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.