After Las Vegas, our trip has seemed to shift gears. The kids are more settled in to this vagabond way of life. They’re interested in what’s next, but also in what is present. And we are all well aware of how we’ve been provided for throughout this trip. Starting in Kansas City, when we stayed…
Category: travel
Fear (Or, why this isn’t for everyone)
The night before we left Las Vegas, I lay awake. Everyone else was sleeping; the five of us were packed in to a double-Queen room with a rollaway, and although I’d initially fallen asleep between Claire and Peter, when I woke, I couldn’t escape the gnawing anxiety about our drive the following day. I grew…
A Big Preference
Sometimes you need to try something to know it does not suit you. And sometimes vastly different experiences create strong preferences. Our family learned we prefer what God made over what man made In just one day, when we awoke beside the South gate of Zion National Park, drove to Las Vegas for an afternoon…
Arches & Zion National Parks
We were all a little sad to move on from Denver, in spite of the adventure ahead, but on Monday morning, we shoved off for Moab, UT, about six hours west. The wonderful thing about being on the open road is the opportunity to see so much along the way – something people say all…
Denver
So far, Bessie has taken us from Nashville to Kansas City, Missouri, through the great, flat state of Kansas, to Denver for Memorial Day weekend with Andrew’s sister, Jenn, and her family. In the past, we’ve somehow only visited Denver in the dead of winter, so it was really nice to experience the city when…
The Way Back to Liberty
Is it possible to enjoy giving up control? I ponder this question as we begin the second drive of our great adventure, from Kansas City to Denver. I am not driving, and giving the wheel to anyone else is extremely unpleasant for me. For years, a number of experiences have convinced me that great things…
On the Road
A couple of years ago, Mary Laura Philpott wrote a series for the New York Times’ Motherlode column about her family’s move from Atlanta to Nashville. Recently, I ran across her essay “And Then The Dog Died,” again. It’s about all the stuff that got in the way of maintaining routine in the midst of…
Saying Goodbye
Partly because of the full lives we lead, and partly because we’re slightly scattered and kind of like to procrastinate, we have always been last minute packers. A week before a trip, we will consider the glories of getting out the door at 7:30 in the morning, kids fed, van packed and ready to go;…
Sabbatical
John Muir, the author, scientist and renowned conservationist, was an absolute fanatic about nature. He climbed trees in gale-force winds to see what it might feel like to be the branches; he stood at the precipice of waterfalls to sense what the water might be feeling before its plunge. He thought nothing of walking fifty…
Who’s Bessie?
Bessie is our car. Since we’ll be driving her over eight thousand miles this summer, we had to name her. This is a job we left to the kids, and their brainstorming session was pretty hilarious. We suggested that they consider names from good books they’ve read, or that they had some other connection with, but they…
Bessie Breaks Away 