In Search of Beautiful

"O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain!" - Katharine Lee Bates

One of the main reasons we want to take this trip is the fact that we have seen so very little of our country.  Generally speaking, we find nearly everything we want to do in a very small radius of our beloved home town.  We're an easy drive away from New York City and Philadelphia.  We have festivals, like today's harvest festival in our historic downtown, pictured above.  We have amusement parks.  We're a couple of hours from the Atlantic.  We have woods, and mountains.  We can even manage a day trip of Washington, D.C. If we want to get really adventurous, we head south or north.  South, of course, will bring us eventually to our two favorite vacation destinations - the Outer Banks or Disney World.  North takes us to the banks of the St. Lawrence and Grandma's house.  To someone else, this may not seem very exciting, but we find plenty to enjoy, even in our limited travel circle.

But Scott has never been farther west than Chicago.  I've never been farther west than Wisconsin.  The kids?  Remember when we went to Cleveland in August? Yup.

Transportation Ponderings

"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? " -The Brain
"I think so, Brain, but this time, you put the trousers on the chimp." -Pinky

 Summer vacation is nearly over, so it's the perfect time (in my warped little mind) to plan next summer's vacation.   After spending most of the day preparing to go back to work, I rewarded myself with a little online research for the trip.

When we first discussed the trip, our plan was to drive across the country, passing through the following states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and California.  We'd rent a car, and then we would return by plane.  But as I mentioned in my very first post on this blog, two of us are severe airplane phobics, and one doesn't like planes all that much.

And that's when I got my next great idea.  I looked into train routes eastward.  Turns out, there's a train that leaves California, passes through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana.  Once the train arrives in New Orleans, there is an overnight stop, which would thrill my daughter no end - for reasons I can't explain, she loves the very idea of New Orleans. 

Then we board a different train to head north through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and back into Pennsylvania.

That would bring our total to 25 states in one road trip!  Not to mention, we wouldn't need to fly, and we'd get a night in the French Quarter.  The cost is only $300 more than flying, and might actually be cheaper than flying as the dates get closer.  (Especially if Amtrak offers a promo code, which they often do...)

Unfortunately, it would mean three nights sleeping in coach.  We've done two nights in coach before and it was somewhat less than pleasant.  It would also mean that Scott would have to get three solid weeks off instead of two.  Still, it's worth pondering!

Mixed Success

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
-Alexander Pope

Our camping trip last weekend was somewhat successful. Some of the lessons that we learned (which may or may not be pertinent to our epic road trip adventure) are as follows:

1. It is really, really important to make sure you clear ALL the rocks from under a tent site. Really. In the battle of sleeping bag cushioning versus rocks, the rocks win, every time.

2. It doesn't matter how much firewood you bought, brought, or found.  You don't have enough.

3. For a decent sunset shot, I have to focus on the sky, and then bring the camera down to my subject.  Otherwise, my camera just keeps washing everything out and eliminating the colors I'm trying to capture.

4. Not everyone will be amused by every roadside attraction.  For example, Pymatuning Lake is known as "where the ducks walk on the fishes' backs" in roadside attraction lore.  You can feed these rather freaky looking carp, who will swarm like pirahnas.  Nick thought it was hysterical.  I thought it was pretty darn funny.  Kai liked it, but was vaguely grossed out.  Scott was just disgusted.  So I guess the actual lesson learned here is you can't please everyone.

5. Keeping the whole family together anywhere where there are interactive toys (such as a hands-on science center) is a losing battle.  They're young enough to want to play with everything, but old enough that it would look pretty stupid to hold their hand when they wander off!

6.  I find this rather shocking, but... apparently everyone is not a Packers fan! Why do they say "cheesehead" like it's a bad thing??

Okay, being somewhat more serious.  We also learned that it's very hard to keep everyone awake on a long car ride after a busy day of adventure.  On the trip home, both kids slept quite a bit.  I tried to stay awake, because I felt bad that Scott had to drive, but I kept nodding off, too.  That is a bit of a problem, if we're planning to have Scott driving 4-8 hours every day (or in some cases, every other day).  He does not like to be a passenger, and I don't like to drive, but we will need to find some way to give him a break from all the driving.

One other thing we learned?  It always rains when you are camping.  At least once.  And we can't always let the tents dry before we put them away, which gets really messy, and would be highly unhealthy for the tents if we weren't able to dry them out at our next destination.  So we'll have to keep an eye on the forecast on our big trip - or risk tossing the tents in the dryer!

Travelling Light?

"We're gonna need a bigger boat."
-Chief Brody

We usually pride ourselves on travelling light. We can pack for two weeks in Florida in three small suitcases. But throw camping into the mix and suddenly the kids are jammed in the backseat with their backpacks full of clothes and a pile of precut firewood.(No, I don't trust Scott with an axe.) Not to mention the coolers, tents, sleeping bags and supplies filling every corner of the trunk. Good thing we plan to rent a minivan or SUV for the cross country trip.

Road Food

"Never eat more than you can lift." - Miss Piggy

It's hard to decide where to be frugal and where to indulge on a trip of this nature.  We want to experience as much as possible, and that includes food, to an extent.  I certainly plan to indulge in a Chicago-style pizza, a brat at Lambeau field, a cowboy steak in Yellowstone, and a Mickey Mouse ice cream on Main Street in Disneyland.  Breakfast, however, has never been an important consideration on our vacations.  We often stick to a cold pop-tart or a hastily inhaled granola bar before running off to the amusement of our choice.  I have no problem with being cheap about breakfast on this trip.  However, I think two weeks of granola bars might be a bit much, even for me.

So this weekend, as we get ready to head off to Ohio for a camping trip and Packers pre-season game, we put together a couple of options for a road food breakfast or snack.  First, we made this really tasty trail mix:

It has peanuts, raisins, golden raisins, dried cranberries, dark chocolate raisins, and M&Ms. Yum.  Ever since we made it, the kids can't wait to leave, because it will be time to eat the trail mix.  Then Nick and I whipped up a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins:

Yes, I know.  The common thread of our food is chocolate, and chocolate doesn't do so well in a hot car.  We're most likely going to bring a cooler with us on the trip, and I will buy a few of the giant plastic bags to keep food like this dry and cool. Conversely, both of these recipes could be made without the chocolate elements.  But what would be the point of that, really?

Tent Practice, Take One

"You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. "
-Franklin P. Jones

I spent part of every summer as a child camping.  But then I married Scott.  Scott had less than no interest in camping.  Every time I suggested camping, he nixed the idea immediately.  But this past Fourth of July (probably out of pity for me, as I was very depressed to be child-less on the Fourth), he decided we should go camping.  After I got over the initial shock, we headed to the store, geared up, and headed out for what turned into a rather nice weekend in the woods.

It only took 17 years of knowing me to change his mind.  Still, that time frame does ensure one thing - our kids have never spent a single night in a tent.  That should change this upcoming weekend when we head out for a camping trip, but the kids are anxious to try out our new camping equipment.  So anxious, in fact, that when their cousins came over last night for a sleepover, they talked me into putting up the tent.  In the living room.

So they still need to practice sleeping outside, but they have in fact conquered the sleeping in a tent bit.  Well. Sort of.  They didn't actually sleep until after 2AM.  But it was a sleepover, after all!

Required Introductions

"What were you doing?" -Samwise Gamgee
"Sneaking." - Gollum

I am a curious person.  No, that's actually far too polite.  In some ways, I am downright nosy.  As I started planning this quite-possibly-impossible trip, I searched the internet looking for other people who had made similar journeys.   I found a few sanitized magazine articles about cross country road trips with kids.  I found quite a few college and twentysomething bloggers who had made amazing yes-I-can-tell-you-don't-have-a-day-job treks.  I found one or two families who combined a move with a vacation. While I know they're out there, I'm still looking for the blogs of other families who would plan a two week cross country road trip for no other reason than George Mallory's. 

Blog searches are a rather typical tool of mine. Whenever we are travelling somewhere new, I want to know about it before I get there.  So I look for people who have done it before. 

This is where the nosy part comes in.  When I find a blog where people have described their trip to wherever, I tend to go back to the beginning of the blog, and look for some kind of introductory post.  I want to know who the people are.  I want to know if I'm likely to agree with their travel review.  Call it inquisitive, call it curious.  Conversely, call it intrusive and ill-mannered (although I must point out that these bloggers have in fact posted this information on the internet).  Yes, most of my readers will likely be friends and family who wander here during our actual trip to make sure we haven't driven into the Grand Canyon.  But in case you are a curious soul like me and wander here by accident, here's the brief introduction to our family.  I promise, the introductions will be shorter than the explanation of why I have written them.

I am Jenn.  I will turn 37 on this trip.  My husband Scott will not turn 37 until later in the trip, much to my great and eternal chagrin.  We are American Baptist and involved members of our church. I teach, he programs.  I scrapbook, he researches geneology.  We are geeky in the nerdy and uncool sense, professing love of multiple well-known fandoms.  We blush to say that we are on the computer more than we read,  read more than we watch movies, and watch movies more than TV.  We love football, but disagree on NFL teams.  Most importantly in terms of the success of this trip, we are actually best friends, and yes, we know how lucky that makes us.

Our kids are Kairi (kay-ree) and Nick.  It's hard to describe your kids, as a parent, and not come off sounding like you are bragging.   Suffice to say, Kairi is 16. She's a talented musician, and a good student, who is possessed of a dry sense of humor and a solid dose of common sense.  Nick is 13, and he is also a talented musician and a decent student. He has a goofy sense of humor, and a strong empathy for others.  They both got a good solid dose of our rabid fan geek gene, and have even introduced us to some of our more beloved fandoms. They get along surprisingly well, for the most part.

(I went back and edited the ages after our trip was pushed off two years, FYI.)

Curiosity satisfied?

So Crazy, It Just Might Work

"You told me not to drive, but I made it home alive, and you said that only proves that I'm insane." - Billy Joel

Somehow it sounds slightly less than sane on paper.  We want to pack a pre-teen boy and his teenage sister into a car with their parents and drive them across the country for approximately 4,000 miles.  That's 68 hours in the car, over the course of two weeks.  Not to mention flying back home with at least two airplane phobics.  We want to do this in the same year that we are roped into paying for an extremely expensive Disney World band trip, and without courting complete financial ruin.  We want to spend part of the time camping with two kids who have never even slept in a tent before.   We want to follow routes that were historically famous for death by dysentary (at least according to my elementary school computers). We want to travel the width of the country, with a quick little jaunt from top to bottom for good measure. Why on earth do we want to do this? 

I'll have to get back to you on that.