We're here in Maryland!

Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh. We have arrived. We are in a place we can park the camper and not move it for like weeks at a whack. Even as I write that, there is a surge of joy, of squiggliness, that is spreading to and alighting each of my cells. We're glad we had the chance to travel across the country for 6 weeks with J's Mom (and her cousin for 1/2 the time), but um, yeah, we would have some morsels of wisdom for anybody else with plans to attempt that particular feat.

So now we're in Maryland, parked at the 1936-built home of J's sister and her husband (and two kids and one dog). It's in about as rural of a place as you can get around here, and there's a clothesline running right past the camper! We have little country roads to run on, and Beth can lay on the grass by the trickling stream all day long, with only their male (read non-fixed) dog, Hunter, to ward off. We have found a coffee shop with internet access in town and a couple of delightful markets. Pretty much, we're in hog-heaven.

It's a matter now of organizing ourselves to see all we want to see, and of figuring out what our next step in life will be come January. One current possibility is to become backup singers for Allison Kraus. Ha ha ha ha ha. No, serious. Wouldn't that be fun? She wouldn't have to pay us much - just enough to keep us alive, and that's negotiable. Anyway. Other ideas, anyone?

O-Hi-oh

The last official stop on the trip was to stay the night in Ohio with Nate and Nicole and their two daughters. Nate and I graduated from high school together, and I'm so glad our families have kept in contact. Highlight memories of my friendship with him, his brother Brett, and their neighbor, Gabe, include a bunch of us sneaking into a gravel plant in the middle of the night to slide down the gravel hills, planning a train-hopping venture (which Gabe actually carried out with other friends - boo!), and scheming how to get down into the floor vents at the high school in hopes of making our way to the unsuspecting Spanish class, so we could hop out of the floor wearing sombreros. Nate and I also went to junior prom together (the first and only time for either of us; neither of us were the prom types). And now to see him with a beautiful and adept wife and two gorgeous kids - man. That's the good stuff right there.

Conversation centered around the communal living dream, organic gardening, fighting The Man, a literal interpretation of Genesis as it relates to science, and catching up on mutual folk. Nicole sent us on our way with homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh garden tomatoes.

Indiana

Indiana was another of the states we spent longer in, because Jason's grandparents live in a weensy town there called Dupont. The quiet contrasted with the busyness of the rest of our trip, but things are different now because of G & G's age-related dementia. There's just a different feel about it, and it makes us sad. There's a whole lot less story-telling, for one thing. We mostly sat around and watched television, read magazines, took walks, fiddled with the camper, went out to eat, and visited with a few other relatives. One of my favorite times was singing old hymns with Grandma at the piano. She didn't remember she'd done so 1/2 hour later, but I do and will.

One morning Jason and I went to breakfast with Grandpa and Grandma at the Railroad Diner in Dupont, where very few meals were priced over $3. Coffee was 85 cents and came in free mugs from varying businesses in the bigger surrounding towns. Young men wore camouflage shirts and hats (but we could still see them against the simple brown booths), everybody smoked, and the walls were covered in Nascar paraphenalia, most notably a life-sized poster of Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the bathroom door. Jason and I love experiences like that where you're all of a sudden in a long-forgotten realm. You look around and think about Dupont's opposite, someplace like Seattle, and you think, "My gosh. This is all part of the same country. Our country!"

Jason smoking pipes with Grandpa

night shot of the rairoad tracks that run by the house

We ended our time in Indiana by having lunch with some old pals from Alaska - Steve and Kim and their three boys. Yay!

Kansas (a couple weeks ago)

As everyone knows, it takes a lot of time to drive across Kansas, and there's very little payoff scenery-wise. The primary tidbit Barb's guidebook offered about the state was that early pioneers there frequently suffered apeirophobia (fear of infinity). We camped at Lake Scott State Park because it was one of National Geographic Magazine's top 50 "must see state parks," and while it is an oasis of sorts among the fields, quite frankly, we decided that either the author of the article was himself suffering apeirophobia when he named the park thus, there was a passing of dirty money in the naming, or there are only roughly 50 state parks in our nation.

However, don't be mistaken; I found our travel through Kansas to be quite pleasant. Not mind-blowing, but pleasant. I liked seeing the old windmills and farm houses, especially against the dusky evening sky. We purposely took the highway rather than the freeway for seeing small towns. The antique stores of the midwest are amazing - for deals and town gossip. At one store, I found a lovely old necklace and learned that the old man who'd brought it in permanently swapped wives with his brother about 15 years back, after each couple raised their own kids and everything. They all still live near each other on the family farm too.

Toward the end of Kansas, we happened upon a sign that said the Wizard of Oz Museum was a mere 18 miles off freeway, so we naturally turned off to have a look. When we couldn't find the museum in town, we pulled into a gas station for me to run in for directions. But on my way in, I caught sight of my shadow on the pavement and started giggling, then laughing, and finally, I stopped walking and couldn't go inside. For you see, I had my hair in two pig-tail braids, banded off higher than usual so that the free hair at the bottom was extra fluffy. I was pretty much Dorothy, but completely by accident. I ran back to the pickup instead, where Barb and Jason were already in a tither, because they had noticed the same thing of me as I headed in. Good times. By the way, that story is more entertaining than the Museum itself appeared to be once we found it, and we decided against throwing good money at it.