Hot and sticky and a TON of peace, love and salt water.

So we made our way from South Carolina to Florida.  We gave up the fight on Gullivers Travels.  We will come back to it but it just wasn't doing it for us.  Since we are now going to be in Hanibal for Tom Sawyer days with our good friends Edie, David, Aimee, Cedric and Pete (OK we have never met Pete but we know we will love him!) for the Fourth of July, we decided to do Huckleberry Finn (we had Huckleberry Finn on our reading list not Tom Sawyer).  We are all loving it!  I think it adds to it that we are going to the event.  The setting along the road got much nicer and more scenic into Georgia and Florida.  It also got hotter.  With a raging temperature around 100 most of the time and again that humidity, we were not looking forward to our unpacking so the trip taking 5 hours was just fine!

Song of the trip:  It was a tie between Fat Bottom Girls and Another Brick in the Wall. Mom got to pick the music but I am lucky that Kirk has instilled in them a love of the classics.  It always cracks me up when Ella loads up a Sting or Police song and knows every lyric.  Sights from the road....we stopped at a roadside stand for water and bathroom and ended up with a treat of the softest fluffiest Peach Fritter and Cherry Butter.  Yummmmmm

We made it to our campsite at Little Talbot Island.  It truly was / is fantastic.  It literally is a jungle.  Moss is dripping from the trees.  There are lizards and snakes and exotic birds and turtles.  The kids all have these pictures on their phones and will hopefully have a chance to post them soon.  The reception is horrible unless you are on a data connection, as I am now.  We just set up nice and slow and were soaking wet when we were done but I fell in love with the charm of it all.

I love the water and try to spend as much time as I can in it whenever we are near.  So on set up night, we walked the mile from our campsite to the beach and went for a dip as the sun went down.  As most people reading this blog will know, my mom has been dead three years now this month.  Her 64th birthday would have been 7/28.  My love of body surfing, adventure, the outdoors, good coffee early in the morning, butterflies, managing crisis and more comes from her.  My mom spent a great deal of her life not wanting to be alive in it and the rest living it to the absolute fullest.  When I was young she had a passion for the book Hope For The Flowers and spent some time having me read it and trying to explain to me why it meant so much to her.  The remembrance of that book and the meaning behind her death and life has left me seeing her always in butterflies.  That first night as we walked to the beach to swim, and Ella to gather her seashells (a passion she got from my mom that is sure to stink up my car), the butterflies were out in beautiful force.  I can feel her a lot on this trip but that moment was extremely special and that combined with the unique and serene area has left me feeling tender about this spot in general.

Now, the kids don't have the same sentimentality for it all and the Bugs (yes with capital B), the heat / humidity, sand, long walk to the beach and the fact that the campsites are so squished together you can hear your neighbors sneeze like they are in your tent, has not left them feeling so warm and fuzzy.  We did enjoy a beautiful bike ride, albeit short because of the heat and more body surfing along with some snorkeling and shelling tonight.  Everyone is getting bronzed and blonder in these hot days.

Tomorrow we are off to St Augustine for a day trip after we get up at 7am per Ella's request to shell.  For all who know Ella's sleeping pattern, this will seem like a lie, it is not!  She is intent on finding a sand dollar and what she considers rare shells.  Katrin has been promised some car time for air conditioning and to avoid some bugs!  Hopefully I will just keep all this love and peace and joy and tomorrow will be as great as the ones that came before it.

The 11 day

Today was great but a little unlucky we went around town buying things but the only three things we bought was an oil change,  mexican food, and a car wash. At the end of the day we went for a hike and then mom decided ella could take a spin in her car with her in it. So for ella this day was awesome. Captain is okay with his leash he still hate's it though. I meant to do my life lesson with that picture of the bird so this is the life lessons for the picture.

Life lesson: Anything that is around your body and is RED is horrible.

Virginia Beach to Charleston, SC

Virginia Beach to Charleston area was very uneventful.  We drove and drove.  I will say that North Carolina was beautiful and the areas we saw made me think that it will be good to go back there some day. Highlights of the drive were the field of sunflowers, a sign right in front of a cemetery saying "Jesus Saves" and Ben Folds ...especially "You Don't Know Me".

South Carolina, however, what we have seen, is not as impressive as North Carolina.  The roads are long and straight and the trees so dense they are all you see.  The last hour of yesterday's seven hour drive felt like five of the hours.

We went into Charleston today (about 30 miles from us) and although I am the proud new owner of baked okra, baked sweet carrots and purple sweet potato chips and I finally got to sample some authentic South Carolina BBQ, there is not much to recommend itself to me here.  The energy seems off somehow.  It might be where we are staying, the cleanest campground I have ever been at filled with the 60+ camper set and not a lot else!  Maybe it is the complete lack of matching architecture and the multiple generational buildings on every corner in the city that seem to speak to bad times over and over. It might be impending rain the last two days which brings 100% stifling humidity and a swarm of bugs I have never seen before, or it might be the deafening silence compared to the busy road we were camped on the last three days. Whatever it is, the energy feels off.  

We did see a lot of Charleston and got a feel for the local culture.  The heavy African influences in the art, style and feel is both beautiful and somehow a little sad reminder of how poorly we as a culture make decisions sometimes.  The food is wonderful.  :)  Even if we had to stay on the lighter side of things.  Healthy eating might be a little hard here if we were eating out or in town a lot!

Camping is becoming an easier adventure even if I did manage to break our tent (nothing a little duct tape and super glue isn't holding together). We all decided cots are compact but are not going to cut the long haul. Although I am now on a cot with a cot air mattress! The long prep of meals compared to a kitchen is now becoming routine and tempers are flaring a little less. We all seem to be finding a groove of sorts. Our schedule seems really tight and some days it feels like all we see is the inside of the car and the tent but I am learning to let those be ok days too!

9-10

The 9th day was the drive to our next camp site. We are now in South Carolina! We took a 7 hour drive from Virginia to South Carolina! It was a long and boring drive. When we got to South Carolina I found that South Carolina is, in some places, abandoned looking.  Other than that it's a pretty place. Where we are camping is actually quite cleaner and smaller than the other campsites. The 10th day we went to Charleston. We walked around a bit with the bird that had on the leash. The bird got a bit stressed and was not happy the whole time. When we got back we had dinner and then I started writing this.

Life lesson: If you want to get people's attention, get a bird. ( All day we had people saying "Hey, look that person has a bird on their sholder.")

9th day

thisiisiss  is the pictures for my life lessonTwthis is that pic 4 11 dayo days ago we got the bird a LEASH, so we have to put it on him whenever we want to go on a walk. Today was great we switched camps so today we are in South Carolina and that took 7 hours to get there, packing up and setting up camp is not so bad anymore so that was good. Tomorrow we are going to have a lot of fun.  

6,7, and 8

OK so well its been a while since I have wrote a blog. So I will start with the drive to Virginia. Ok so we got up a took a five hour drive from Maryland to Virginia. There was a lot of traffic. When we got to the camp we had a bit of trouble with the camp spots. There were not that much to choose from. We finally got a really good spot. The next day the bird flew off again.  Only this time we didn't find our bird for a long time. Our bird had flew off because of the sound of the bay. The camp we're at is right next to the chesapeake bay. My mom had gone off to see the bay with the bird. The bird had got scared of the sound of the wated. We spent a little time looking for the bird with no luck.  Then my mom finally suggested a walk on a trail that she had spotted while our search. We walked for just a bit when we heard our little bird squeak. After we had gotten the bird done from a tall tree we had turned around and made our way back to camp. At the camp mom ordered our bird a leash. (He is not fond of it at the moment. ) oh ya I almost forgot something. While we were looking for the bird we had gone to a activity the campsite provided. There are a ton of activities to do at the camp at different times. We had gone to one of the activities called: What's in the net? It was a fun thing to do involving nets and fish. There were net that were provided and we took the nets and used them to get fish that swam in the bay. Ok so the next day the leash came in and we watched a video of jow yo put it on the bird. We had gone on a walk with our bird with the leash on. Bird hates the leash, he is not a fan. After we built a fire which was huge for a while. And that was the whole 3 days adventures.

Life lesson: Little things can make a big difference, but only for a little while. (I had got this from putting a ton of twigs on the fire to make it bigger (which it had), but it only lasted for a short time.)

Military Row

Caution....philosophizing follows.

Today we drove from DC (Maryland really) to Virginia.  We passed Annapolis, West Point and Quantico.  In addition, we passed Jamestown, Fredricksburg, Williamsburg, Richmond, York, etc.  You couldn't help but feel the fighting force of this country.  Whether it be outside forces or each other, the military presence was Known (with a capital K). For me, this is a comforting thing.

The drive was beautiful if just straight and well congested with traffic.  Made me wish for the days that you can set your car to autopilot (Have you seen this car?) and play some Candy Crush (level 452 and not a little bit ashamed (more like a lot) thank you very much) while the world passes you by.  Alas, I was forced to watch the passing cars.  You know what I did not see?  I did not see, "Guns don't kill people, people do" stickers.  I did not see, "Teach Parents to Parent" stickers.  Nope.  I saw, Siempre Fi (Always Faithful) and military insignia galore.  I saw one car that carried the saying, "My Son Protects."  I smiled feeling safe and like the "protection" of this country continues to be in the right hands.  I hope.

I philosophized and Katrin slept!

It is the luxury of the young!  Also the necessity I suppose.  Katrin has been a GREAT co-pilot.  She finds me all the cheap cheap gas right off the freeway.  Today we only paid $3.21 a gallon!  She is learning mapping skills as well.  Whenever I miss an exit she is right there researching what happens next.  That may or may not have happened once today when I decided that the appealing, non trafficky HOV lane was calling our name, even if it didn't offer an exit for the exit I needed.  Woops!

The girls do spend a lot of time reading.  Ella is reading a book to Katrin, The Raven Boys, that she in fact has read twice!  That girl does love her books!  Truly it is a beautiful thing to see her love of reading and trying to share that with Katrin.

So, we arrived safe and happy and are settled in.  I will probably be quiet on the blogging front while we enjoy these days of "vacation".  I will let the girls handle the highlights!

Ps....on a capitalist note, it's good to see that Dunkin Donuts has died and that 7-Eleven is a thriving business.