Brazil Trip

McDowell Creek Park in the Fall

Last week I had the privilege to attend a Pastor's Prayer Summit at Camp Tadmor. I was disappointed that I didn't have better weather and didn't find prettier places, until my last day. Then I discovered McDowell Creek Park. Here are some pics:

A Mom's Life

We're Home!

We're Home! We loved our trip AND we're excited to be back. Here are some stats from our trip --

Trip Stats

Days way from Home: 53
Nights in a Motel: 16
Breakfasts at McDonalds: 0
Museums: >17
Number of times Marcia's cell phone went off during the changing of the guard at Arlington Cemetary: 1
Total Miles: 10,609
Lowest Gas Price: $2.49 (Two places)
Highest Gas Price: $3:26 (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Quarts of Automatic Transmission Fluid: 7
Pictures: 5324
Minutes in the car with tears: 4
Mosquito bites on Lisa: 147 (more or less)
Most common question: Where was your favorite place?

Thank you for your prayers and love for our family. We returned with a renewed love for each other, for the Lord, for our country and for our church that would allow us to be gone for so long.

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore, in one sense, is in the same category as Wall Drug and the Corn Palace. It is a preposterous attempt to get people to South Dakota. It is, on the other hand, a magnificent and awe-inspiring tribute to the birth, growth, preservation and development of the U.S. of A.

South Dakota

South Dakota gets credit for doing the most with the least. I cannot believe the marketing moxie of this most barren of our 50 states. The Corn Palace in Mitchell and Wall Drug are boondoggles that were created simply to convince people to come visit are interesting only because of their preposterous marketing. You are in the middle of nowhere the whole time you are in South Dakota. . . and you need to stop at these places simply to take the car off auto-pilot.

Walnut Grove, MN

We left Niagara Falls and drove through Ontario. We stayed at Ann Arbor, Michigan. They raised the price of our hotel, we paid the highest gas prices of the trip and they refused to feed us when they learned we were from Oregon! We saw Hillsdale College and Olivia Wolcott the next morning and then visited Moody Bible Institute that afternoon. The next morning we toured Wheaton College with Heidi Mitchell. (The people are in the "Friends" post, but I thought I wouldn't bore you with pictures of schools). Then we drove to Mankato, MN so we could get to Walnut Grove for our final Little House on the Prairie destination. Here are our final "Little House" pictures.

Niagara Falls

We left Connecticut and drove through upstate New York in the rain. We saw the house I lived in when I was in kindergarten and first-grade. Then we spent the night at Niagara Falls. The sound is more impressive even than the sight of the magnificent waterfall.

New York, New York

We took a train into the city and then took a tour-boat ride around New York City. We had a beautiful day to do it.

Connecticut

We went from Philly to Connecticut to see Marcia's Family. We had a great time there. They are gracious and generous people.

Friends Along The Way

We all agreed that one of the chief highlights of the trip has been seeing people. I mentioned already we saw the family of a friend who was in our wedding. We also saw the Searls, all the Wibaux/Glendive cousins and Marcia's cousin and aunt in Connecticut. We met my fourth cousin once removed, Ken Reavely, who has in one notebook more than anyone knows about our branch of the Reavely family. We stopped by and visited some colleges and saw Janelle Austen, Olivia Wolcott, and Heidi Mitchell. Here are some pictures of the friends, old and new, we saw on this trip.

Pennsylvania

We left D.C. and drove through Lancaster, PA on our way to Philadelphia. We saw Amish country, ate the largest meal ever conceived, and visited historic Independence Hall.

Washington, D.C. #3

Here are the rest of our Washington, D.C. pictures of the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court Building.

Washington, DC #2

In order, these albums are the National Cathedral, the White House, the Holocaust Museum, Ford's Theatre and the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.

Washington, DC

I have several albums from Washington, DC. They are in order: Korean War Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, DC at night, and Arlington National Cemetery. I'll save the others for another post, so this one isn't so long. The key thing you need to know out of all these stops is that Marcia's cell phone went off DURING the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier!

Washington, DC Day Trips

We made a home outside of DC our home base for ten days. Here are some of the day trips we made. We went to Fulks Run, VA, a quaint little wide-spot in the road where my 4x great-grandfather lived. We met a distant relative who happened to have a display board of my relatives and we saw their school house and cemetery.

We drove to Gettysburg and visited my friend Steve Burlew, the director of Banner of Truth in Carlisle, PA.

Manassas Battlefield, the site of two decisive Confederate victories, was another favorite. It is the place where Thomas Jackson earned his nickname "Stonewall".

Mount Vernon was the place that most exceeded my expectations on the trip. It was beautiful. George Washington retired as president because he would rather be at Mount Vernon than be president of the United States.

Annapolis

We stopped for a few minutes at Annapolis, MD where Taylor and I went to a conference four years ago. It is a beautiful city and home to the Naval Academy.

Williamsburg

We had three great days in Williamsburg. We could have used more. We went to Water World and Busch Gardens (we got pictures from neither place because we didn't want to hang on to the camera).

The historic areas were great. We met Rosie Jonson, the wife of an old friend who was in our wedding. She, in God's kind providence, happened to be dropping her daughter Sarah off at William and Mary.

Monticello

From Lexington we went to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home seen on the back of nickels. It was fascinating and beautiful. We also saw Ash Lawn Meadow, home of James Monroe.

Lexington

We spent the next night in Lexington, VA. Marcia is a big fan of Stonewall Jackson. We saw his gravesite and the tomb of Robert E. Lee. We drove through Hazard, KY, where my mom was born.

Day Trips

While Marcia and I were at A Quiet Place we took some day trips by ourselves. We went to Old Fort Harrod, a revolutionary war era fort in KY, on the far western frontier.
We visited the bloodiest Civil War battlefield in Kentucky, Perryville. The confederates won the battle but, as in much of war, could not maintain their gains for lack of men, supplies and ammunition. So, even though they won, they retreated out of Kentucky and surrendered the Ohio River as a key transportation route to the North.

One of the interesting stories from this battle came when a commander from the South saw some troops ahead who were firing on his men. He mistook them for Confederates and rode up saying, "Stop firing on friends." When he got to the top of the ridge, the commanding officer ask him to identify himself. It was then he realized that he had mistakenly ridden into the Union line. He mumbled his name and then rode down the line hollering, "Cease fire." He then rode back to the Confederate line and told them to fire and will and they mowed down the Union soldiers. The commander was so flustered from his face-to-face encounter with the enemy that he didn't effectively follow up his brigade's pounding of the Union soldiers!


We drove to the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. It is a National Historic place now. The Shakers believed their leader Ann Lee was the second coming of Christ. They were named Shakers because of their charismatic trembling in their services. They didn't believe in marriage and even separated married couples who converted. Consequently they didn't have any children except orphans they raised. So, they eventually died out. They believed in simplicity and hard work. One of their slogans was, "Heart to God, Hands to work."

Searls

We had a delightful stay with the Searls. They are all doing well. Our kids had a good time together and Chuck & Erica and Marcia & I got to spend a little time together. Here is a picture of their house in Rineyville, KY."Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters. . ."
We celeberated Taylor's 18th birthday with some homemade ice cream. That was the only thing that could top the Blue Bell Ice Cream that was on sale while we were there in the 100 degree heat!
A prolonged good-bye and we still couldn't get a good picture!

Mammoth Caves

We visited Mammoth Caves, the largest mapped cave in the world. I had a little speluncher for my partner.





The cooks feed the deer old watermelon rinds so this one was very tame. The girls enjoyed being this close.

A Quiet Place

One of the reasons I am so far behind blogging this trip is the privilege Marcia and I enjoyed to spend four days at A Quiet Place. A Quiet Place is a ministry of our new friends, Rick & Teresa Jenkins (pictured below). We couldn't do the "three C's" while we were there: no Children, no Cell phone, and no Computer. It turned out to be a sweet blessing. We had time with the Lord and time with each other like we hadn't had in a long time.

Louisville

We enjoyed our visit with the Searls in Louisville. We saw the city, the Louisville Slugger plant, and then crossed the Ohio River and saw a fossil bed on the falls, then we toured Southern Seminary with Cousin Joel Amunrud.

Land of Lincoln

When I was a boy I have a vague recollection of my parents taking me to Lincoln's birthplace and boyhood home. So I took my kids. It's been over 95 everyday we've been here. But we found a cool spot for a picnic. Kentucky is proud of Abraham Lincoln even though he left here when he was seven.

South Dakota & Missouri

You'd think I was amazingly busy as infrequently as we post pictures. Sorry. After we left Wibaux we went to DeSmet, SD and enjoyed the Little Town on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Homestead.


The next night we spent in Independence, MO. We saw where the wagons left on the Oregon Trail. We didn't go through the museum because, when I told the person at the desk she said, "Oh, you have way better things out there!" We took our picture at an old Railroad depot. We saw Harry Truman's Home before he was president. And then, as we left the state, we saw the St. Louis Arch.

Wibaux reprise #2

Wibaux reprise

In Wibaux, we did something we had never done before. In fact we did something no one had done for over a hundred years. We walked down into a "buffalo jump." We couldn't really figure out where the indians used to run buffalo off the cliff, but we found extraordinary rock formations in miniature canyons. We found petrified wood and a (what we think is) a dinosaur bone.