2019

Currently all five us us are wearing matching plaid pajamas and the kids are laughing and shrieking their way through a MarioKart race. They plan to stay up until midnight, but they do not like watching the Times Square countdown party. They just want to play video games until it's obscenely late and then go outside and bang pots and pans together. I'm not sure how my neighbors will feel about this, so I might have to veto that last part.

I just scrolled back to the start of this blog and read all of the year end posts. Things have changed a lot since 2006!

Spiral Jetty, UT

2019 has been a wild ride. We finally bought a road-worthy camper and spent about 12 weeks in it this year, traveling through 23 states on several different trips. We love a good road trip and this one was full of excitement like forest fires, a car break-in, unseasonably cold temperatures, and even an earthquake. Also, beautiful scenery, visits with friends, junior ranger badges, sunsets on the beach, aquarium visits, giant trees, bison, meeting campground friends, and sharing way too many jerky sticks.  This trip had some highs and lows. The hardest thing was probably balancing the work-from-road and the driving with the needs of our kids, which turned out to be...not driving so much. They like the stopping part a lot more.

We started homeschooling our kids. This has been a huge shift for everyone, but an overall positive change for our family. Everyone is getting better sleep and exercise and way more outdoor time. I'm confident that they are keeping pace academically. Marko learned to read really fluently in the last few months. Even Max is starting to read a little. Laurel just took an online class and she enjoyed the format a lot, so I think we might try some more of this style.

Marko tried kung fu for about six months, but he decided to switch to gymnastics recently. Laurel went to sleep away Girl Scout camp for the second time and she moved up to Juniors. She rides horses whenever she can get to the stables. M's grandmother died and we gathered with all of his aunts, uncles and cousins for the first time in many years. I started working with my aunt and uncle at their restaurant (as a cook!) and the kids usually go to my parents' house while I do that. I love that they have the opportunity to spend time with their grandparents and also get a taste of that running free through the backyard kind of suburban life. We met up with my friend Leah and her family for another successful Pennsylvania cabin vacation. We babysat some guinea pigs.

Photo Credit Jennifer Kamienski

M did some running this year, naturally.  (I can't even remember what he was like before he started running.) His favorite races this year were Hyner and World's End, and I would have to say these were also the most fun for our family. We also went to the Vermont 100, and M finished it and got his buckle, but the heat was brutal.  M and some of the kids ran an aid station at the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge. We have lots of friends in the running community now so going to these races has a very social feel to it. It's also so much easier to cart along three kids now that everybody is out of diapers and naps. It helps that they love going to races. Endless snacks + M is easily convinced to stop for ice cream for up to a week afterwards.

On the GAP.

I turned 40 this year and did a solo bicycle trip from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, something that has been on my bucket list forever. It was a really fun trip and my 5 day itinerary was just challenging enough for me, although I would have put fatter tires on my bike for the C&O portion of the trip. I had great weather and met some cool people on the trail. My dad biked down to meet me for the last stretch into Pittsburgh and that was pretty awesome. Traveling alone is so different, but I loved it and I am planning to do more bike trips like this. There is actually a trail in Missouri with my name on it. Literally!

So that's what I can remember from 2019. I wish I'd written about it more as it was happening. I hope my kids will remember the good parts. I am aiming for 2020 to be even better.

Homeschool Update December

We just finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, using the Arrow Guide from Brave Writer to study literary devices, vocabulary, capitalization and dialogue markers. I was happy (but not surprised) to see that Marko was able to follow the story and the activities even though the guide is for grades 3-5. I have to modify his writing to what the guide calls "Jot It Down" - which basically means he has great ideas and I should just write them for him, unless he grabs the pencil away from me and wants to write independently. This would be impossible in a classroom setting, but it works quite well at home. I'm saving these drafts in the hopes that they will look impressive next to whatever he will be able to produce on his own by June. Focus on progress. To get through this book, I borrowed an audio copy of the book from the library and we listened to it in the car. Nobody talks or fights because they want to hear the story, although Max falls asleep, more often than not. Our next book is Artemis Fowl and now that I know how these Arrow guides work, I think we'll be going a lot deeper with it.

We have still been plugging through the Spectrum math workbooks and alternating that with Khan Academy. Marko just needs to keep practice sums/differences to 100, but Laurel is going to get into geometry and is going to need a lot of instruction for that. I'm going to take a break from the workbooks and Khan until January and just play games.

I got a bunch of the Girl Scout Badges that we probably aren't going to do with our troop and Laurel is going to work through some of those to meet her social studies/civics standards.

We've been watching a lot of Crash Course World Mythology videos, singing along to holiday songs, and doing some HIIT inside because it's super cold and gloomy outside all the time. Youtube makes it so easy right now and I'm sure it's going to be either riddled with ads or require a subscription before long.

Icy Morning Walk to the Bakery

We started the day out with a walk to the bakery and did our read aloud while munching on chocolate croissants. One of our neighborhood playgrounds is being fixed up and there was a lot of new equipment to explore. Max doesn't love Mrs. Frisby yet, so he can be a real pill about being quiet. Pure genius on my part; he was busy peeling his croissant apart and didn't interrupt too much. I bought a literature guide from the Brave Writer website. As a former teacher with a lot of materials stocked away, I am extremely resistant to paying money for more of these things. However, sometimes it's easier to have it all spelled out for you.  Sometimes someone else just did it better than me. The guide gives you a passage to study each week and suggestions for talking about spelling, grammar, literary elements and a few sample writing activities. Nothing contained in the packet was new information to me, but I love having a routine of activities to follow. You can pick the novels you do and order guides a la carte, and it's pretty easy to scale the activities for kids at different levels.

I keep having to wiggle out from under this idea that if the kids are having fun and the work is completed with ease, that they are not learning anything.

Marko made a drum out of a little candy tin he found and several layers of paper and stickers fixed to the top. Then he made a drum stick out of a little branch he found outside, sanded down until it made the sound he wanted. Laurel planned some activities for her birthday celebration this weekend (watching the Percy Jackson movie, making candy sushi). Max played Minecraft and Zelda with Marko. I sat down together with each child and went through some Khan Academy videos and exercises together. Marko set up and read through the directions for a very complicated board game called Oregon Trail.

I am reading so much these days. Wilding by Isabella Tree, No More Mean Girls by Katie Hurley, Food Not Lawns by Heather Flores. Flat Broke with Two Goats by Jennifer McGaha. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. The Year of Less by Cait Flanders. Farming While Black by Leah Penniman. There are books stacked on my bedside shelf, and always something on the Libby app on my phone, and a number of items on the holds list at the library. I signed up for movement videos from Katy Bowman and a class on homemaking by Hannah Marcotti. I'm working through an online course on permaculture. I'm going on an organized hike on the North Country Trail. Somehow I didn't have time for my own learning when all the kids were in school, or at least I didn't prioritize it...I squeezed it in. It feels different now.

Are you curious about the home-schooling?

Ah, yes, so we're homeschooling and I know you are curious because everyone asks, but the leading question is usually something about curriculum, which is, frankly, boring to talk about, so the conversation fizzles. 

What I think you really mean is "How do you spend your days? Do your kids listen to you? How do you decide what they should learn? Do you teach all the subjects? Are you paying tutors? Are they playing video games all day? Do they annoy you? Are they above grade level? Below grade level? How do you test them? How much are they reading? Do you give them homework? Will they be able to get into college? Is it better than school? Is it worse than school? Could I do it?"

And truthfully, I would love to talk about it to anyone. There's an incredible amount of freedom and flexibility and that can be daunting. I know we haven't hit our stride....yet. However, I can see it coming. 

I did make some decisions about curricula at the beginning of the summer. Spectrum workbooks and Khan Academy for math. Wilson Reading for any spelling and phonics issues. Core Knowledge Series textbooks for language arts, social studies and science. There are 12 required subjects, which I dutifully check off each time I feel I have provided some meaningful instruction. But this never feels like the meat of their learning for the day. I think it does serve to anchor us a bit and I do usually squeeze in what I needed to, but this is what actually happened:

Max built a 100 piece puzzle with help. Marko and Laurel did some math workbook pages.  Laurel and I looked at paragraph indentation choices in a number of books. I made an accordion book and then there was a flurry of crafting and I don't know where any of the finished products ended up, but they were all making little books and collages. Everyone played Minecraft. I played two rounds of Uno with the boys. Laurel made approximately 1,000 rainbow loom bracelets. She read a lot of graphic novels. We had a tea party and discussed the composer Debussy and whether or not "Impressionist" could be considered an insult, and how his music sounded like Chopin, or did it? We went to a library homeschool group and Marko and Laurel made little water color sketches of squash, corn and beans. It snowed on and off all day and they all went outside and played in the backyard for little chunks of time. I would have taken them to the park but our new snow/rain boots have not arrived yet. So they just wore their sneakers and dried them out in between. We decided to stop reading Pax (getting too scary and violet for some of us) and to begin reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I have a Brave Writer unit plan to go along with that novel so we'll see how that language arts approach works for us. Marko read a lot of Star Wars books and then checked out even more Star Wars books at the library. I found a book on Islam with a lot of pictures to go with the unit Laurel is reading in the Core Knowledge textbook. We listened to a podcast called Tumble and the episode was about peregrine falcons. Marko practiced the next phone number he is trying to memorize. We read some more poems from The Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane nad Jackie Morris. We cut open the massive osage ball I found on my hike over the weekend. It looks tropical, they said. And then put it outside to see if the squirrels would take the seeds out of it. We tried our hand at sketching the osage ball using nature sketching principles but our colored pencils are very dull at the moment and the pencil sharpener was not effective at bringing them back. Marko made some attempts to fix his helicopter wing with tape, and failed. He watched some youtube videos that showed a guy fixing the wing by tracing it onto a shampoo bottle and then cutting out a replacement wing. The videos were all in French, but it was the exact same helicopter! We don't have an empty shampoo bottle yet, though, so this also failed. Sometimes there is a lot of failure and I think that's my favorite part of homeschool. Not that they failed, but that we have the space and time to fail. I think he'll probably keep working on that helicopter tomorrow. 

So that's the current status. 

Re-Entry

You have to ease back in after a trip like that. It was intense. We spent more time together than we had in many years. Homeschooling felt rough at times, but the kids actually managed to work through 2-3 chapters of math while we were gone. I thought we would do a lot of corresponding with people back home but we hardly wrote any letters or post cards. I thought they would have these beautiful journals full of thoughtful reflections, but they did a lot of random sketching in their notebooks. Looks like corn, is what they wrote on a lot of pages. I cannot disagree, there was a lot of corn. We drove about 7,000 miles, if you count all the driving around the East Bay we did. They did read a lot and we listened to a lot of interesting podcasts and books. One was called "To the Best of Our Knowledge" and the episode about the caves had us all breathlessly captivated. With all the distractions of home gone, we learned a lot about ourselves and each other. We learned to tell each other exactly what we needed. Not that we could always get it right then, but we learned to ask anyway. The decisions to travel and to homeschool were on rather different threads, although they do go together well. But what that hints at is that there were growing pains, along with the wanderlust.  Now that we're all back home again there's a temptation to settle back into the roles and spaces that were not serving us well.

Anyway, there was not a lot to come back to, schedule-wise. The calendar was blissfully clear. I did laundry and had my neighbor over for tea and we celebrated Laurel's birthday by eating breakfast at our usual breakfast spot down the street. I took the kids for a hike at a park near my brother's house and the hillsides were almost glowing, from the last of the fall leaves. When we went down into the trailhead, two hunters were dragging a buck out of the woods, much to my surprise. The trail smelled of blood and wet leaves. The most Pennsylvanian thing ever. Our feet were soaking wet because everyone outgrew their rain boots on our trip. I had sort of forgotten about rain boots, actually, until that moment I felt my feet sink into the water-logged soil under the grass. The next day we planned to go on another hike to look for the fox we had seen over the summer, but it rained and rained, hovering near 32 all day. We didn't actually leave the house the entire day. It was all dance parties and Nintendo. Today we we visited our librarian and got new books to read. It was sunny, but very cold.

I ordered rain boots.

Snow Canyon State Park

We came to Southern Utah to 1) wait out the snowstorm that is happening at the pass in Colorado and 2) to see the wonders of Zion, Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef. However, as soon as we entered Utah, we marveled at the low gas prices, the open space, the courteous drivers and the fact that nobody gawks at a family with 3 kids out here. Utah is very orderly and tidy compared to California, which was literally catching on fire when we drove out of there. They fix their potholes and have wonderful, spacious, cheap laundromats. Personally I'm a fan of the low alcohol Mormon beer, too.

I took the kids to Snow Canyon State Park, where we walked through pink sand dunes and looked at hundreds of animal tracks. They were so clear, it was almost as if a museum curator had arranged them, but no, that's just the real animals running around at night. The kids loved tracking the prints and figuring out which animal went with which print. Marko then built himself a little print-maker out of sticks and went about laying his own crazy footprints. This park also has a small slot canyon that is a short hike from the parking area. It was kind of scary to look up and see the boulders wedged directly above us. We saw some people rock climbing. We also saw a hawk hunting and Marko found a print of his wings brushing through the sand. The canyons were beautiful. Not as high as Zion's but just as colorful.

We really need to start driving home, but each weather report is worse than the last. We are keeping our furnace running high and unplugging our hoses at night when it freezes. We made some impulsive Halloween costume impulse buys so we are ready to have some Halloween fun, although it will be really different from our usual Halloweens. Happy Birthday to Mary and Grandma Cake!

Rig

If you scroll way back to the first entries on this blog, you can read about the road trip we took in 2006. We traveled in a Saturn sedan with a borrowed tent, a basic coleman stove and an ice chest. We saved up for that trip, quit our jobs and expenses were pretty low. Circumstances are a bit different now. We have 3 kids, and M is working remotely. There are smart phones now which is a real game changer for maps and weather. I can remember back in 2006 watching an extremely scary black cloud emerging over the horizon and then frantically flipping through pages of a Rand McNally road atlas to see what county we were in while listening to some random AM radio station describing where the tornado was hitting. PS, it was close. PPS, most midwestern rest areas have a severe weather bunker you can go in.

We are now traveling with a 2016 GMC Yukon towing an RPOD 176. It's a tiny, lightweight trailer. Narrower than most trailers because the wheel bases are on the outside, it's easy to tow. You can see around it without special mirrors and it usually fits in a regular parking spot. It's less than 10 ft tall, so clearance is rarely an issue and we can fit in the smallest sites at campgrounds. The kitchen is nested in a half slide. Things we especially liked about it were the double bed bunks, and the u-shaped dinette we can all eat or play games at, the propane furnace, hot water heater that runs on propane or electric, 3 way refrigerator, fairly large black and gray tanks, a convection microwave (yes I have baked cakes and cornbread in it!) and even television and an air conditioner. All spring and summer I loved going on trips where we just had to pack our clothes and some food. All the cookware and sleeping stuff was already stowed and ready to go. In the most inclement weather, the kids can lounge on the top bunk and watch tv (if we have a 30 amp hook up). If we have no hook ups, it's easy enough to keep a few gallons of water in the fresh tank for the toilet and we can keep the fridge cool on propane.  The convection/microwave is tiny, but it definitely works well for toasting bread, baking corn bread or cakes, and heating up leftovers. I also bought a small Instant Pot, which is useful for cooking rice, soup, chili, hardboiled eggs and oatmeal.

Downsides of this are mainly that's it's just a very small amount of space for 5 people. M and I are pretty short and I  would not recommend these beds to anyone who is on the taller side. When we are getting up in the morning, it's just silly how much bumping and cursing we do while trying to make coffee, fold the dinette bed back into a table and get all the little kids to go to the bathroom before they pee their pants. It has a fair amount of storage, but it's hard to keep the clothing in places where the kids can actually reach it on their own. Ditto with dishes. I feel like all the kids had a regression with their independence on this trip. They needed a lot of help reaching everything.

They say you are ready to camp when you pull out of the RV lot, but we have bought a lot of things to improve our trailer. We installed sway bars on the hitch, which keeps the trailer from blowing around in the wind or on rough roads. We also upgraded our sewage hose from the one that came with the trailer. No way did I want to risk a spill with that stuff! We had regular hoses at first for drinking water, but swapped those out for the collapsible kind. We also have a five gallon jerry can for water in case there's no hose at our site. We bought a small box fan and a small electric heater to augment the furnace and ac/fan. We have a pressure regulator for the hose and a surge protector for our 30amp cord. We've been carrying around two cast iron pans which we used all the time in Pennsylvania because we cook on fires there. But out west, there's way fewer options for safely lighting a campfire, and we haven't done it at all.

Our biggest regret is not installing solar before we left. M's computer is the main thing we need to power, and there are lots of times when we could have opted for a nicer campsite or park if we didn't need the 30amp hookup. But then, we couldn't really do this trip if he didn't have an awesome job that let him work remotely.

I keep meaning to take pictures of the inside, but it's a tough angle. I want to show you how it looks like when our stuff sort of explodes all over the place, but then I end up tidying everything up too quickly, and it really does all go back together in about 30 minutes. The kids love doing chores when "sweeping up" or "clean the bathroom" is a 5 minute thing. I love how the bunks are tucked into the front and behind the pantry. It's very cozy. I think it will be hard to go to sleep at home when I can't hear my whole family breathing.

Death Valley National Park

There are a few "rules" often given in RV forums about how long to drive, how long to stay somewhere and at what point in the day to stop driving and set up camp. Something about driving no more than 200 miles, stopping every two hours, and setting up camp by 2pm. We wholeheartedly agree with the rules....and hardly ever follow them. Part of this was because we were working around M's schedule. He had a lot of video conference calls, therefore needing really great wifi and a quiet place to take them. We ended up driving into the evening pretty frequently. Also, nobody ever had to pee at the same time, so some days we stopped a lot more than every two hours, really dragging things out. On the day we went to Death Valley, we entered the park from a remote 2 lane road on the southwestern side of the park. I'm not sure why we chose this road. We had long since realized that blindly following google maps was a terrible idea, especially in California and most especially while towing a trailer. We usually checked for clearance or road condition or grade issues on RV Parky and technically this road was fine for all that. It was just really remote, really rough, really steep. However, our reward was that it was also really beautiful.

I thought of Death Valley as just being the low elevation salt flats, but it's weather is so extreme because the valley is surrounded by several mountain chains. Some of them were sandy, some were covered in volcanic rock, some had big boulders, or purple and pink tops. They are stunning. As we were driving further into the park and passing very few people, the sun started to set. Sand was blowing across the loneliest road I had ever been on. I started to really notice the differences between the rocks, and there were so many different kinds, colors, sizes, shapes, formations. In a very road-trippy moment, we ate some jerky sticks, each taking a bite before passing it to the next person. There were some white knuckle moments for M, who was driving. It was so hard to anticipate where the road was going next. Later I discovered that the bumpiness of the road had dislodged our camper door, so there was a lot of Death Valley dust inside!

Eventually we made our way into the park itself and sadly found that the campground we wanted to stop in...despite having rows and rows of open sites....was not open for the season yet. We drove past the sand dunes as the sun set and then in darkness to the next camping area 20 miles down the road. The developed campground with all the hookups was pretty full, but we went down the street a little way to what was basically a parking lot and for $14 had an awesome view of the night sky. Shooting stars and the milky way.

The next day we went to the visitor center to look at the exhibits and so Laurel could do a junior ranger program. Then we drove to the Badwater Basin, which is the lowest point in North America. They have a plaque upon the mountain above that shows sea level, but this concept was way too mind blowing for the kids. They did like the salt flats, although they kept trying to sneak tastes of it. There is a ton to do in this park and it's an easy drive from Las Vegas (not on the road we came from). I would like to go backpacking there sometime and I understand they have great wildflower blooms during certain times of the year. If you like driving through interesting scenery, you could easily spend a week or more driving through this park, although you need something really rugged to get into parts of the park.

Sandcastles and River Swimming

Is it better to plan in great detail or go with the flow? Sometimes it feels reassuring to know how long we are going to stay somewhere, but almost nothing turns out like we think it will. Sequoia wasn't even originally on our plans, but we decided to go over there and try to link up with my sister. It didn't end up working out to see my sister here, but we still had a nice few days. I liked the vibe of the campground. There were a lot of groups of families or friends staying here, and I really enjoyed hearing the sounds of their reunions in the background. Last year we did a weekend camping trip with my brother, sister in law and parents and the weather was terrible. Icy cold rain all weekend. We did the same sorts of things, though, hanging out around a fire and drinking beer, eating good food. Playing Uno. Good times are universal. We also met a few other homeschooling/traveling families with kids about the same age as ours. I very much appreciated being able to chat with some other parents doing the same kind of thing as I am and don't think it's weird, but also understand the challenges. For instance, there is no way you can bring enough books! 

Seeing the big sequoia trees was definitely worth the drive into Sequoia/King's Canyon National Park. We resolved to be happy with a 1 mile hike down to one of the groves. I say resolved because M and I would prefer to go further, but Max is getting too big to carry and if he's not into the hike, it becomes an exercise in patience for the whole rest of the family. Laurel did a junior ranger program and we stopped at a few points of interest such as Hospital Rock, which had some really old petroglyphs and a rock with a bunch of indentations where people pounded acorns into flour. That was pretty much the extent of our trip into the national parks. Sometimes I feel like we are wasting a precious opportunity to see the wonders of the world. But there's also value in dishing up an amount of epic wonder that they can digest. They did think the big trees were really cool on the short hike we did.

We camped at the bend in the Kaweah River and there were a lot of huge boulders to climb on as well as a little sandy beach. The kids spent many hours building sand castles and wading in the river. I'm always amazed at how comfortable 85 degree weather is when the humidity is low. One afternoon, we all lay down on the blanket and listened to the Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe for an hour while staring at the sky. This is one of the memories of this trip I'm trying to hold at the front of my mind, for when things get stressful.

California Dreamin'

Everything is near the
In&Out Burger

We finally broke free of the East Bay. Kind of kidding, but seriously, Oakland pulled us in and we got the Total Experience. Earthquake, refinery explosion, widespread power outage, wind storm with accompanying fire warnings, hours of traffic, and Max got really sick. But the worst thing was that our car was broken into while parked at an Airbnb and pretty much all of the kids' books, games and souvenirs were stolen, along with M's running kit. At first, we were like ok, it's just stuff and at least they didn't steal our vehicle, because we would have been in a real pickle trying to replace that. Insurance covered the repair, we found someone to do it quickly and we are back on the road. But really, what is life in our family without books and running? If I'm going to be truly honest, this was a terribly sad thing to happen to us because replacing things accumulated through travel or running ultras is pretty much impossible. Laurel just realized last night that this little stuffed unicorn she bought at Girl Scout camp was among the missing objects and holding her while she cried over it, made me cry too.

The good part of the Oakland time was that I got to visit my friend Leah and her family. We met in Phoenix 15 years ago and have continued a long distance friendship mostly through email, but we try to visit each other whenever possible. We last saw each other in Pennsylvania this summer where we brought our families together in a cabin in the woods for the second time. This time we visited at her new house. We went to the beach at Half Moon Bay one day but mostly we did regular stuff together, hanging out with the kids, playgrounds, dishes, walking dogs, and dealing with the unexpected things life sometimes throws at us. Marko was sitting on the couch reading to her dog about 10 minutes after we arrived, and this pretty much sums up the welcoming vibe of Leah and her family. She reminded me how much I needed to take some breaks and then saw to it that I took a walk by myself and invited me to yoga class. She had a family emergency and I watched her kids. We would make great neighbors, if not for the living 3,000 miles apart.

So the past two weeks have been simultaneously awesome and terrible.

We finally got our car back and the Rpod loaded up again and moved down to Carmel. Not very far, but feels momentous because it's not East Bay. Weekends are lovely when M isn't working. He misses out on all the fun stuff during the week and is pretty much tethered to his computer or driving. Working and traveling so much is really difficult, vastly more so than I anticipated. Max is still sick so I'm watching him here at the campground while M has the kids at the beach/aquarium. It's very peaceful and I'm watching cows over the hillside. I totally understand the allure of California. Something about the way the light hits the golden hills, and being on the edge of all these fault lines and coast lines. The cows are all sitting down now and I wonder if it will rain, except I know it won't. Not for months. Maybe they are just enjoying the light, too.

The Road is Long

We are on the road and the road is long.

Originally, we had plans to go to Yellowstone and then follow the Lewis and Clark trail and maybe hit up Portland and see giant Redwoods and drive down the coast. However, snow came early this year and M needed to meet a colleague in the Oakland office and Salt Lake City was nice but not quite warm enough, so we just put the pedal to the metal and trucked through Utah, Nevada and California all in one weekend go, briefly stopping in Reno, and collectively holding our breaths over the Sierra Nevadas.

Agile, they call it. Yes, we are pretty much always ready to pivot. To a fault, I think sometimes. But it was actually kind of fun to lay down some miles. Stopping for late night burgers at a McDonalds Casino combo truck stop and sleeping in a Walmart parking lot, where - no joke- somebody had a tent set up because nobody cares what you do in Nevada, apparently. When we woke up in the morning I stepped out of the camper and oh my goodness, the view of the sunrise over the mountains around the parking lot was absolutely breathtaking. There was was snow up there, and my breath made puffy little clouds. We did not linger, but kept moving until we got to Reno. We decided to stop for a few hours and check out this car collection museum. I don't really consider us "car people," except for the fact that we like driving around in them an awful lot, so I guess this really was a good museum for us to see. They had a cool exhibit about this 1908 automobile race that was New York to Paris. They had the actual car that won this race, in kind of beat up condition, although looking pretty good considering they drove 22,000 miles. There's a really cool painting in the exhibit of the car racing alongside a bunch of wild ponies in Mongolia. I wanted to buy a print, but there's literally no room left in the camper for anything. I have to go to the post office tomorrow, in fact, to mail things home.

After the car museum, we went searching for this burger called the Awful-Awful, which turned out to be served inside the smoky Nugget casino. Not entirely child friendly, but the burger was pretty good. Awful-Awful is a good nickname for the Reno experience in general, as we left the casino and passed people passed out all over the street and in the park. Police were sort of casually patrolling and waking people up, or as the case may be, summoning ambulances. The weather was lovely and we may have stuck around longer enjoying the little park near the Truckee river, but it was bad vibes all around. We hit the road and went up and over the mountains and didn't stop until Vacaville. We took a wrong turn getting off the freeway to go into the RV park and ended up driving very slowly around an entire almond orchard and some rice paddies, but it was a very cool impromptu lesson on agriculture.

And that's how your weekends go sometimes.

Now we are in Oakland. Reluctant to leave, because the weather is extremely pleasant here, and because M has an office here and we have friends here and it's easy to pretend this is just regular life.

Plotting a course back to Pittsburgh is daunting. The kids have seen the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, driven alongside wild bison, camped in the Badlands, met a Lakota family, offered prayers to the effigy mounds and the spiral jetty. This afternoon, they played in the surf of the Pacific Ocean. Half the bucket list items and it hardly seems real. I was a young adult before I saw anything west of Ohio and I've wondered sometimes if this is just a long road to them, if I somehow robbed them of the awe they might have felt at 22, seeing the land drop away around the Missouri River for the first time. I am in awe, always, of all of it, but maybe I have an unusual infatuation with geography. Maybe this trip has nothing to do with the kids at all, and it's just me and M, needing to take another lap before settling in again. Like the way dogs circle their beds before they rest.

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City was on the original agenda, because M was supposed to run a trail race just north of there. But then we had to change our plans due to some work obligations and ended up leaving later. He decided not to run that race and we figured we would take a northerly route. Northerly is a gamble in September/October, but it's a gamble you sometimes win. We didn't win this time. It was 90 degrees when we set out. But after a few shivery days in Rapid City and a winter storm blanketing everything to the north and west of us, we decided to head south and spend a few days in Salt Lake City. We had been there 2 years ago with the kids and my parents, and a year ago just M and I. Those trips were both for trail races and it felt a little different this time to not have that focus. We didn't do much except warm up, wash our extremely dirty car and camper and visit two places we had already been. First, the Aviary, which always seems to have baby flamingos when we visit. And second, the King's English Bookstore, possibly my favorite book store on the planet. It's not a huge space, but they have so many good books. The staff are friendly and helpful, especially to the kids. We
promised everybody could pick out 2 new books and it took us a good hour to do that. We also made a quick visit to my friend Elaina's house and watched her chickens run around for a couple of hours.

From there, we headed to California, but took a detour up around the northern end of the Great Salt Lake to see the Golden Spike and the Spiral Jetty. The Golden Spike is where the railroads came together to link the transcontinental line. There were some really epic details to the completion of this passage. Chiseling through the Sierra Nevada mountains by hand, for one. And then completing 10 miles of track in a single day as part of the final push. The place where the two rail companies came together is out in the middle of nowhere. About 15 miles from the Golden Spike Visitor Center, there is a piece of art worth checking out. The Spiral Jetty, according to Marko, "was very swirly, and very lizardy. I liked the scenery. We walked down a big volcano stone path and then walked around and around the Spiral Jetty to the middle and felt positive energy. The sand had a crust of salt on it."

There really isn't much to in the way of tourist attractions after this. Services are 100+ miles apart. Occasionally you pass a fenced off defense contractor site, or a mine or something. No trespassing. We were eager for some warm temperatures so we drove almost 700 miles in a day and a half, pausing to sleep in a Walmart parking lot. We got in very late, and when I woke up in the morning I was amazed at the surrounding scenery. Prettiest parking lot I've ever been. It was only 24 degrees, though. By the time we got up and over the mountains and into the agricultural part of California near Sacramento it was 89 degrees! The locals thought we were crazy, but we took the kids swimming.

Casper, WY

"You should really go to...."

Everybody has suggestions for places we absolutely must see, and we welcome these suggestions and love hearing stories about places people fell in love with. There were certainly spots that M & I dreamed of taking the kids. This trip has been years in the making and it hardly seemed real as the pieces fell into place one by one....remote job...check. Funds for camper....check. Upgraded tow vehicle...check. Homeschool paperwork for kids...check. Some attempts at planning a route were thwarted by a work trip required for M and a Girl Scout camping trip for Laurel and me. We left Pittsburgh several weeks later than we would have liked. I guess at a certain point we realized that we didn't really care where we went. When we hitched up the camper at the storage lot where we store it, we were not entirely sure that we had packed everything we needed nor did we have a specific destination in mine, other than "west of here." We drove through Ohio and almost all the way through Indiana the first day and stopped because it was raining.

Exhibits highlighting
Lakota (Dakota Nakota)
 history are also prevalent here.

A few weeks before we left, we did a brainstorming activity to try and narrow down everyone's expectations and pick a starting direction at least. Some surprising things came up as we tallied the votes...South Dakota being one of them. This area is characterized by people who like to roam around. Sometimes the roaming was to follow food sources or to avoid particularly unpleasant seasonal weather conditions. For others, it was a certainty that some kind of paradise lay just ahead. We stopped at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, WY and I was struck by the sheer numbers of people who walked through here during a 20 year period, almost half a million, who mostly walked the 2,000 miles, next to their wagons or handcarts full of all their worldly possessions. I have walked 2,000 miles and while it's difficult at times, it's mostly just very tedious. And I didn't have to deal with dysentery or watching my oxen drown in the Sweetwater River.

So, why Casper, WY? It's on the way to Salt Lake City. We were cold and wet. Salt Lake City is warm and dry. In other words, not really any good reason. To me, Casper felt like a town where a bar fight may break out at any moment.  Lots of money, not enough women. We somewhat accidentally stopped at a steakhouse for dinner, and then slept in a Walmart parking lot. Not legal, but politely sanctioned. M had to work in the morning, so I took the kids to the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center. Then we drove up onto the high plain towards the pass. The wind was gusting to 50 mph and it was hard work to keep the trailer in the lane. There was not much to see, but we did pass a bison ranch. Unlike the bison we saw at Badlands and Custer State Park, these ranched bison were running and charging at each other. It was amazing to watch. We stopped at Independence Rock so I could unclench my fingers for a moment. The wind died down after we descended a few thousand feet and it was an easy drive into Salt Lake City. Glittery city lights below, with a clear starry sky above and a cartoonish crescent moon setting over the western mountains. Pretty magical. But mostly we were happy to be out of the rain.

I cannot exactly recommend that you go to Casper, WY. It's very far away from everywhere. But should you be passing through, go sit in the tipi and look out at the Platte River and think about the oil drilling and the bison ranches and the wind turbines and the flood of emigrants and the Indigenous people who watched a way of life collapse around them not so long ago.

Rapid City, Black Hills, South Dakota

Picture the look on my face, when I stepped out of the camper to put my boots on and realized they were filled with water. It had rained overnight, but it was really the gusting winds that blew the water from our camper gutters into the plastic mat we store on the ground below...and filled up ALL the shoes with water. "Mom, your shoes have puddles in them!!"

I dumped them out, put some plastic grocery bags over my socks and put them on anyway. I really needed the morning walk. One of the most challenging things about homeschooling, being a mom, living in a camper and doing all of those at once is that there are precious few opportunities for space or solitude. It was not raining so much as the campground was engulfed in a cloud, so my feet ended up being the driest part of me. The morning walk was good and restorative, but the mismatch between the weather forecast we had read (75 and sunny) and the current conditions (55 and inside a cloud) put us into a funk of indecision that lasted all morning. We filled the time by arguing, yelling at the kids, and gorilla gluing pieces of our closet hardware back into place. The kids ran around, whined for snacks every 10 minutes, and kept disrupting the gorilla gluing operation.

Around noon, the cloud seemed like it was getting less wet. Marko really wanted to see Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse so we decided to just get in the car and drive up there. Maybe it would be too foggy to see them, but it was only a 30 minute drive. Maybe Max, who is in a perpetual phase of needing yet refusing a nap, would actually fall asleep. 

We headed out with few expectations, but friends, you are not going to believe it, the skies cleared as we drove up into the Black Hills. I'm talking it was suddenly a blue sky, sunny, warm, no clouds kind of day. That land is sacred to Lakota people and it felt like a prayer to drive up through these spiraling black rocks and aromatic pine forest. We did a quick stop at Mount Rushmore (it's smaller than I thought it would be, said Marko) and then headed over to the Crazy Horse Memorial. It costs $30 to drive in and there was a special hike taking place that day so it was very crowded. Nonetheless we found a parking spot near the entrance. Max did not take a nap in the car so I ended up taking him out to the deck behind the museum pretty immediately. (Grant me the serenity to survive this phase of his development). Laurel and Marko got scavenger hunt packets from the front desk and toured the museum with M.

Max only wanted to look at the coins tossed in the little artificial pond on the back deck. But soon a little girl came over to him, coaxing him to play with her. They were soon chasing each other around and giggling. It turned out that she was the daughter of the Lakota couple who were doing presentations at the Memorial, and she was as in need of a playmate at that moment as he was. She had her own jingle dress and took part in the presentation. Max sat down right in front of the stage to watch her. Her mom, Jessie Taken Alive Rencountre is Hunkpapa Lakota and grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation and now lives in Rapid City. She just published a children's book, works at a school, and also goes around sharing things about the Lakota culture. Her husband played a drum and sang during the presentation and shared a bit about his perspective on the historic and ongoing misunderstandings between Indigenous and European people. At the end, we all stood in a circle and participated in a friendship dance. When it was over, she gave Max an autographed copy of her book. 

It was so just exactly what we needed as a family. For me to see another mother's perspective on my child, whom I am seeing through a lens of frustration right now. To just let the kids have fun and play with other kids. To learn about another culture, not just the historical but also the contemporary aspects of that culture. And to do it all under a blue sky with the Black Hills surrounding us on every side, was very healing. Jessie talked about the jingle dresses being healing dresses and it really did feel like healing energy was flowing. 

The weather turned back to cloudy and rainy that evening. It's even colder now, but we had another great morning in Rapid City, visiting the library and randomly meeting a bunch of homeschoolers there. In the afternoon, we came back to the campground and met a German family who is finishing out a long tour of North America. They are basically following the route we just took out here, so I was able to hand over a bunch of brochures and maps and recommendations. We have to move on in order to get out of the path of winter weather, but am definitely looking forward to my next visit to South Dakota.

Work From....County Regional Park

The last time M and I drove out this way, we did not have jobs or kids. Logistically it was a lot easier. But there are a few things we have figured out to make traveling now not just possible, but also enjoyable and fun. If we are going to be driving all day, we try to stop every 2 hours for a long break. We look for parks. If it's the weekend, an elementary school or a high school track is a good bet. Weekdays we look for county or state parks. I check the satellite view for big enough parking lots. Our trailer is only 20 ft. long and very maneuverable, but too long for a regular spot, so we usually end up parking across 4 spots. (Not very courteous if there's Little League or something going on, so we move on if that's the case.) Getting out of the car to really run around makes the kids behave pretty well when we are driving. There are a lot of podcasts we all enjoy listening to, and it's also a good time for them to work on their school work.

Right now we have to work around M's work schedule. Last night we stayed at a KOA with a noon checkout time. This morning I did some lessons with the kids, washed our clothes and got everything packed up while he worked. Then on his lunch break we drove about 80 miles to a county park near Minneapolis where we spent the rest of the afternoon. M worked on a really pretty deck overlooking a lake and the the kids and I went to the Visitor's Center, played on the beach, took a hike and did a scavenger hunt. They had a little library collection of all sorts of books about Minnesota plants and wildlife and an indoor play area. The vegetation is not all that different, although we did get to see some sections of restored prairie today. Mostly the kids are still noticing the endless fields of corn and soy that cover the midwest.

Now we're on the road again and will drive until we find another good spot to spend the night.

Wyalusing State Park, Wisconsin

These giant turbines sprinkled across the corn fields were not here the last time we came through the Midwest. I remember the corn, though. We have a few wind farms in Pennsylvania and I have biked past some of them on the GAP. I pay extra for wind powered energy, mostly because it seems better than coal. But seeing them stretched out to the horizon like this really hits home how much we change the landscape with our choices.

"It's just corn and floods," Marko said. He was balking at writing anything in his journal. We ended up covering quite a long distance these past two days. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and now Wisconsin. He's not wrong, it's incredible how much corn is out here. 

M picked Wyalusing State Park because it seemed like it was in the right direction. It sits on these bluffs above where the Wisconsin River flows into the Mississippi. We took the interstate part of the way, and then got off on a series of two lane roads that wound through more corn fields. We pulled over to a cheese store for curds, or squeaky cheese as the kids called it. M also bought a giant foam cheese hat for the kids. We got here before sunset and it wasn't raining so already an improvement over the previous day's travels.

The park turned out to be full of things to do. A decent cell signal meant M had no trouble working. There were plenty of hiking/running trails. There are all these effigy mounds in the shapes of bears and birds around here and the kids were happy to hike around and look at them. The hardwood forest here is filled with nut trees. Hickory and walnuts and acorns were all over the place. We also went looking for our first geocache, which unfortunately was hidden in the burned out trunk of a tree and Max got so sooty he demanded a bath, which is saying a lot.

Oh, by the way, we're on a road trip. I'm homeschooling the kids and M is working remotely. More about that later, but I thought I better get started logging our journey before I forgot. 

State parks often have really late checkouts. This one is 3pm, so we'll hang out here for most of the day tomorrow. M will work and we'll probably play some tennis and go on some more hikes. The kids got these pretty cool workbooks from the ranger with all sorts of scavenger hunts and activities to do outside. Then we'll try some late day driving and see where we end up. When we went through Ohio, the turnpike rest areas actually had a dump station and electric hookups for RVs, so we might try to find something like that. 

August 2019

With August coming to a close, we're finishing our first (official) month of homeschooling. I'll write more later about the hows and whys of coming to this decision, but for now I just want to share the positives and negatives from this first month.

What went well....
Khan Academy works so well on my phone while we are driving. The two older kids are using it for math instruction and practice.  I like that it's just plain questions and not games. I get a weekly report on their progress and can check in on a dashboard at any time to see how much they've done. They do way more when they use the app on a touchscreen, vs. using the keyboard on a computer.

"Cup of Twenty" - it's a cup with 20 objects in it and a pair of dice. Roll the dice, add them, count out that number of objects and the other person "guesses" how many objects are left in the cup. So simple, fun and not a worksheet, but does the work of a worksheet for number fluency.

Keeping the globe on hand for reference during study of any subject. Land and water features make everything make more sense.

Letting them play a lot.

Using the Libby app to check out ebooks and starting the day with reading aloud, either from the app, or from books from our house that they haven't read yet. Sometimes you read a kid a paragraph or a chapter and then just leave it lying around. They won't always pick it up to finish it, but often they will.

Working a day a week at my aunt and uncle's restaurant. My parents watch the kids and teach them all sorts of things only grandparents can. I get a chance to do a very different type of work than I usually do. Everybody wins.

What did not go well...
Kindle Fires suck at everything expect delivering content Amazon has decided you should see. The few things I really wanted the kids to be able to do....check out library materials, work on Khan Academy, play chess and view videos I wanted them to see on Youtube....are really not that easy to make work on Kindle Fires with child profiles set up. And some content, no matter how many times I deleted it, kept reappearing. Passwords are always an issue. Kindles are great for playing Minecraft and viewing Freetime content.

Core Knowledge textbooks for Geography, History and Language Arts are not as useful as I thought they would be. I think it's because I just have PDF versions, and we have yet to really solve the problem of devices for the kids. Also I find that elementary textbooks have so much less information than a regular nonfiction book on that topic.

Focusing attention on the older two, when Max is around. Max kind of steals the show.

Journals. We're writing every day on the principal that I think we ought to, but I can't really say why I think that's important. To me that's a definite sign we should rework this.

Road Trip NY VT PA

Home is where the heart is.

We just spent 2 weeks traveling about 1,800 miles to go to a trail race in Vermont, meet up with friends in the Poconos and just generally enjoy a road trip adventure and time outside. This blog started with a road trip back in 2006 and things are certainly a little different now. We used to sleep in the Saturn by flipping the back seats down and putting our legs in the trunk! Now we have a full size SUV towing a 20 ft travel trailer to accommodate the 3 additional people in our family. We looked at trailers for 3 years before we decided on the RPOD 176, mainly because it has full-size bunk beds and the profile of the trailer makes it very easy to tow. After going on a half dozen trips, I think we made a great decision, although there has been a lot to learn about RVs, warranties, hookups, towing and wifi. M works most of the time we are traveling, which is a slight challenge when it comes to scheduling travel days and where we are going to stop, but there's no way we could travel this much without his employer allowing him to work remotely. So we will find the wifi!

Play. Ground.

One thing I love about our trips now is I usually get really good sleep. This trailer is really tiny. Definitely just for sleeping and shelter in bad weather. Therefore, we are forced to spend a lot of time outside. We do a lot of the same types of activities that we do at home, but the eating, playing with toys, reading and hanging out happens outside a lot more. We all usually go to bed when it gets dark. M reads Harry Potter by headlamp and it's so relaxing to fall asleep with all the summer time insect noises. Max is our daily alarm at 6am, no matter what we are doing or where we are, but Laurel will sleep in until 8 or 9. Laurel became a really strong swimmer this year and she can spend hours in a pool or lake, which I think contributes to her long hours of sleep. After a tough year in third grade, she seems to be back to her creative, enthusiastic self and played for hours with her brothers or with any kids she happens to meet at the campgrounds. Speaking of other kids at campgrounds, we met a family with three kids who is hiking the Appalachian Trail together. It was fun to talk with their teenagers, Max introduced himself to them in the pool one day, but I wondered how much of the trail they would remember. I absolutely obsessed over those section maps along our way (we carried paper way back then, lol). Even now, when I step onto the AT, I can summon some memories of what it was like in 2007.

Life is better with a flower crown.

One of the best parts of this trip was that we were able to arrange a few days together with my friend Leah and her family. Despite living 3,000 miles apart, we've managed to keep our friendship going, even growing I think, for 15 years. Last year we we had the guts to get our spouses and kids altogether in a cabin for 3 days, despite none of them really knowing each other at all. If I didn't write about that trip, I should, because it rained the entire time and I'm talking the heavy summer rain that falls from the sky and rises up from the mossy, flooded yards and mists through the trees and floods the river and knocks out the power to the entire county, which knocks out the well pump. But luckily you can still flush the toilet by putting a bucket outside to collect water from the overflowing gutters. Adventures! And yet, I think all of us considered that a good trip. So we did it again, in the Poconos this time, and it didn't rain the entire time. We spent a lot of time at the lake at Tobyhanna State Park, with our five kids swirling around us casting Harry Potter spells on each other and fighting over sand pails. The cabin had a comically long couch in the basement. A sort of party room set up, and most of the kids slept there, all laid out in a line. We arrived in a vulnerable state, having just come from the Vermont 100 race, and that deserves a post of its own, because that was M's 11th hundred miler and no, it doesn't get easier and that doesn't just refer to the runner. But they thankfully offered to cook the first dinner (we split meal prep, which is a very good idea for these types of trips). We made a lot of campfires and stayed up too late talking and took turns playing with the kids. While I was there I realized we don't do a lot of socializing with other families anymore...we do a lot of splitting up and taking one or two kids to various things. The five of us spend a lot of time together, but not with other people usually.

We finished out the trip with 2 days at Hyner Run, one of our favorite camping spots. This was an excellent place to wind down and then the last leg home was only 3 1/2 hours of driving. Nobody felt tired and there wasn't a ton of stuff to clean up when we got home because we had cleaned everything in the camper pretty thoroughly and had been doing laundry along the way. This trip was kind of a test to see how we could live on the road for a few weeks, It went so well, we are all looking forward to our next trip.

Washington DC to Pittsburgh...By Bicycle Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

Day 3 Hancock to Frostburg

Not pictured, whiskey.

I know I said I planned for 65 mile days, but it didn't come out to that exactly. Due to spacing of trail towns and my desire to stay inside a locked room each night, I had to go 76 miles on my 3rd day of pedaling. From Hancock I got back on the Western Maryland Rail Trail and the miles flew by. What a treat it is to ride through a mountain landscape on a flat paved trail. I saw an enormous woodpecker and so many deer. Shortly after I got back onto the Towpath, I ran into a guy I recognized from the train. We decided to ride together for a while. Thirty miles went by pretty quickly while we were chatting and I started to feel a lot better about making it to Frostburg. Once I got to Cumberland, I would be back on familiar territory and on the much better surfaced Great Allegheny Passage Trail. We vented about the conditions of the trail and how much harder it was than we expected, and traded life stories.

Green, green, green on this part
of the Towpath. Just me and the birds.

We split up after a break and I started zooming down the last section into Cumberland. This was a dumb idea, though because my tire got caught in a deep rut and I took a spill. Hot and sweaty, with a gruesome case of road rash (ugly but not serious), I finally made it to Cumberland where I plopped down on a bench and just sat there for a while. I had 15 miles to Frostburg and although the entire trail is railroad grade, this is the one part where you definitely feel the climb. A storm was rolling in. The Airbnb I was going to was probably an additional 2 miles up the mountain from the trail head. And then I lost my poncho. What can you do, though? I started pedaling. And then just as the rain started falling, I came to a tunnel. What luck! I waited out the brief, but intense storm, and then kept going. The sun came out. I found a little rest area with a picnic table and a bathroom and I cooked the most fabulous pot of tuna mac ever. I forgot to bring a fork, so I carved a pair a chopsticks. Then I got a text from my Airbnb host who was willing to pick me up at the trailhead! During the final mile of the day, a group of college students waiting for the rest of their group on the side of the trail cheered for me as I went by. My Airbnb host was incredibly gracious. I have had several really great Airbnb experiences in Frostburg and even though this town is UP the mountain from the trailhead, I still really recommend it (send me a message if you want some recommendations). Eat at the Princess Restaurant if you like diner food.

Day 4 Frostburg to Ohiopyle

Up and over the mountain. My route was right to left.

It stormed all evening on the other side of the mountain from Frostburg so I had the pleasant experience of laying in bed with the windows open and a cool breeze blowing, lightning flashing in the distance. I had a very restful sleep and made myself a bowl of oatmeal in the morning. I did a little bike maintenance and tried to adjust my bent fender. The brakes were definitely not in great shape, but I figured the terrain was mostly flat once I got back down onto the trail so I headed out. And who was there at the trailhead, but my riding partner from the day before! He had stayed in Cumberland and was taking a break after pedaling the first 15 miles up the mountain. We decided to ride together a little more, and the final stretch of uphill pedaling was a breeze. We parted ways in Meyersdale and I spent the rest of my day riding pretty leisurely and enjoying the solitude. I got a flat that I had to fix outside of Rockwood. It actually turned out to be a leaky stem. I ate a really good grilled cheese sandwich at the Lucky Dog Cafe in Confluence. In Ohiopyle, I stayed in the hostel above the Falls Market Inn. I thought it was a bit pricey at $125 a night, but it was Memorial Day weekend. Before I went to bed, I got an ice cream cone and ate it on a bench by the river and thought about swimming in that river as a kid. The summer of 1988 was particularly hot and dry and the river got really low. I could remember being way out in the middle of it and sliding down the rocks on my butt.

Day 5 Ohiopyle to Home
Originally I planned to ride to Homestead, which is the closest spot on the trail to my house and about 60 miles from Ohiopyle. But M convinced me to ride all the way to the end of the GAP which is at the Point in downtown Pittsburgh. Then my dad decided to come out and bike with me on the last stretch. It would be another long day, but the weather was good. It was fun to ride with my dad, although I was plagued with technical difficulties with my brakes on the way home. Thankfully a guy stopped who knew his way around cantilever brakes. He figured out that a spring was missing and hacked a quick fix.

The GAP changes from scenic green mountains to a much more post industrial rust belt vibe in this section. I love the history of this region, though, and these bike trails only exist because of the railroad and canal construction, driven by the mining and steel industries. These are the things that brought my ancestors to Western Pennsylvania from Europe and I could not stop thinking about immigration on this trip. The hows and whys of people moving from place to place and the things other people try to do to control it.

The best feeling was getting to the Point and saying goodbye to my dad, and then starting up the hill to go home. My family had a cookout feast and a cold beer waiting for me. I felt like I could go a lot further (like I had a brief moment where I thought I should pedal down to Route 50 and keep going until I got to San Francisco), but I was also glad to be home.

Why did I do this? Is it safe to travel alone? What kind of bike do I need? What's the cheapest way to do this trip? Do you get tired?

This is 40.

I have done many trips on the Great Allegheny Passage, but I had never done the C&O Canal Towpath. The idea of pedaling home to Pittsburgh was very appealing to me, plus I like being alone. This felt like the most relaxing way to celebrate my 40th birthday. I think it's pretty safe to travel alone. I carry a knife and pepper spray, but the most important thing to do is remain aware of your surroundings and trust your instincts and just quickly move away from anyone who gives you the creeps. The vast majority of people I met were super cool. Most of the day I was just by myself and kind of far from roads and towns. You can always tell that a trail parking area is coming up because you will start to see people walking dogs or little kids on tricycles. Originally I planned to camp, but I knew I would sleep more soundly indoors and I really needed to catch up on some sleep. That was another reason to do a trip like this...I get much better sleep after some good physical activity and yes I did get a little tired and sore. My bike is a Windsor Tourist, which is a road touring bike I bought from BikesDirect many years ago, and modified a little here and there. You could really ride anything on these trails. They are flat and graded and the GAP is one of the nicest in the country. The Towpath is a different story, but you can certainly manage with any sort of bike, as long as it hasn't rained too much. (It gets very muddy as the path is more packed dirt than crushed gravel.) If you want to keep your trip cheap, you can camp along the way in so many places, mostly for free.

Washington, DC to Pittsburgh...by Bicycle! Part 1

It's been a while since we did any blogging about epic travel adventures, but I wanted to post this itinerary of my Washington to Pittsburgh ride, in case anyone else is thinking of doing this. For my 40th birthday, I wanted to do some kind of solo travel. I've had this trip on my mind for a decade at least, but logistically it was hard to work out the details with the whole family and bike trailers and all that. But for this trip, it was pretty easy. I booked a train ticket for $42 plus $12 to roll on my bike, selected 5 places to stay that were roughly 65ish miles apart and "bike-friendly," changed the brake pads on my aging but certainly still serviceable touring bike and bought some random snacks at Walgreens. If you haven't done any bicycle touring the mileage might seem a little daunting at first, but I can assure you, this is a very doable trip for anyone. Other than a few street miles on either end, the entirety of this trip is on car-free bike trail laid on old canal towpath or railroad. In other words, the grade is 2% at most. The trails go up and over a mountain range, so you are generally going up for half and then down for half, but the trail always looks pretty flat. I usually assume I will pedal about 10 mph on average including breaks. So, 65 miles a day is only about 6.5 hours of leisurely pedaling. I know a guy who just did this same distance in 2 days! But my goal was to spend some time alone and see the wildlife and history along the way, so I took 5 days, plus one day for travel.

Day 0 for Travel

Sunrise view from the train.

The train station is within biking distance from my house (7 miles or so). I had to leave a bit early in the morning to catch a 5:30am train, but this was actually nice, because there were virtually no cars on the roads.
The people at the Amtrak station couldn't have been nicer and told me to take my bike in the elevator to the platform. There were no racks in the train car, which was not as it was described on the website, but we all just kind of laid down our bikes on the floor and there was plenty of room. There were about 6 other people with loaded bicycles. Because the train is often delayed I decided to book a bed at Hosteling International in DC and start my trip the following day. Sure enough, we were sitting on the tracks outside of Cumberland for almost 2 hours, but the train is a very comfortable, if slow, way to travel. Seats are huge and they recline enough to take a very pleasant nap. It was a little unnerving to get off the the train and be swept immediately outside into a huge city at rush hour, but Washington DC actually has some great bike lanes and bike paths so I spent the remainder of the day riding around the Mall and the monuments. The Hostel was about $45 for a bunk bed in a shared room. They did have decent bathrooms and free linens and a locked shed that was inside a locked courtyard for bicycle storage. Breakfast was included. I thought it would be mostly young adults, but there were people of every age there, including a field trip of middle school students!

Day 1 Georgetown to Harper's Ferry

Can you spot the heron?

I heard that it was hard to locate the beginning of the trail and that it would be crowded and difficult to ride, but I basically ran into it by accident and there were hardly any people out.  It is brick and narrow and kind of bumpy at first, but before you know it, you are outside of the city....Potomac River to one side and the swampy canal to the other. There was a fair amount of commuter bike traffic at first, and a lot of highway noise, but by mile 10, it was very quiet. The wildlife viewing on this stretch is amazing, especially for birds. The miles melted away and I enjoyed the solitude. The trail is hard packed dirt, with a lot of rocks and roots. Not the most comfortable to ride, but I lucked out with weather and the mud wasn't too bad. However, there is a section just before Harper's Ferry that is washed out and you have to carry your bike and bags through a creek and up a steep bank. I was spared this unpleasantness because a storm blew in just before I got to that section and I was sitting under a porch on an old canal house next to a parking lot. A couple who was walking their dog offered me a ride around the washed out section, which I gladly accepted. When I got to Harper's Ferry I decided to bike up the huge hill (very huge, actually had to get off and push towards the top) to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. I met a few thru and section hikers on the way and was reminded of how different one's view of the AT is when you are a thousand miles in, compared to after you actually complete it. They were definitely in the "why am I doing this" phase. That night I slept at The Town's Inn, which is a really old (like 1840s old) inn. I had my own bathroom but it was on a different floor than the room. No television in the room, but it did have an AC unit in the window and a small fridge and microwave. 

Day 2 Harper's Ferry to Hancock

Snakes in trees.

I got the tip to get off the Towpath and get on the paved Western Maryland Rail Trail just before Hancock and I have no regrets about doing this. The Towpath gets very bumpy and rocky and covered in black rat snakes and mosquitoes and muddy ruts or hard dried ruts and it was very hot. I questioned all of my motives embarking on this voyage and despaired over choosing such an unpleasant way to celebrate my birthday. Just kidding, but the miles certainly dragged on, and while I was still following the river, the water birds weren't as interesting, or maybe I was just tired of looking. I must have gotten a little dehydrated because that nauseous feeling set in sometime in the afternoon and I had to stop every few miles just to suck on a ginger chew and try to drink some water. This is the problem with traveling alone...you have nobody to talk to if your mood gets low. I was never so grateful to see a Super 8 Motel, my destination in Hancock. The lobby was filled with motorcycle guys who raised their Coors Light bottles to me when I staggered in, all dusty and red-faced. This motel was about what you expect for $50, but I would recommend it. The desk clerk gave me a towel for my bike and directed me to a hose at the end of the building. After I cleaned it off, I was allowed to take it into my room. I heard nothing from the motorcycle guys all night and actually slept pretty soundly. Hancock is a town that embraces bicycling and the rail trails, whether you are going 3 miles or 300, and there is a bike shop and tons of restaurants. Everything is well signed, with is ample parking and you can rent whatever you need there.

Stay tuned for days 3-6!

A Hawk in Laurel Hill

The mountain laurels were still in bloom this weekend when we went camping in Laurel Hill State Park. I could write many things about this weekend, which was wonderful and restorative, but the thing I don't want to forget is that after we had the camper all hitched up and the tanks drained clean and were finally on the road out of the park, we saw a hawk dive down into the ferns and come up with a mouse or something in its talons. The road out of Laurel Hill is technicolor green this kind of year, with a high canopy and the floor covered in ferns. I have seen hawks in the woods before, usually harassing squirrels up in a nest, but I had never seen one dive down into the ferns to hunt. It was spectacular.

Bel Monte

We went to our first trail race of the season, the Bel Monte Endurance Race. Yes, we knew the weather was going to be cold and snowy. A winter weather advisory was posted for the area and the Blue Ridge Parkway was shut down. On the way down, we noticed a screw driven pretty deeply into our tire and made a detour to a mechanic to have it removed and patched. Luckily we found a decent garage and met Tootie, who entertained and was entertained by our kids. The snow hit shortly after that, and we arrived at the camping area when it was nearly dark, which was definitely not the plan (we left at 9am and the drive should take about 5 hours). The facilities were pretty basic. I swear the guy told me there would be hot showers when I made the reservation, but there weren't even flush toilets or running water. We did see a row of portable toilets near the race start line, but it was a pretty long walk from our site. At least the site was leveled and had a picnic table, because it was literally on the side of a mountain. The snow had pretty much stopped while we pitched the tent. We kept the kids inside the car to stay warm. We didn't do much else that night, just climbed into our sleeping bags and M read Harry Potter to the kids. M's friend Jason showed up a little while later and ended up sleeping in his car near our tent. We fell asleep early and it was very, very quiet. No wind, no animals rustling, no people sounds, no trains, no road sounds. 

The next day, M got up early to go the race. It was my hope that everyone else would stay asleep for a long time, but the kids all got up and started goofing off. Freezing rain was in the forecast for the evening and I did not want to spend the next night in the tent (more like I didn't want to pack it up when it was all we). Laurel and I took the tent down and we headed off down the road to see if we could find an aid station to cheer on the runners. I had neglected to print any maps in advance and we had no cell reception, so we had to find a place where we could either hop on some wifi or get some cell service. The woods were beautiful with the fresh snow on the branches, but I could tell it was going to be a sloppy day on the trail. We stopped at the first store we came to, where a sweet older lady made us some really delicious egg and bacon sandwiches and a rather deaf older man stood behind a counter display with a wide variety of revolvers for sale. They also sold Virginia souvenirs, camping supplies, groceries, bait, pretty much anything you can imagine. The man was pretty friendly but could not believe anyone would run in the mountains, and had only a vague idea of where Pittsburgh was. 

We carried on down the road and found an aid station, but M had long since passed through. We followed a forest road and eventually found another aid station. We missed him again, but it was an out and back race so we decided to camp out and wait for him. I pulled out the propane stove and we made some coffee and soup and grilled cheese. The kids ran around in the woods for a while, chatted with the ham radio operators, entertained a baby and ate all the snacks I had packed.

When M came back through the aid station, he was more than halfway done, but was moving much slower than he had anticipated. We gave him a grilled cheese and a pep talk and told him we would meet him at the finish. Then we waited for Jason to come through and all the kids ran with him into the aid station, which made him very happy. 

Well, I'm not going to give you too many more details on this next subject, but let's just say if you are going to travel with a kid who is not potty trained yet, you should...well, probably just stay home. I had to make a trip into town to procure some more supplies and while there, I booked a room at our favorite hotel chain before heading back up the mountain to the finish line. The kids all fell asleep in the car on the way back up. As we went up the mountain it got foggier and foggier until visibility was about 10 yards. I parked the car and went to check out the finish line and heard someone calling my name. Two more friends! This greatly boosted my spirits. Tomas had actually finished the 25k hours earlier but was waiting around to watch M come in. While I was hanging out waiting I met a few other runners who had met M along the way or at other races. Finally he emerged from the fog and crossed the finish line. A hard-earned finish on a 50 mile day. (He was delighted to see the hotel key cards in my hand.) As soon as everybody had a much needed shower, we tucked into our beds, cozy and warm and listened to M read more Harry Potter.  

We learned a few things this weekend. First, we need to bring a portable toilet with us. Second, I need a warmer or newer sleeping bag for cold weather camping. Mine was rated to 20 degrees when I bought it (used) at an REI garage sale 15 years ago. I carried it on the AT. I'm thinking it has lost some of its loft, because I was not super warm. Max only has a quilt and that actually seemed ok for him but he was wearing his snow pants and coat all night. I'm not sure if I like that arrangement or if I should get him a real sleeping bag. Third, we are so awesome at winging it. It's one of the strengths of our family. This weekend presented more than a few challenges, but we stuck together, encouraged each other and enjoyed each other.