Awesome Times- by Maddy

        We’ve had a really great two weeks so far! We went to Tennessee and saw Stones River National Battlefield where we got Junior Ranger booklets, which were activity books for the Battlefield. There were a certain number of activities that you had to do in order to be sworn in as a junior ranger and get badges. There was some good stuff in the Visitor Center too! We saw a small movie and did some of the activities in the booklet that were meant for the Center. There were also plaques all around the park outside and we walked to every one, which was all together about three miles long! We also went to a cemetery and saw the gravestones of all the fighters. After we were done with that, we finished it off by becoming junior rangers and getting badges and pins! There was a nice old guy, Mr. Bob Turpin, who swore us in as rangers and also told us a lot about the battle. After the ranger things were done, Mom told Mr. Bob about our trip and he said to bring brownies the next time we came. :) 

Mr. Bob Turpin telling us about the battle

Next we came to Mississippi and did the Vicksburg National Battlefield where we drove around in our mini van and saw all the monuments of the states of the soldiers that gave there lives for this battle. The battle lasted 47 days and the Illinois monument was a dome that had 47 steps!

The Illinois Memorial at Vicksburg Military Park

The RV park we went to next was in Natchez and it had a pretty lake next to it, woods, and a small park! Elliot and I explored a lot, taking pictures of vegetation, wildlife, nature scenes, and more. There was a small creek running into the river and on the end of it where there wasn’t much water there was a vine that we all swung across and it was really fun!

Enjoying dinner over the fire at Natchez St. Park

While we where in Natchez, we went to the Pig Out BBQ Inn where I tried BBQ sauce and I loved it! There was a picture of a pig with a huge, and I mean huge, smily grin on its face. :)  We also went to a Plantation house, the Rosalie House. 

Real southern BBQ

Next, we drove all the way down to New Orleans in Louisiana and met my Grandparents on my Mom’s side of the family. We went to a certain restaurant and ice cream place 2 times! 

We visited an insectarium where we saw many different kinds of insects from butterflies to cockroaches! We got souvenirs and the boys ate bugs like crickets and wax worms, but not me! Yuck! 

Maddy with a friend on her head

On one of the beautiful nights in New Orleans we went on a Dinner Jazz Cruise on a really big boat with a buffet and lots of yummy stuff like macaroni and cheese, catfish, and pork. Yum! 

For transportation we had to ride a ferry across the Mississippi River for 2$ a person.

The last awesome thing we did was a Louisiana swamp tour where we got to see real wild alligators, quite a few actually, and the tour guide (his name was Reggie) fed the alligators marshmallows and put one on one of the alligator’s heads! It was pretty fun and also really cool. We got to feel alligator scales and hold a real young alligator! It was AWESOME!! :) :)

Louisiana swamp friend

Personal Goals – by Colin

Hello everyone!

This is Colin, and I apologize for not writing a post yet, as free time and wifi have not come on even terms with each other. So as a basic overview of what has happened so far on our trip: Mammoth cave was long, dark and very cool. History is one of my favorite subjects, so the Civil War re-creations and memorials were very interesting. However, the two most important things that I will speak of are my two personal goals: to try various weird foods, and to find the most amusing city names. Generally, for all who do not know me very well, I am very picky with food. I have tried, however, in these two weeks of being on a trip: squid, catfish, a bug, fried pickles, fried oysters, and Kentucky Hotbrown. It's pretty impressive, isn't it? As for amusing city names, I have found two: Murfreesboro, and Chunky. Murfreesboro is funny because I simply cannot say it with a straight face! It sounds like someone tried to rewrite the name Murphy, and failed miserably. I don't even have to say anything about Chunky, as the funny parts should be obvious. However, I will say that the best part about Chunky is that we went on a bridge over CHUNKY RIVER! Ewwww. Why is the river chunky, and with what? 

Eating a bug at the Audubon Insectarium

Old Dogs, New Tricks {Part 1}

Enjoying a KY meal at the historic Old Talbott Tavern

I could fill the Grand Canyon with the amount of things we've learned on this trip in the last week and a half.  Has it really only been a week and a half??

We've learned things the easy way.  {youtube}

And we've learned things the hard way.  {don't ask}

We found it amusing when people would ask us how much we've RV'ed before this trip.  We knew taking our very first RV trip for 2 months instead of just a weekend was risky.  We knew it the way a young pregnant woman knows that having her first child will be hard.  We knew it because people told us, but since we hadn't experienced it yet, we couldn't know exactly what we were getting into.

In a nutshell:

It was AWESOME to take on this adventure.  And we were also completely ignorant of all that it would entail.  But now we're relatively settled {though every time I have thought that thus far we've had some kind of minor catastrophe...} and having a grand ol' time in New Orleans.  I actually am happy we didn't have any trial runs first.  It would have totally changed the experience and taken away some of the great and stressful memories we have had so far.

Working on their Junior Ranger booklets

So let me fill you in on the past 10 days.

We left in a flurry of excitement on Monday March 9th bound for Kentucky.  In the course of that next day or two I realized I had forgotten only half a dozen little things, none of which were all that important or unable to be purchased at a Walmart.  Our very first learning experience was finding out that the RV with a tow behind it was very difficult to drive for someone {Jason} who had never driven something that large before.  He white-knuckled it to the local Kroger for gas.

Learning experience #2: when we realized we couldn't get out of said Kroger gas station we had to unhook the tow vehicle, drive it separately from the RV and re-hook it up once we were clear of gas pumps and other cars.

We made it about 60 miles or so when Jason cried uncle and we pulled off to unhook the minivan for me to drive tandem.  This changed things a lot.  And we weren't even in Cincinnati yet.  Even now we have yet to hook the tow up again, though we plan on trying again at some point, and so this means double the mileage and significantly more in gas money.  Thankfully, I really enjoy driving, so I don't mind taking the wheel of the van.  And I've even now clocked nearly as many miles driving the RV as Jason.  More on that later.

Our trip to Kentucky was a mixed bag.  We had yet to de-winterize the RV, so we had no water.  It wasn't much of a problem as we had gallon jugs to use at the campsite and a decent bathhouse at the campground.  We had driven 6 hours that first day, including stops, and Jason was totally beat from the mental energy it took to drive the RV for the first time.

Learning experience #3: you can't make as many miles traveling comfortably in an RV as you can in a car.  It's just too tiring to drive.

Our muddy mess of a campground in KY

So once we were at the campground, it was late- probably near ten pm- and we had never hooked up before.  And it was raining.  A steady rain that was to last the entire week.  The campground was a muddy mess and we were able to move our reserved site to one that was on higher ground so the pond/creek wouldn't flood.

It was an interesting night.

So we got our stressed and tired selves bunked in for the night.  It was cold and rainy, and the RV gets humid.  so learning experience #4 was that we need ways to release the humidity, or absorb it.  We had read about this of course, but reading is different than experiencing it firsthand.  Within the next couple of days we purchased some Damp-Rid containers and the weather also eventually dried up.

Ain't we cute?

The kids have written about the Mammoth Cave and Lincoln Museum/Birthplace adventures, both of which were awesome, so I'll leave those trips to them.  Once we left Kentucky, we headed to Tennessee to see the Stones River National Battlefield.  It was a wonderful self-guided tour, with Junior Ranger booklets for the kids to fill out.  We have been so impressed by the rangers, volunteers, and tour guides at these historic sites!  They are so knowledgable and passionate about their parks and we feel so blessed to see things through their eyes!

Getting "sworn in" as Junior Rangers by Bob at Stones River National Battlefield.
He made them promise to bring him brownies should we ever pass through again.

Life in the RV has been an adjustment, but not as bad as I expected.  I didn't start sleeping well till we were in Mississippi, just due to the newness of it all and my constant late night worry that the kids weren't sleeping, or were hot/cold, but once I was well-rested I really felt I was "home."  The kids have had no problems at all, and we tear down and put back up the couch and dinette every day with their help.

Even though we've had crazy things happen, and the unexpected level of work to maintain this traveling life has taken us by surprise, I truly would not have changed a thing thus far.

{Our internet connection has been spotty, so we haven't been posting as often as we'd like.  Hopefully Colin will have a post up this week!}

NATIONAL PARKS- by Zach

I've been having a great time on my trip! The National Parks that I have gone to so far are Mammoth Cave, Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace, and Stones River National Battlefield. Stones River National Battlefield is interesting because almost 24,000 people died or were wounded in that battle.  We visited a cemetery and saw all the Union Soldiers's graves.  And in every National Park there is a Junior Ranger booklet with fun activities that you can do about the National Park you are in. also if you do enough of them, then you get a souvenir that you can keep for free.

Mammoth Cave was awesome! I saw two bats. One was sleeping and the other was flying. We got to go to two parts of Mammoth Cave, and one of the parts you had to go down 300 steps! and the other part of Mammoth Cave was cool and you had to twist and turn and do all that kind of stuff. Also Mammoth Cave is the longest cave in the whole world! There is lots of mammals in Mammoth Cave.    There is bats, beetles, eyeless shrimp, eyeless fish, salamanders, and lots more.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace was cool.  His house was very small, but he liked his house.  It did not have a door. It only had one room.  One of his chores was chopping wood.  His one roomed house only had one window also. When he grew up he had four kids, and two of them were Willie and Tad.  Both of these sons got terrible fevers.  One of the kids's fever got better. and the other, Willie's fever got worse and he died.  When Abraham grew a little bit more, he became a President, but this was after failing a lot.  He got assassinated, but the man that assassinated Abraham broke his leg as he escaped.

Mammoth Cave Coolness

A little bat we saw hanging from the ceiling.

Today we went to Mammoth Cave National Park which is the  longest cave in the whole world! We saw a cave salamander, two bats, and a lot of cave crickets. They turned off the lights halfway down into the cave!  You couldn't even see your hands. It was creepy. 

Our first adventure of our road trip (Tuesday) started out visiting the Lincoln Museum and the Lincoln Memorial, Lincoln's birthplace. The Lincoln Museum had dioramas going through his life and what happened. I liked that best. We got to see the log cabin Lincoln would have lived in which isn't to big, 15 feet long and 12 feet wide. That was really cool.

The next day we traveled into the longest cave system in the world (Mammoth Cave)! We had two tours. One was a historical tour, and the other was a one about formations. One cool and amazing fact we learned at the historical tour was that a African American slave (Steven Bishop) was the first one to really explore the caves and caverns alone and made many daring decisions. He also made the cave tours a lot better because he learned a lot about caves and then shared the facts to the visitors.

Some of the wildlife we observed in the cave were an adorable little cave salamander, tons of cave crickets, and and two cute tiny bats! It was a very successful first time!

Goin' on a trip, doo doo doo doo doo

When our oldest son was little Jason and I made up a lot of silly songs.  We actually had a competition to see who could come up with the better ones, and while mine were always very chipper, they were also very dorky.  Jason's were, quite simply, better in form and tune, but to this day we still remember all of them and have a good laugh every now and then when we sing them to the kids.

One of my dorky songs was a preschoolish one with the words, "Goin' on a trip, goin' on a trip, going' on a trip, doo doo doo doo doo."  Now I have to add that our son was actually in preschool at the time, so it wasn't really all that bad, but still, I'm not terribly proud of that one.

Nonetheless, every time we get ready to go on an adventure of some sort, I sing that little ditty, sometimes out loud, which then prompts someone (if not everyone) to tell me to stop.  So it's not surprising that as I sit down to write this inaugural post on our family travel blog, the humming begins.  It's just so catchy!

How did this big adventure even come to be?  

Well, I adore traveling, and so does Jason.  We both have had ample opportunities to travel, due to our chosen career paths in classical music.  Neither of us, however, has ever spent time out west, with the exception of an opera gig Jason performed in his 20's at the Utah Festival Opera one summer.  We've always dreamed of traveling a lot with our kids, but the typical suburban life doesn't really allow for much more than dreaming.

Until now.

With Jason's sabbatical from his university job, we have decided to take a trip.  A big one.  Since we homeschool our four children, our schedule is more flexible than most, and because of the university structure, which allows for continuing education time for professors, Jason has a window of time between professional conducting gigs to make this a reality.  So once Opera Columbus completes its run of The Marriage of Figaro, with Jason at the helm, we are off on this amazing journey.

Where are we going exactly?

That's for us to know and you to find out.  The basic loop we are making is south from Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico, west to California, then north and back around to the east.  We'll visit family, spend time in national parks, and eat a lot of s'mores.  You'll have to follow along to get all of the wild and crazy details!

Our goal is to have the kids each post once per week on this 8-week trip.  This is part of our geography curriculum, after all!  We each have an art journal and some travel watercolors, oodles of card games, and fully stocked Kindles.  We leave next week!  Why don't you come along for the ride?

Join us on our adventures by subscribing by email on the sidebar!