It's a Dry Cold

Let me just say, for the record, that it is cold here in Texas.  It was cold when we aired out our sleeping bags and tent in Austin.  It was cold when we almost ran over a boar on I-10.  And it is cold here in Fort Davis where we're tucking in for a couple of nights.

I'm not talking about a little cold either.  I am talking wear your jacket, hat, and mittens cold.

And I don't want to hear about how it is a 'dry cold' either.  It is dry, and it is cold.  I've put on more chapstick in the last 24 hours than I've put on in my life.  Our faces hurt from the dry and the cold.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are not in Burke, VA, anymore.  Hitch on your belts, hike up your boots, and pull down your hats.  We're deep in the heart of Texas where a little mound of dirt can hide a heap of the angriest little ants you ever did see and even the grass can getchya.

The boys have learned more about staying on the path in one day than they have in years of my talking, lecturing, and threatening them about it.  It turns out there is no teacher like one inch thorns and prickers on every scraggly bush trying to grow knee high.

After all that, you may be surprised to learn that the place is ... well, cute.  Shhh.  Don't tell them I said so.  But get a load of that drug store in the first photo.  Very cute.

It comes complete with 'penny' candy available for a steal at a dime a piece.

We are in Fort Davis, Texas.  It is tourist town.  Kind of.  We saw a store selling 'Working Brooms and Walking Sticks.'  And a few stores that would be happy to let you look around, if you'd call them to let them know you'd like to do so.

The town is charming for its complete lack of pretense.  The kids liked the scenery, small houses, lack of traffic, the simplicity.

We are making friends with area animals.  This horse, at Fort Davis, along with another and two goats got plenty of love and attention from the boys.

We were there to see Fort Davis, a National Historical Site.  It was a military outpost originally set up to protect pioneers going west from Apache raids when Jefferson Davis was the Secretary of the Department of Interior.  When the Civil War came about, the federals left, and the confederates moved in trying to gain territory.  It turned out to be too much work for not enough gain.

After the war, Fort Davis was renovated and re-established.  It was the Regimental Headquarters for all four regiments of African American soldiers, nicknamed Buffalo Soldiers by the Native Americans, from 1867 to 1885.  They helped keep travelers safe on the San Antionio-El Paso Trail, laid 91 miles of telegraph lines, scouted and preserved watering holes.  You may not agree with Manifest Destiny and how it, well, manifested.  But the work of the soldiers during their tenure there broke critical ground.

The first African American graduate from West Point served there as well.  Breaking new ground does not come without a cost.  He was accused of embezzling, found not guilty, and still dishonorably discharged for 'behavior unbecoming to an officer.'  His rank was posthumously reinstated by President Clinton; his discharge changed to honorable.

When we walked on to the site, I encouraged the boys to imagine themselves 150 years ago, traveling for months, and then finally seeing these few buildings ... and knowing you've arrived.

We spent hours walking around the grounds.  It was a gorgeous day.  Picture perfect.  And cold.

At night we went to a Star Party at McDonald's Observatory.  We had the opportunity to see Jupiter and a few of its moons through a massive telescope; along with a few other treats, the moon, the Pleiades, Orion's belt.

It was a great time.  And cold.

Tomorrow we are heading to Big Bend National Park with a stop first at the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center.  If the weather is warmer as it promised to be, we'll be camping for the first time on this trip!

Christmas Texas Style

There's nothing small about Texas.

The night we arrived, we -- along with a mass of other people -- made our way to Zilker Park to walk through the Trail of Lights.

While we waited in line, we did things Texas style -- big -- and attempted to get into the Guinness Book of World Record for the largest number of people singing a Christmas carol together.  The word is still not in as to whether we were successful, but it did make the waiting pass pleasantly.

We wore our headlamps to help distinguish us from the others in a crowd.  It did.  I heard one person comment, "There goes the miner family."

Everything was big on Christmas:  a big gathering of family, a big heap of gifts, a big feast, and all-around big generosity, love, and kindness.

Merry Christmas!

Tomorrow we begin the process of totally emptying out the car, cleaning it, and re-organizing for our trip down to Big Bend.

The Natchez Trace

The best part of the Natchez Trace was walking along the same trail that early Americans walked along between Nashville and Natchez.  I tried to imagine what it would have been like to walk purposefully from one town to another hundreds of years ago.  I'm not sure I totally captured it, but I'm sure there would have been fewer people calling out from behind, "Walking?  Why do we have to walk?"

Our first stop on the trail was where Meriwether Lewis spent his last night.  That story was fresh in our minds from studying the Lewis & Clark expedition last year.  Lewis was heading to Natchez to go to DC via boat.  He changed his mind mid-way, deciding the Corps of Discovery documents he was carrying would be safer traveled by foot.  He stopped here for the night.  It is the Grinder House, one of the houses spaced a day's walk from each other on the Trail to give travelers a bed for the night.

Lewis died here, presumably by his own hand.  His remains were discovered there about 40 years later.  A monument marks his grave site now.

We made other stops along the trail. We walked along a swamp and wondered at natures marvelous adaptations.  Some of us wondered why Mom was asking so many questions.  ("Honey, it is roadschooling.")

We made a stop at Mounds built thousands of years ago by the great-great-great-great-great  grand natives of the Native American Woodland people.  They built the mounds to honor their dead.  Imagine a monument that lasts 8,000 years -- a great mound of earth.

The Natchez Trace parkway crossing the Tennessee River in Cherokee, AL.

Memorable times on the Natchez Trace.

The John Deere Man

We met a man in Mississippi at Brenda and Kerry's.  We were just sitting down with our coffee when there was a rat-tat-tat at the door.  It was Charlie.  This Charlie.  The one you see there.  Clean sturdy overalls.  Plaid shirt.  Spit-fire jacket with some kind of embroidery on the back about Steel Tractors.

We'd no sooner shaken hands when he leaned forward and told me he was 84 years old.  He nodded, as if to say, "Yep, 84, can you believe it?"

Then he told me, announced, really, that Brenda takes care of him.  She had taken care of him since his wife died three years ago, he told me.

Brenda.  You'll remember her from the Mississippi Memories post.  She is both ethereal and solid foundation. She is the anchor that allows another to be free.

Charlie was a character.  He was 84 years of living Mississippi history.

I have to admit, I couldn't always understand him.  It was the drawl.  I'm not too good at it.  In fairness, though, he couldn't understand me either.  He said I spoke too fast for him.

We decided a stop to stop at his house on the way out of town that day.  We decided that it would be better than any other museum we might choose.  We were right.

This is Charlie's little dog, Pissant.  I'm sorry, but it is true.  That was her name.  It was pronounced Pissaint, or Pissie for short.  The boys loved her.

This is what remains of Charlie's gun collection. At one time, he'd had nearly one hundred.  "Don't touch them," he warned the boys, "they're loaded."

He had all kinds of collections: pocket knives, china, crystal.  His house was like a museum.  In his great room, he had an old wood fire stove, an old metal tub, and a long dining table he'd hewn himself.  The walls were absolutely covered with antiques dating back to the Civil War, most of them keepsakes from within his family.

In his day, he was known as the John Deere Man.  He could take any rusty tractor and turn it, quite literally, into a museum piece.  He used to have as many as 18 tractors in the old barn.  We saw one.  It had been rusty, too, but was all cleaned up, refurbished, and ready for sale.

He gave each of the boys an Indian Head penny, part of another collection, I'm sure.  We could have stayed a long time combing through his house, listening to his stories.  But the road called.

We'd infused spring water with silver molecules with Brenda.  She was going to show us where she collected the spring water, and we'd planned to finish the Natchez Trace Trail before nightfall.

Charlie, though, he was a fire-cracker.  A museum unto himself.  If you're ever in town, look him up.  You won't be sorry.

Mississippi Memories

I was worried we might miss Christmas being in the car for six days leading up to Christmas.  You know, no sparkling lights, no cookies baking, no presents calling out temptation from under the tree.  I needn't have worried.

We spent one night in Mississippi with Brenda and Kerry.  They didn't have lights either.  There wasn't a tree.  No holiday decorations that I recall.

But their house was infused with the spirit of Christmas.  Love.  Plain old love.  Love of God.  Love of His creations.  Love for each other, for family, for friends.  Love for all the simple things that are a tapestry of beauty and inherently complex.  Music, harmony, art.  Nature, animals, people.

Brenda fed us a feast of Southern home cooking, including chicken & dumplin's and cornbread. We ate well,  had pleasant conversation, all the while being entertained by Kerry's jokes.

The back room is rich with musical instruments that people have given to them or entrusted to find the right home.  Between the two of them, I think they play just about every one.  Some of them, they play well.  Others they play to learn a song, to enjoy the process, to enjoy the richness of being and creating.

Kerry is a big Civil War history buff; spends hours in the library researching history in the area and then follows it up with time on the field with a metal detector.  His walls are covered with his finds.  Wagon wheels, chains, horseshoes, a ram rod, and more.  Before long, he was showing the boys had to make wax bullets as they would have done for the Civil War.

In the back room is a treasure of petrified wood that Kerry and his co-workers discovered doing renovations.  Everyone else said they wanted it, but no one took it.  Kerry took some and polished it.  "You just can't compete with God's work."

In the evening, they sang Christmas carols for us -- at my request.  It was peaceful, sweet, and fun.

Merry Christmas, Brenda & Kerry!  Thank you for a lovely visit!

Charlie is the guest star of my next post.

xoxo

Kerry giving the boys a ride on his 110 year old Amish wagon.

The boys giving Pooch lots of love.  Blurry, but precious nevertheless. 

A Lesson in Packing in Mammoth Cave, KY

I wish I could tell you that everything went exactly according to plan on this day.  But it didn't.  It went exactly according to the plan that happens when nothing goes according to plan.  At the first sign of that, I start letting go of my expectation about how things are 'supposed' to turn out and start paying attention to how they are going to turn it.

It was time for another life lesson.  And you just can't rush those things.

This time it was about packing -- or more precisely unpacking.  So many lessons, really.  For instance, it is handy to have a little peak in the middle of your pack so the rain rolls off the pack instead of pools.  If you haven't done that, then unpacking the pack -- even if you're unpacking to make it more organized -- is really a two person job when it has been raining.  Otherwise, all the water that pooled up runs into the pack, and the stuff that would have been dry is now all wet.

The short story is we are now better packed, more streamlined, more organized -- and still stuffed to the gills.  And I wonder about the lesson that awaits us when we reopen the pack again after wet stuff has been up there for a day or two.

The weather is much colder that we expected.  Lots of rain and winds up to 50 mph lured us off the camping schedule and into the hotel.  I told the boys I drew the line at camping in a thunderstorm, but really wind and rain will do me in, too.

Mammoth Cave was, well, mammoth!  No mammoth remains for those of you interested in paleontology.  But there are anthropological records of people using the caves as early as 1000 BC. Though we didn't have the privilege of seeing it, there are prehistoric drawings on the wall.  And an American version of the Iceman was found here in the 1935; the dessicated, mummified remains of an early American who was killed by a falling rock.

The tour was much more sedate than yesterday's, but still great.  Huge .. 400 miles of tunnels in five tiers of earth.   Temperature is a constant 54 degrees.  Humidity 85%.  Again, the moisture is caught in the reflection of the flash.

We are napping in Tennessee tonight.  Tomorrow we will start exploring the Natchez Trace Trail capped with a southern hospitality with family in Mississippi.

Caving at Hidden River Cave, Kentucky

We had a blast caving with Peggy at Hidden River Cave in Kentucky.  We were especially lucky because, not only was she very pleasant with a great understanding for kids, she also is a Caving Biologist with a veritable treasure trove of information packed into her head!

First we got ourselves set up with bandannas, helmets, and lights.

Then we started our descent down the long flight of stairs to the mouth of the cave.

Our plan was to travel on a short trail to get the feel for caving and then go off-trail and explore with Peggy.

The hole in the rocks is the first trek we went on.  Interestingly enough, you can actually see the moisture in the photo that we could not see while we were down there.  (Thanks to my my new cool camera!)

There was a fair amount of crawling on that one: bear crawling, crawling on our hand & knees, and bottom scootching.  Occasionally we could stand stooped over, and very occasionally we could stand straight up.  Took a short break for snacks and water.

We got plenty of dirty,

Saw plenty of cool things,

like two dozen crayfish -- blind and without pigmentation, a fleeting blind fish (so fast we weren't actually sure we saw him!), and a salamander.

We saw flow stone in the making.

 

It was an entirely new adventure,

And an adventure we'd like to repeat some time!

Thanks, Peggy, for a classic (& educational) caving adventure!

For those of you who might want to do the same, check out http://hiddenrivercave.com!

We're off!

After six months of preparation, we loaded up ... without our trailer & with our new car ... and hit the road!

We downsized all of our belongings to what you see here and about 20 boxes left behind.  Setting out was exciting and humbling.  Exciting:  Six months of work for this moment!  Humbling:  the enormity of the opportunity ahead of us.

All of it is a journey through appreciation of my family who, from the moment I came up with the crazy idea to get rid of it all and go on a cross country adventure, has given me endless amount of support -- both the emotional kind and the practical kind.  From encouragement and love to sleeping bags, backpacks, and actually making an itinerary, I have a rock solid foundation of support behind me.

The free spirit begins with my mom and dad, of course.  The nut doesn't fall too far from the tree.  Thirty years of showing us the wonders of the world paired with the conviction that "You have to do what makes you happy"(my mom) and "Do it your way" (my dad) planted the seed....

At its very core:  I want to offer my children the opportunity to experience the world in much the same way my parents offered me the opportunity to do so.  I don't know yet about the world, but I felt a sense of urgency to start something with my daughter fast approaching twenty.  I took the plunge to start with the country.  And I started in the only way I know how: get in the car and go.

That we have the added blessing to our family, Manuel, to help with the navigation, driving, and helping to keep our tribe safe and on track is just that ... a blessing.

And so we are off!

We bit off a 10+ hour drive yesterday to get to Mammoth Cave, KY, today.  There is so much to do!  We are starting today with a Wild Tour at Hidden River Cave.