What’s Going on!
When Nathan and I were dating, maybe even before, while we were best friends, we day-dreamed about a life where we had adventure after adventure. When we had our first child we talked about all the cool things we were going to show her and teach her about. By the time we had our second child we also had jobs, mortgages and loans to payback. We still day-dreamed but they began to feel more like far away dreams than almost here dreams. One day we woke up and started planning the biggest adventure we could in the span of four months. We have dear friends who have 6 beautiful children… their oldest, Kit, overheard our adventure plans… and said with child-like wonder and belief…”You should do that, and I am going to come with you.” We all began to get serious and put together this trip. Our goals, not necessarily in this order, are to show the children things that they have learned in the textbooks, and show them what is not in the text books. You could say that we are moving from homeschooling to roadschooling. The next goal is to show our family how to work together as a team… how often does a family get to go through difficult situations that they have to push through and finish as a team ?(other than a game show) The final goal is that we are blessed by God and follow His will for us on this trip.
Follow Us!
See our family’s realtime progress HERE with real time GPS coordinates from our SPOT satellite tracker.
The Blogs!
Our first day of driving felt extremely stressful. Getting everything finalized to leave for four months is nerve wrecking to say the least. Fortunately, I have wonderful parents, in-laws and good friends.
Day 1:
We begin our trip with a prayer and we start to head off, before I can get out the driveway, Kit cuts his leg with a new knife…. I had all the lovely first aid kits in the trailer packed and locked up. It reminded me of the saying that God always has you exactly where He wants you, well before I left; He reminded me that I needed a car first aid kit.
Off we head to Kerrville, to see Grandmother Betty. We had a wonderful time with family, and newly married in family from Tunisia… to celebrate the coming together of different cultures we ate Paella a delicious Spanish dish that culminates different flavors beautifully. The next morning we said heartfelt goodbyes in butchered French and Arabic. I quickly realized that as well organized as the trailer may be, it is a real workout getting things in and out… not to mention a real head banger.
Day 2:
We head off on a reallllllllllllyyyyyyy long drive, it was supposed to be just 5.5 hours but it ended up being around 7 or 8. The path was wrought with financial mishaps and gut twisting phone calls to the bank as the gas tank kept returning to empty in the middle of the desert. Miraculously we made it and finances restored we set up camp under the threat of a thunderstorm. This was a real team building effort, as none of us really knew what we were doing with this style of tent but hey we are homeschoolers and there was never a problem we couldn’t pull our experiences together and get the job done. Kit abandoned his tent for the big one when the gigantic flashlight fireflies swarmed around us. Kit and Katharine were convinced they were glowing baseballs from outer space. In the morning the kiddos grabbed walkie talkies and headed off to climb the Fort Davis Mountains as all children should experience.
Day 3:
In the morning our plan was to head to Carlsbad Caverns. On the way we passed Guadalupe national park, the children went nuts… “Stop the car; I’ve got to get a picture of this!” I heard a constant stream of astonished remarks like, “This is Texas! I never knew Texas was so amazing!” We said goodbye to our fair home state and headed into New Mexico without much adieu, all felt ready for what lies ahead. The caverns were fantastic. Our National park pass allowed us to go into the caverns for free and do a self guided tour. Along the way we made up stories of the mud men giants who were frozen where they lay, where the Dinosaur/dragon eggs and nesting grounds were. We remain fascinated by how the rocks fell from the cavern ceiling.
The next stop on our trip is to Roswell. To see what could be said about the age old question… “Are we alone” I have heard comedians joke about writing books that are called Skip it! When traveling across America… if I were to write such a book it would be Carlsbad to Roswell. We were so completely bored… we saw a couple interesting things… little alien feet painted on the sidewalk…. Alien lights on the lampposts and U.F.O crashed into buildings. There was also a questionable human we spoke to about where I could get a cup of coffee. Other than that… there was not much to write home about. It would be a shame if such a book were published because as awful as it was to us, people do call it home. I also gained such an appreciation for what lay ahead, the further away we drove and the closer we were to where the land began to roll and rise up into hills that kept my imagination going to the days of Natives roaming the land hunting buffalo.
We drove to Ruidoso, arriving very late… we found a lot of R.V. parks, but the few campsites we read about were not to be found. We drove up this one dirt road that had signs pointing to a campsite, but never found it. In the pitch dark, with tall coniferous trees towering over us and the road getting rougher, we began to scare each other with the possible outcomes if we never reach our destination… this proved all the scarier when we could not find a place to turn the abominable trailer around… the one place we found had a steep road going up and lose dirt around us and a ditch followed by a drop off… after banging up the backend and jackknifing ourselves we managed with prayers uttered in gusto to turn ourselves around. We gave up the camping for a lost cause and began to search for a place to sleep in the car… nowhere safe to be found… we passed a ski lodge and booked the last available room for the night and that is where I sit now writing to you while the kids take turns getting showered and watch beloved cartoons.
Day 4:
Today’s agenda is to drive to Santa Fe by dinner tonight.
Santa Fe, and I am fortunate to have a wonderful cousin who lives there and agreed to let me and the children stay at his house for the night. When I arrived, I wondered why he was not there to greet us, we waited and waited. I began to worry that something might have happened and thought about what we would do if we had no where to stay the night. 20 minutes after the said meeting time my cousin, his wife and son pull up looking thoroughly perplexed at our presence… giving him the benefit of the doubt, after all the last time he saw me I was twelve and now am thirty-two I explained it’s me, Nicole with a big ole Texas smile. He said, “You are early?”… No, I don’t think so, not wanting to be rude and point out his lateness, after all it does run in the family. No, you are… today is Sunday and you said you would be here on Monday… how did you manage to get here a day early? We were all a bit perplexed at the situation but given that I was famil,y I was warmly welcomed despite not being ready for me at all. Later on I realized it was ALL MY mistake, when I looked at my schedule to tell him the day I would be arriving I only looked where I saw Santa Fe in big letters on our Day 5, Monday. I failed to look at the very end of day 4 in small print where it said I would be arriving in Santa Fe that evening. If you are related to me, or happen to bless me with your friendship… I should hand out clauses, stating that my head has always been caught up in more intriguing thoughts than time schedules. Someone once told me that it was an incredibly rude and selfish thing to do to others, and that is true, it is. My only caveat is that I like to think that I give as much if not more than I take. The kids and I had such a wonderful time in Santa Fe… with my cousin and his family. It was refreshing to see that he and his family were just as odd and eccentric as I am in our collections, foods and frame of minds. I really hope that in the future we can spend more time together. Even with almost thirty years between us I can see that if we had grown up together, we would have been close, having much in common. I wonder if he knows that.
My cousin recommended to me that if we wanted to stay out of the “skip it areas” we should go up to Bandelier and see the cliff dwelling ruins, then drive through to flagstaff up to the south rim instead of four corners.
Day 5:
Bandelier and the Jemnez mountains were amazing. The Kids loved climbing up into the old dwellings and taking in the sites. This was a great area to teach about permanent village life, we even got to see archaeologists at work on the site. I think for them and most definitely for myself, touching the places, climbing the ladders to homes of the past, crawling around in them looking for signs of life, out windows with the same view, made it so much more than a text book could ever be. Hard as this trip might be I will never regret these teachable moments. While learning to be a teacher in school they taught us to recognize when a teachable moment entered your classroom… well I just created four months of teachable moments.
Day 6:
After Bandelier, we wanted to cut our drive to the Grand Canyon into two sections. We left Bandelier and then headed to Holbrook to campout. We didn’t arrive until after dark and setting up the tent for only the second time in the dark was quite the adventure! The next day weary and already hot I set up our school for the day… let me first say that we do get a lot of school done without actually “doing school” During the day the children read, listen to reading. All the children have atlases that they are obsessed with drawing the route and telling me where I should be driving or looking at things they want to see, they also journal and draw. When we are out and hiking or visiting somewhere they are gathering a plethora of history and science… we would have to try to not get this in. However I do feel the need that according to each child’s level math and grammar need to be covered as well so that when we come back from this journey that has not fallen by the wayside… we are after all not getting back until October. Now for the “rest of the story” I set up school and have them all start independent work, this is so that I can work with each one independently when the time comes and no one is running around distracting the other… it’s a little rough. I worked with Austin first, then Kit but by the time I got to Katharine it was hot and almost time to check out… we all wanted to swim, I mean, that is why I paid 25 dollars for the night, the pool. We are also concerned because of the road closures in Flagstaff due to a forest fire. We head out a little past noon and start our drive to flagstaff hearing that 89 has been reopened. Along the way I see signs for the largest meteor crash site, well we just got to go there… I have never seen a crash site, it was interesting, but so not worth my 40 dollars, maybe if I had more time to see the movie and the whole museum and take the guided rim hour long tour… but I didn’t, so it wasn’t.
Flagstaff is a burning. We all discussed what we had learned on our tour of Smokey the Bear national landmark and looked in awe as we saw firefighters working to tame the flames. After passing through Flagstaff we stopped and took pictures of the pillars of smoke rising from the mountains.
Day 7:
Our clocks are always wrong and they seem to be changing… we all think that we might have picked up an alien in Roswell that keeps screwing with our clocks.
We drove through a lot of reservation area and not a whole lot of gas stations, knowing that I was going to the south rim to the Grand Canyon village I assumed there would be a lot of gas stations along the way. But there is not. My jeep was reading 60 miles to empty, puling this trailer it is probably more like 20. As we pull through the park ranger tells me that I still have 25 miles to go before we get to our designated campsite (this place is huge!) He suggests (unbeknownst to our gas problem) that Desert view is the last place with facilities. We pull in to the gas station after much adieu about how to turn around and find it… and gas comes at a hefty price of well over 3dollars. Oh well, at least we have gas!
We arrive in Grand Canyon with many oooos and awwwws. We set up camp in the light hung our wet clothes that we washed in Holbrook but didn’t have time to dry. Then almost immediately after dinner, we all wanted to fall asleep. I think that we were all so tired from getting to a place and immediately the next day having to break it all down and drive on is wearing us down. However, here we are sleeping two night s and the thought of being able to wake up and enjoy the day with no rush is relaxing me so that my eyelids are shutting with a smile on my lips.
The Grand Canyon is GRAND. It almost seems like its fake, like I am looking at a painted back drop. What is the deal with the time? We made our way to the rim and hiked around, there was hardly any English to be heard. Apparently the most visited site by foreign travelers is the Grand Canyon. We stop again for a water break and Kit realizes that he has left his water bottle somewhere. He proceeds to beret himself and I assure him that it is ok; we all are going to end up doing dumb things on this trip at one time or another. He looks up to me and smiles and says yeah, like when you…. He then lists several things of my doing.
We hike back retracing our steps until we find the water bottle. We found a ranger giving a talk on condors and we went out to the ledge to listen. We didn’t site any condors but looking for them out over the canyon rim was fun, we identified several ravens, crows and turkey vultures… which really look similar to the condor, just their wing span is 3ft shorter. The kids did not want to hike anymore so I found a shuttle that could take us to all the spots we wanted to see and we could stop and look around and hike a few miles instead of the foreboding 5hr hike. This we really enjoyed, the shuttles were crowded but the hiking trails were not. I suppose because they were for the “I really love hiking” as opposed to the “ooh, I’ve got my cutest shoes that are perfect for viewing the canyon” hiking.
The next morning we have a lot of laundry to do and all are desperate for a shower. I send the boys off to shower while us girls do the laundry, there are so many people that I did not want to leave it alone. 2dollars for every load washed and 2more for every one dried. I start to feel like what am I getting for my 50$ a night camp stay. But ever more so than when I go out to the trailer after 30 minutes to get the essential oils to dry with the laundry and find the two boys sitting on the curb, still dirty! They told me that showers cost $2 for 8 minutes and they had no money, in a very exasperated way I ask why in the world they did not come in the laundry mat to get some money from me… Kit said “well, we thought you would come out eventually” I need to note here that the showers and the laundry mat are literally 3 steps from each other.
What can you do in 8 minutes?
Austin= just wash your body, not your face, hair or feet.
Katharine= everything essential but when the water runs out, do a worried check that you still have soap.
Nicole= everything and amazingly shave without cutting myself, but when the water cuts off, my rag is still loaded with soap and once I am dressed I notice not all of me is shaved.
Kit= has time to do everything and relax for 5minutes in the nice stream of hot water.
Onward we go to the Hoover Dam
Day 8:
There was so much road construction going on 20 miles outside of the dam that it took a lot to get near it and as we did the traffic did not slow down… apparently the dam is high on the watch list and so we had to pull over and open up our trailer, answer questions then unload a few things and let them check it out. I have no problem helping our country out; I just hate the terrorist who made it this way. Both Gentlemen who were questioning me were very nice, I remember one poked his head in the car and in his deep baritone voice said, “hello little people” and as we were leaving “good bye little people” the kids thought this was great and repeated this phrase all the way to our campsite at Lake Mead.
Lake Mead was like being on Mars. The scenery is just inexplicable. The closest I can think of is that movie with Governor Arnold S. where he is on mars and everything was red and baron. The mountains that surrounded the lake at sunset were aflame with color, rocky and baron. The lake shimmered like a smooth glass surface. 8:30pm it was still 114 degrees outside, we went in the lake, of course, and it was freezing cold. I have never had the experience where below my knees is freezing cold and above feeling like I was in an oven. That night we decided to camp out amongst the stars and not set up a tent, being that at 10pm it was still 110. We all slept in our bathing suits and our water bottles had ice in them and lay on our bodies to cool us down. I slept hugging my bowie knife like a teddy bear. I began to question my sanity for going on this trip. Those of you, who really know me, know I love to travel and experience all that life has to offer at the banquet God has prepared, so for me to come to this conclusion, you must know how bad it was! I began to think of the doctor who pleaded with me not to go for another two weeks because of my bronchitis. I thought about my ankle that had been hurting for a week, then the night before swelled up to the size of a tennis ball, that still aches to this day. I dwelled on the many family members who called and pleaded with me to not go, telling me that this was by far the craziest thing I had planned, that I need not act too true to my ”Sweet” (this is my maden name, and apparently all named so are a little to adventourous) side of family. I fell asleep watching the stars and awoke to the morning sun at a cool 89 degrees and the faintest memory of a bad dream.
Day 9:
We decided that instead of the two nights we were going to spend here we would just do one, we broke down camp early and headed to the dam. What a spectacular sight. It is invigorating to see the work done by America’s great past. It makes me long for our country to see greatness again. This dam was built during the depression and a marvel that it was completed two years short of the deadline and under budget. Let’s see that again!
Day 10:
We drove out to Zion, the drive alone is interesting. When we arrived a day early, we searched high and low for a campsite within 35 miles of the park. Not one was to be had. We ended up getting a hotel room and felt really blessed by the air conditioning, pool, TV, showers and a desk to complete some school work on. We drove into Zion the next day and took a shuttle up to the last stop, hiked around and played in a river; it was hot but fortunately just 100 degrees. The views were spectacular. It looks like a rock climbers dream. I would love to go there again with just Nathan, during the cooler months to explore some more.
Day 11:
From Zion we headed to salt lake. Yuck! This is a skip it place for sure. I never want to hear again “camping on Antelope Island” How shall I describe the smell, or the swarms of insects. Other than an open toilet and the bugs were like dust tornadoes coming up from the ground… we hiked up one hill and the view was beautiful, but that is all the good I have to say about that.
Day 12:
We head to Craters of the Moon. Now this I not how I would describe it, so if you want to go because of the name, don’t go with that expectation. But if you want to see where the earth opened up and lava spewed forth creating miles and miles of volcanic wonder, then you should go. We went into the lava tubes and hiked around with wonder and amazement. Austin kept finding places where dragons could keep their eggs and Katharine wondered what the Native Americans thought when they met there. We meet some really neat people from all over the country and the globe for that matter. We were able to get a little school done. We chose again to camp out amongst the stars; because of this decision another couple came over and told us that all the nearby campers took a vote and we won the coolest family. The next day as we headed out we stopped at the visitors center and opened up excerpts of people who were on the Oregon trail. I cannot imagine traversing this stretch of land with a wagon and babies. I was not surprised to find that one Oregon traveler described it as the earth opening up and spewing forth black vomit.
Tomorrow we head to Salmon.
Day 13:
The drive up was amazing. We went through the Sawtooth range to the Bitterroots, where Lewis and Clark had adventures and met with Sacagawea and her peoples. It is a wonder to me that as soon as I hit that fresh mountain air I felt as though an awakening began. I felt the dark cloud lift and pure excitement and joy undulated within. I was on the coolest road trip ever. The temperature dropped to 75 and again to 65 in the highest parts. Kit and Katharine debated about why it was cooler in the mountains when it was closer to the sun. I did not interject. Sometimes it’s not about what you know… it’s about what they know, even if they are wrong. They need opportunities to show how they can prove their points, they will find out soon enough in their learning. The Kids saw snow and shouted, “we need to stop!”, so we did. We got out found a little patch of snow and hiked down to it and built snowmen and threw snow balls… with frozen hands we head back to the car and set out to find our camping destination. We found a great little campsite right next to the Salmon river and right near a Lewis and Clark’s expedition spot. We made friends with all our neighbors and learned of all their travels and they prepared us for ours.
This night I pondered my life back at home. It does not look like anything that I want out of life. This awakening in my mind was opening up corners that had long cobwebbed over. What did I want? What did I dream about? The last three years of my current life feel like a life of pretend. I came to the realization that Nathan and I had given in to the rat race of life.
Often on the road Kit will talk to Austin and Katharine about all the things he misses back home. There is a lot that he seems to miss and I wonder if he will make it the whole way. This has got to be difficult for a young man of twelve who has lived in the same area, to now be away from everything familiar. I think that he realizes how much he does love his siblings, I think he even misses wrestling with them. Nathan and I knew that this would be a hard trip on our kiddos even if they loved travel and adventure. I expected them to rattle of a long list of complaints and “I miss…” but surprisingly the only real two things they missed the most were grandparents and dogs. The chief complaint, and I have to agree, is setting up and breaking down camp. When I was asked, the only thing I missed was my husband. I have not missed Nathan like this since his trip to Tasmania. I always miss him, but this is different. I do not have much time to talk to him and process thoughts and fears with our usual nightly conversations. Out here, if something goes wrong… it is all on me. I looked around that night and thought, what would make this trip better. The things I thought about were to have more time(camp took up a considerable amount). If we had an RV we would have more of an established base camp and when we met up with Nathan, it would be easy to leave base camp behind and backpack into the wilderness. With an RV we could also have our dogs. I went into a frenzy of mathmaticaladdition and thought how can we afford homes, travel and an RV? Something has to give, would it be our dreams to just travel around, having the ability to pick up and go wherever God called us? Or a typical American home complete with the picketed mortgage and stable community to raise our children in? It was then Nathan called and we talked about my thoughts. Both settling on that we, two people who seemed unconventional, were indeed in a rat race of conventionalism and that we desperately wanted out.
That night I went to sleep with wonderful dreams and thoughts about all the things I was going to see, wanted to see and hope for the future to come in this trip and when I went back home. I was set on making changes as soon as this trip ended. Who knew that those thoughts would soon come to fruition and that the next day was going to be the end of my journey upward.
March 9, 2011
Wow! Is that a record for not updating?! I certainly left you guys on a great cliff-hanger.
The journey home was arduous to say the least. The thought of blogging afterwards was not the first on my mind.
Here’s the why we became homeward bound in a nut-shell: We spent a lot of money in preparation for the G.A.R.T. however, when our vacant rental house’s plumbing decided to flood, there was no money left in our emergency funds. Contractors had to be hired and floors, electricity and walls had to be replaced. We were faced with 2 decisions: do we 1. Keep going and place everything on credit, after all in 3 weeks we’ll get paid. Or 2. We tuck our tails in, turn around and head home on as little cash as possible. We chose the later based on the logic that we did not know the extent of the damage to the rental home. It really ended up the better decision because whatever could go wrong, seemed to. Everything from our accounts being frozen, to rounds with the insurance companies, to worst of all, borrowing money from our parents… (something that in our twenties we swore we’d never do again.)
I remember at one low point I was out of money, out of gas and our accounts were frozen. I stopped in a gas station and begged the attendant if I could write him a check, to which he replied “of course!” Then when I took my check out, he said “oh, wait, you’re from out of state… I can’t do that.” I felt like a whipped dog in the street. I grimaced and walked out, drove to a park with storm clouds literally swarming overhead. I parked, let the kids out to play and bumped the all too familiar place on my head as I unloaded the stove from the trailer to make a batch of infamous Ramen noodles. A happy birthday party was going on in the foreground. The temperature dropped and wind picked up, making it difficult to light the stove. I looked around and saw the physical beauty before me, but had no joy in seeing it. I looked up, felt rain on my face. “Soups done!” I called to the kids. They ate in silence looking at me…. I tried to show a countenance of joy in the midst of this trial… I don’t think they bought it. I said to them, “its bad, but we’ll be alright.” They smiled, finished and took off to play again. Alone with my thoughts I prayed, aloud. I can’t remember what I was praying for; I just remember desperately wanting to be close to the Father. Lightning streaked across the sky, I called to them to get out of the field and stay to the path with trees to come back to the car. The wind killed my voice, lighting flashed again and thunder bowled overhead, they started to run to me. I think the mountainous sides made the thunder seem so much louder. I ran to the trees and beckoned them to do the same. we waited then ran to the car, jumped in and I called my dad. He found a campsite nearby and wired us some money. When we arrived at the site, it was like an oasis, a glorious setting. a swimming pool, bathroom, showers, and video arcade. We had real food in our bellies and rest for our weary bodies. I was determined to not spend very much and I drove like crazy to get home. The kids were ready to be done with the car and camping. Kit said that he just wanted to drive straight home and surprise his mom. We did. We arrived at two in the morning to a hot Texas night. Kit tried to sneak in but couldn’t and ended up having to knock on the door and be let in. I think his mom still gets a start when she has to open the door at night.
My homecoming felt embarrassing. I just didn’t want to tell my story again. I wanted to be on the road, even thinking about it now is difficult. I wanted to be as far away as possiable. I laugh it off as my failed trip to Alaska but successful journey to Idaho when I have to retell it now. Did I learn a lot, yes. Does it still hurt to think about what might have been, yes. Would I do it again, even if I didn’t make it, yes. I whole-heartdly believe that we made the right decision both in going and in coming home. I say that because that Journey to Idaho, gave me answers to questions, I didn’t even know I had.