We made it back to the campground late again but having had yet another wonderful day together.

Blessings,

Rebecca

We had a nice cool night in our campsite.  After breakfast, we finally all took showers!  Yay!  It was so nice to feel all clean!  These showers are pay per use showers, so it cost $2.50 for a 5 minute shower.  You weren’t able to add more money for more minutes.  It just cut off at 5 minutes.  Charlie thought it would be a great idea to install one of those machines in the showers at our house in order to keep certain people from staying in there for hours.  Mom and Dad may have liked that for certain ones of us growing up too, isn’t that right Robert?

After showers, it started raining.  We pulled out in the rain to drive to Northeast Catholic College.  We have a family friend who graduated from there last year and now has taken a job there.  We were able to get a tour and visit with our friend Connor.  The school was great!  I would love for some of our kids to attend there.  It would give me a great excuse to go visit, especially during the winter.  I would love to experience a New Hampshire winter!  I know what you are all thinking; Charlie thinks I am crazy too.   I always enjoy seeing people that I know from home in a totally different location in the country, so it was great to be able to spend some time with Connor.  We had lunch together at a great little mom and pop restaurant where the kids were able to eat a lot of brunch food inexpensively.  I like those kinds of deals!

The church at Northeast Catholic College.

After lunch, we left Connor and Northeast Catholic and drove back toward our campground and the White Mountains. We decided to just spend some time driving around trying to try to see the sights since it was still raining. We chose to drive the Kancamagus Highway since it wasn’t too far from us and was supposed to offer many beautiful sights. Despite the rain, I could definitely see the beauty. One of the first stops we made was at an overlook near the peak elevation of the highway, 2855 ft. Even I was surprised that the elevations weren’t a little higher here as we easily get to over 3000 in the Blue Ridge Mtns. However, the temperatures were definitely chillier than in the Blue Ridge Mtns in July. At this point, our van thermometer said it was 48 degrees outside. I definitely wanted to experience 48 degrees in July, so we hopped out of the van and took some pictures. Actually, I wasn’t going to take pictures, as the fog was obscuring our view, but when Nathanael made a comment like, “I see why they call it the White Mountains. Everything is white!” I decided that was very appropriate and needed to take a picture of the White Mountains on a very rainy day.

Yes, the mountains are certainly “white” 🙂

We stopped and saw a small waterfall and a covered bridge.

Charlie and I at the waterfall

Nathanael on the covered bridge.

The kids got out of the van and played on the rocks in a river on one quick stop, where of course most of them managed to get their shoes wet.  Thank goodness we bring two pairs of shoes.  Getting their sandals wet is one thing, but when they get tennis shoes wet, they take forever to dry out!

Amelia, Isaac, and AnaClaire standing IN the river wearing their shoes.

One of the views on the Kancamagus Highway

We even managed to find some wild blueberries, most not being ripe yet.  We ate just a few, but hopefully will find plenty to pick on this trip.

Wild blueberries – very small compared with the type we grow in the South, but still delicious!

We had a great time driving the Kancamagus Highway and headed back to the campground for a quick dinner and bed.  Ryon needed to work on his paper for a class, so he and I headed to Dunkin Donuts again for wifi and work.  Hopefully tomorrow the rain will let up, and we will have a day of being able to get out and sight-see!

Blessings,

Rebecca

WalMart was our lodging location for Saturday night too.  We drove into Newburgh, NY, Saturday evening and started driving to the Catholic churches in the area to make sure we could find a place to park.  Every Catholic church that we drove to had no place to park a van and camper.  Two of them were in the downtown area where the roads were very narrow and certainly weren’t going to allow for parking for a large camper.  We decided then to go ahead to a WalMart and we would find a Catholic church that was in a smaller town.  Charlie found one with a school, hoping that because it had a school, it would have parking.

We had another hot night in the camper, but when we woke up the next morning it was blissfully cool outside.  I guess we need to start opening the windows before we go to bed.  Hopefully from here on out, we will be in areas that will be cool enough at night not to even need to start out with the air condition.  We woke the kids up around 6:45am to get up and out to a 7:30 Mass in a nearby town.  We drove to Walden, NY to Precious Blood Catholic Church and managed to find a nice wide open parking area on the main street just a couple blocks away from the church.  We hurriedly changed into our church clothes and walked the couple blocks to Mass.  Our children are used to more of a High Mass, so they were little surprised that there was no singing.  However, the Mass had a wonderful homily and a beautiful simplicity.  After Mass, we started our next full day of driving.  We drove up I-87 to Albany, where Isaac commented that all of a sudden there were tall buildings in the middle of nowhere.  After that, we headed east.

When I think of New York, I tend to envision New York City, which is a place I have no desire to go to again.  So, it was really nice to drive through the countryside of New York and see so many small farms and rural locations.  I now have a desire to come back and just spend time exploring the more rural areas of this beautiful state.  One thing that Charlie and I commented on during our drive through Pennsylvania and New York was how the scenery doesn’t seem to change as much as when you head west.  In the Northeast, you have lots of hardwood forests, just as you do in the Southeast.  However, in the Southeast, you tend to pass more planted pine forests than hardwood forests.  We have plenty of hardwoods, but I do think many hardwoods in the Southeast have been displaced in favor of planting pines.  At least in Pennsylvania and New York, I saw many more hardwood forests than pine forests.  I know that I will see many more pines in Maine, but for now I am enjoying seeing the hardwood trees and imagining how much color one could see during the fall.

When we passed into Vermont, I fell in love.  Rural Vermont is so beautiful.  I loved seeing the small towns, the mountains, the old farmhouses and barns.  I did see more pines in Vermont, but they were more mixed in with the hardwoods instead of planted.  We passed a couple signs for U-pick blueberries, which I really want to do.  The blueberry crop in our area was severely damaged by a late freeze.  We managed to pick 2 gallons on one day at our local blueberry farm and then the picking was done, so I have really wanted to pick while we are up north.  While we were seeing the U-pick signs, we noticed that the outdoor thermometer on the van said that it was 71 degrees outside.  I remarked that 71 degrees would make the best blueberry picking experience that we have ever had.  71 degrees is very different from the low 90s with 90% humidity.  Although we didn’t stop to pick any blueberries, I do hope to pick some to bring home.  However, first we will have to eat some of the delicious meat in our freezer so that we have room for blueberries.

After Vermont, we entered into New Hampshire.  We stopped at the Welcome Center for some much-needed lunch of more sandwiches and cherries.  

Lots of cherry juice-covered faces!

After lunch, we drove toward our campground.  New Hampshire and Vermont are my kind of places.  Everything we saw was very rural, lots of older New England-style architecture and lots of trees.  I couldn’t stop looking out the window.  I had heard descriptions before of houses with attached barns, but I had not seen any yet.  Here, I finally see them.  I also love to take pictures of old barns.  Maybe that comes from my grandfather as I remember a picture he had hanging in his den of an old barn with a thatched roof.  My kids are always pointing barns out to me to take pictures of them, but I tell them that I only take pictures of barns that “speak to me.”  Here are some of the old barns I loved.  I also loved the many, many rock walls that we saw everywhere.  Charlie particularly liked this view.What a wonderful drive we had.

The campsite that I had reserved was an adventure for Charlie to get into.  He actually had to pull into the campsite across from us in order to back into our campsite.  If another camper comes and takes the site across from us, we may be stuck in that campsite until they leave.  However, Charlie always impresses me with his camper-parking abilities.  He is like my mom – he always talks about how difficult it will be to get the camper out of this site, but he manages to make it look so easy.  My mom always used to say she would have a difficult time with some sewing she needed to repair, but she always did it and made it look perfect!

The kids really appreciated being out of the car and running around the campsite.  After dinner, Ryon and I were able to head to the Dunkin Donuts down the road for Wifi service, Ryon to write a paper for school and myself to get some blogs published!

Blessings,

Rebecca

Like usual, the morning began with two little boys awake before everyone else.  Of course, it is only about 0630, and it was late when we finally pulled into the WalMart in Staunton, VA.  Late, as in around 11:00pm.  We pulled them into bed with us and spent some time cuddling with the little ones as they slowly got up.

Charlie with Damien, Amelia, and Dominic

Medusa, a.k.a. AnaClaire

WalMart camping in VA in July is a little warmer than we prefer.  Fortunately, Charlie borrowed a generator from a friend (thank you Dale!), so we were able to use that to cool the camper down.  After the camper was cool, we turned it off for the rest of the night.  By morning, we were all rather hot and sticky and ready to get out into the fresh air.  After a trip into WalMart for some groceries and a quick yogurt breakfast, we finally  got on the road.  Oops, almost forgot.  We also walked to the Dunkin Donuts for some morning refreshments, a little caffeine for Charlie and I (and a few of the older kids) and decaf for the rest.  They put so much sugar in those drinks that you can’t even taste the coffee.

Alex, Nathanael, and Nicholas came to help with carrying the drinks. They were more than happy to help to ensure they received what they wanted 🙂

Back we went into the car for another full day of driving.  Charlie and I talked about the options of places to stop and spend a few hours along the way.  We were close to Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm (a real pioneer in sustainable farming, an author, and a wonderful speaker) and really wanted to go back there, but we decided that it didn’t make sense to start our day with an activity.  Luray Caverns was an option, but again it wasn’t very far down the road.  We kept driving through West Virginia, Maryland, and into Pennsylvania.  Then Charlie had an idea – how about going to visit Hershey, PA?  I looked into it and discovered a free tour that wasn’t supposed to take very long.  We didn’t tell the kids what we were going to do, but when we drove into Hershey, they began to guess that we were going to do something that involved candy.  After some confusion about where to park, we pulled into some outlets that we discovered for a lunch of sandwiches and a bathroom break.  I had brought some of our tomatoes from our garden, but I had not really had one of the large tomatoes from our garden yet since they were just coming in when we left.  Charlie took some tomato slices, spread a little hummus on them, and wrapped the tomato slices in sliced turkey.  Wow was that good.  The tomatoes were certainly a wonderful taste of summer.

After finally filling our tummies, we went back to find the parking for Hershey’s Chocolate World.  On the way, Alex noticed in the town that the street lights were made in the shape of Hershey’s kisses. When we made it back to Chocolate World, they directed us to literally a front parking space directly in front of the museum.  We thought that would be an excellent space in case it started raining.  The kids were all so excited.  I tried to explain to them that this was just a tour, and that we wouldn’t be spending a lot of money on chocolate as it would be melted before we got to WalMart that evening.  The smell of chocolate outside was delicious.  Thank goodness we had just eaten!  We went inside and got into line for the tour.

In line at Hershey’s Chocolate World.

Fortunately we couldn’t see how long the line was when we entered, but it moved well.  We were able to read all kinds of things about Milton Hershey and the company he built.  We were all very impressed to learn that he started a school for orphan boys there in Hershey, PA, and then he left his fortune to the school.  We finally made it to the bottom of the line where we were put into little open moving “cars” to ride through the tour.

Nathanael, Nicholas, Isaac, and Annette in their “car”.

We found out all about how Hershey chocolate bars are made.  It was a really fun tour, and at the end we all received a small Hershey bar.  As I haven’t had sugar in a while, I couldn’t believe how sweet it was, but it was a nice treat.

Here we all are at Hershey’s Chocolate World!

Just as we walked out of the museum, it started to sprinkle.  We made it back into the van quickly, but before we were out of the parking lot, it was pouring.  What fun we had at Chocolate World!

Back into the van we went and drove off into the countryside of Pennsylvania.  On this trip, we decided to bring the kayaks that we gave to Charlie for Father’s Day.  They are riding around attached to the top of the van.  Unfortunately, the rack they are riding on kept coming loose.  We finally had to pull over and do some adjustments to the rack.  The older boys all like to have their opportunity to climb on top of the van, so this is a much coveted job.  After the adjustments were complete, we were going again and had no more problems with it for the rest of the day.

Ryon, Charlie, and Nicholas working on the kayaks. Nicholas got the coveted job 🙂

Scranton, PA was our destination for the day, but we decided to push on and make it a little farther especially since we needed to make it to Mass in the morning.  One full day of driving behind us and one more to go before we will be able to spend more of our day enjoying where we are as opposed to driving through it and wishing we could stop to see more things along the way.

Blessings,

Rebecca

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.

  This was our last morning. We stripped all the beds and piled all the dirty laundry up for me to start on as soon as we walk in the door at home (one of these days, I really hope I have two washers and dryers, but that would require a bigger laundry room too…) We had a delicious breakfast of bagels and sausage. At home, we will have our own sausage to eat, and we really look forward to all that good food we have waiting for us there. I closed the slide to the camper with tears in my eyes. This has been such a wonderful trip, and something that I have wanted to do for a long time. It is so hard to believe that it is over. I could have continued to travel like this for a long time. However, God has other things in store for our family, and I look forward to each and every day with them, no matter what those days hold for us. I thank God for this special opportunity that I have had to spend with my husband and children over the past 6 weeks, and I thank God for giving us this beautiful country that we live in. I have a much greater appreciation and understanding of it than I ever did before.    We hitched up for the last time and pulled out of the campground. Home was supposedly only about 5 hours away; of course we have to add at least 2 hours for stops and slower driving than the speed limit. Driving through the hills of Tennessee we saw beautiful small farms that remind me of home. I have been dreading the end of our trip for the past week or two. However, our little trip to Bakersville in Mansfield, Missouri helped me to remember how much I love our small homestead life. I do look forward to tending to my garden and using the new tool for weeding that I picked up in Bakersville. I have no idea if any of the garden we planted survived its 6 weeks without us, but even if it didn’t survive, I anticipate doing a lot of planting this upcoming week.

Funny story: when we were driving to Mammoth Cave the other day, Charlie was talking about having to go home and butcher the turkeys since we have now been through two mating seasons with no baby turkeys (poults) to show for it. We bought this breed of turkeys (Bourbon Reds) because they are supposed to be able to naturally reproduce, and we were hoping to let the turkey hens raise their own babies since they aren’t easy to keep alive when we are doing the raising. After we got out of our cave tour, Charlie checked his messages on his phone only to discover that he had a message from the girls who are taking care of our animals (thank you!) Well, guess what? They had sent him a picture of a baby poult that was evidently born to one of our hens. What a surprise! The turkeys have now received a pardon. Now we will just have to see if that poult will survive, but we are very happy to know that a natural reproduction was finally successful! The kids can’t stop talking about it.

As we drive, we seem to be bringing the rain with us. It has rained the past two nights while we were in Cumberland Gap, and it has rained a lot on the way home. I’m sure the rain will be welcome in the Carolinas as this time of year there isn’t always a lot of it. Of course, while it is raining, we get to sit in traffic. We have truly been blessed on this trip. Pretty much, until today, the only traffic that we have sat in was in a couple national parks while they were doing some road construction. However, I-40 east going into Asheville had about an hour’s worth of traffic to sit in.

When we finally make it through the traffic, we pull off at the first exit we see with a gas station. The bathroom was needed. Evidently everyone else had the same idea as the gas stations just by the exit ramp were packed. We drove a little further down the road so that we could actually find a place to park at the gas station (you need a good bit of room to maneuver when you have so much vehicle and trailer). Charlie spoke with someone saying that the first gas station had around 15 women in line and about 10 men. Glad we waited until we got a little further down the road.

We continue on home with the rain coming and going. The kids began to get excited as they saw places they recognized, like the Dunkin Donuts in Hendersonville, NC where I often get them a treat when we drive up there for a day of apple picking. As we drove up our highway, it was good to see things that felt so familiar. I had been feeling that I wasn’t ready to come home, but it was feeling good now. Then we all saw it, the place that we have called home for over three years now, our homestead that we have all put so much of ourselves into. We were finally there – we were home.    Blessings,

Rebecca

Playing in a stream along a trail

That A/C last night sure did feel good! We all slept well and got up ready to do some exploring of Cumberland Gap. After breakfast, we drove to the Visitors’ Center to sign up for a couple tours that we wanted to do. Unfortunately, due to federal budget cuts, they have had to cut back on the number of tours that they offer every day and all the tours were full. (Note to self: This is one of the problems that you encounter when you don’t plan trips in advance, especially when you have a lot of people to include in a tour.) So the rangers gave us a couple other ideas of trails to take and things to do. We headed off for a trail.

As the kids got out of the car for our hike, I noticed that Dominic got out minus his shoes. When asked where his shoes were, he replied that he had lost them. After questioning the older child that was specifically told to make all littles had shoes, we realized that he didn’t complete his task either. Not willing to go back to the campground, we put Dominic into the backpack and let him be carried for a little while. Eventually, he wanted to get out and walk. As we weren’t on a long hike, I made him walk in his barefeet the whole way back as a natural consequence. He walks barefoot everywhere at home, and even 4 year olds can learn from natural consequences. We hiked up to a cave and were amazed at the natural air conditioning emanating from its entrance.

View of Fern Lake from Cumberland Gap National Park

I’m finally seeing rhododendrons in bloom in the wild.

Nicholas and AnaClaire ready for a hike.

Dressing up at the Cumberland Gap National Park Visitors’ Center

Dominic dressed up as a pioneer boy

After our hike, we returned to the campground for lunch. The kids were all moaning about “peanut butter and jelly again?” but when you don’t eat meat on Fridays and you are having quick lunches, PB&J is an easy, go-to meal. We all climbed back into the van for a little driving. In the hopes that some littles would sleep in the van, we ran a couple errands: a quick oil change and picking up charcoal for grilling dinner. Next we took the pinnacle drive up a steep, narrow road to an overlook where you could see the surrounding areas as well as the point where the three states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia meet. The kids all thought it was neat to drive into three different states in a matter of about two minutes. We finally went back to the Visitors’ Center to see the film about Daniel Boone. They had a nice dress-up area for the littles, which kept them occupied for probably thirty minutes. I sure would like to have some dress-ups like that at home – nice quality wool coats, linen shirts, wool trousers, and wool tricorn hats for the boys. The girls had some really cute hats and cotton dresses along with wool capes. There was also a craft center and a gentleman demonstrating his craft of broom making. I bought a beautiful piece of pottery as a little remembrance of this trip.      We headed back to the campground for our dinner of grilled salmon with mango salsa and broccoli. We were going to finish our last night on this trip eating well. The kids even had s’mores for dessert. We all had a little down time in the campground, just enjoying the outdoors. It is hard to believe this is our last night of our trip of blessings – I guess all good things must come to an end. We will be home tomorrow.

Dominic eating a s’more

The results of Dominic’s s’more: sticky hands. He thought it was funny, as we all did, to stick his hands to his face and pull his cheeks out.

Ryon, just one of the family pyromaniacs

S’mores are enjoyed by all except Charlie and I. We opted instead for an all-fruit sweetened Larabar – no sugar for us!

Some people are even happy with cooked-to-a-crisp marshmallows!

Damien, with a large branch that he was attacking me with and laughing about it.

Nathanael enjoying his chocolate

As a side note, Happy Birthday to my dad and my sister, Karen! (Of course, this is a day late when I finally get it posted.) Blessings, Rebecca