That History Town

There's 104 days of summer vacation and school comes along just to end it.

So the annual question for our generation is finding the best way to spend it.

Labor day was our last day of summer vacation. This year felt lie the endless summer with the kids getting out way back at Memorial Day weekend and then not having to go back to school until Labor Day. A true full summer vacation.  My vision of homeschooling slipped away again this year, but why not have that last day of summer, be a little educational

So we went to "that History town" as Azalea likes to refer to Harpers Ferry.

I tried to give the kids a Wikipedia synopsis of Harper's Ferry's  history while they were strapped into their seatbelts. They had no way to get out of the moving car while I fill them with important facts about Frederick Douglass and the Civil War.

While Azalea was pretty excited and Tigo was intrugued, yet frightened, we skipped the Ghost Tours.

You don't have to look too far to see where the stone for these old buildings came from. And if you look close enough there is one of the earliest billboards around. They have never been pretty, especially when they are painted permanently on the side of a mountain.

What good is visiting a small tourist town with out checking out the trinket stores, where you can get all the things that you don't need.

But I do love when I see that there are still stores that haven't subscribed to the overbearing world of credit cards and corporations.

 

And then there are the amazing rivers. The Shenandoah River flows into the Patomack (or Potomac for y'all in the new millenium). The rivers are so beautiful and gently flowing into rapids. Next summer we will most definitely be doing many tubing trips down the Shenandoah.

West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia meet here.

My silly peeps.

We are all about rock stacking. It was a favorite of ours in NM, so it was pretty cool to see this amazing random display on a weird obscure wall.

 

The last time I came to Harpers Ferry was over 15 years ago and I went camping with my friend Tiffany. If I remember correctly, we checked out the town, then hiked up the mountain, and found some random patch of forest floor to sleep on and told ghost stories, freaked each other out and claimed we heard a bear in the night. Exploration changes form with kids.

Everybody loves a sound of a train in the distance...

Everybody knows it's true.

 

 

For three years I was promising the kids that we would take the train to Santa Fe.

We would watch the mighty RailRunner go by nearly everyday. We always seemed to be commuting to either gymnastics or soccer as the afternoon train would roll by.

 

 

And we would count the trains coming and going from Santa Fe.

And so we had to go. We always drove when we went to Santa Fe. It was always easier for timing, and a family of 5 commuting to the Plaza. But this time it was the train.

 

Of course there was texting, and gaming and chatting. But the real joy was seeing all the things that could barely be captured by a photograph. Kind of like driving along the road, when you see something that passes so quickly but you can't take a photo of it.

 

Elmer saw a calf on our way up north. It was all alone caught in a barbed wire fence, alive and struggling to get free. A calf, that if he weren't rescued sometime soon by his rancher, he would probably die from hurting himself trying to escape.  We thought about that scared little baby all day long. Wondering if he got released or not. We looked for him on the return trip and didn't see him.

 

We found Santa Fe and we walked the streets, zigzaging our way to the old Plaza.

 

There was an imported rug store that I have been dying to go into for over a decade. For whatever reason, I never went until this day. The kids and I browsed through gorgeous wood carvings and handmade rugs from all over. The owner, or manager, or whoever, treated us like the scum of the Earth. Followed us around and asked us to leave his store, though we did no trouble other than me traveling with 3 children. It was the worst I had ever seen of Santa Fe's hosts. I will never go back.

 

And what is Santa Fe with out a wealthy woman sitting on a balcony overlooking the Plaza in her Cowgirl hat. These balconies don't come cheap, but I'm guessing there is some pretty good people watching from there.

 

Oh the peppers. How I will miss all the peppers. Oh I miss them right now, just thinking about all those peppers hanging in all those places that seem just right, and beautiful.

Me gusta Frida (that's her on the yellow bags in the back).

 

 

While we were sitting right here in this spot, Lola watched a man get down on his knee and propose to the woman he loves.  Tigo and Azalea missed it as they were wrestling in the grass. After Lola told us what had just happened, we watched them hug and kiss and then walk off to buy a freshly squeezed Lemonade, because that is what everyone should do when they become engaged on a hot, high desert, summer day.

 

 

 

Not the most flattering picture, taken by Lola laying in the grass. But it was so nice seeing Shana almost everytime I went to Santa Fe. And with her mom there this time it was even better.

 

The wild sunflowers overtaking the sidewalk. With so many red doors we pass.

 

Santa Fe Trail

 

It's a bit hard to read, here, but the photograph is of a License for Prostitution. Oh, the good ole days.

 

 

This was close to my favorite picture.

 

In the end. We were glad we went. It was fun. The train ride was cool. We got to look at old adobe buildings falling down and being reconstructed again. We saw Reservation land in an area that we normally didn't go. The "Carny" folk on the train were interesting. From bicycling commuters, to goth pharmacists, to teenage grandchildren visiting their grandparents, to Native Americans commuting from one Reservation to another, to part-time tourists like us. It was a Sunday, so the work crowd was gone.

 

I'd go back again.

St. Augustine Beach

I knew I wanted to go to St. Augustine. In the game I sometimes play of "Where in the World Should We Move?" I've picked. St. Augustine a few times and played out scenarios in my head of how it would all work out. I like that game. It takes me away. Almost as good as a real vacation.

On days like today, I could totally play that game, and St. Augustine would come up high in the rankings.

But until our cross country venture this past summer, I had never been. But I knew that we should be going.

I knew that the beach wanted us there. But like a lot of things, we had to fight a little to get it.

After convincing Elmer it was a good idea. I did the math, and adding this stop to our road trip would only really add 7 hours. Seven hours is a lot you say. But not if you consider the fact that if we had to do it at a completely different time it would cost us an additional 4 days. How you like them apples?

When we got to the original house that we rented for the week.... it was occupied.

Total bummer. When you have been driving for 4 days with a family of 5 plus 2 dogs and all you want is to relax, watch the waves and swim in the ocean, and your house that you just paid a large sum of money for is ocupado by another family who got their first. Bummer, is kind of an understatement.

But it's only castles in the sand.

There was an even better house, empty and waiting for us and with a way less crowded beach.

As in no one, but us beach. With the tides calm, waters warm, dolphins swimming by, shells to be picked up.

It turned out to be worth the trouble. And Elmer even said that he'd go back.

Ch ch ch changes....

From riding the train to Santa Fe to lunch roundevous in Madrid, NM, to saying goodbye to friends in Albuquerque, to holding on tight to a house we weren't sure what it meant to us to spending three long and terribly short weeks traveling across the country, visiting 10 states before coming to our temporary - temporary home, to coming to our temporary home in Virginia, where we are now. And not even including the additional tours to Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. And of course revisiting some old local haunts in Virginia. DC... just wait, you'll see us plenty.

I am slightly overwhelmed right now with how I should proceed here with the information I've got on my hands. It's the last two months worth of crazy that I have stored up in visual form, either on my little camera or my little phone camera. There is so much that has occured, I'm not sure I can do it all chronologically. And since it's so "out of date" with regards to real time blogging... well, you'll just have to deal. Sorry. I'll put dates for when they fun or crazy occurred, but it won't be the dates of the blog post. So get ready to be jealous of all the fun we had. Or maybe you'll just say oh my stinkin' heck, I am so glad I am not that person. And maybe just for kicks I'll throw some real time info in, until I get back into the world slightly less angled than I am now.

1 husband, 2 dogs, 3 kids, and way too much stuff!!

This world is turning.

Ring of Fire

It turned out to be a pretty mystical experience.Those once in a life time things that we remember. Quite literally. The day started with us being removed from our house, for an open house. I had high hopes for the stars alignment to fall favor on us too. But I feel like I've been lacking in the karma department.

Note to self: work much harder and giving out good... but not just to receive the good... to give the good.

So we headed up to Sandia Peak. I didn't quite realized there would be so many people there. As in from all over the country and world. Europeans, Asians, Eastern Europeans. For New Mexico, that's a pretty big deal.

So we passed all the huge telescopes and headed down the path to walk for a bit.

Oh but not too far. Too many distractions. Furthermore there were humming birds to check out.

As the visitor center, gift shop, snack bar placey there is a spot where the hummingbirds come and will land on you. Who woulda thought that would even be possible. Taking a picture of it is close to impossible though. But thanks to digital cameras, I was able to try about 10,000 times before getting one that was decent.

But the day progressed and we headed back to the valley. Over to the fields in our neighborhood to watch the eclipse with friends and neighbors. We went to the middle of the fields, but in the back of this photo you can see a really abnormal number of people lined up along the edge to get a glimse of the coming eclipse.

 Oh I simply love this picture of my sweet Lola. It just seems right.

 Here, she is doning the eclipse glasses, trying to navigate when wearing them causes essentially complete darkenss unless staring at the sun.

 Azalea found her crawdad remains in the mini-ditch.

 It was sometimes hard to focus on the eclipse when there were perfectly good toads and lizards to catch. (and release)

 Here is one view of the birding telescope that was set up to capture the eclipse on the cardboard box set up behind it.

 And with my eclipse glasses in front of my camera, I was able to capture some pretty awesome pictures of what was going on.

 I was also able to capture some crazy kids.

 And capturing the toad. The kids were thrilled with their joint effort in having it.

 Here is the other side of the said birding/eclipse scope for viewing the eclipse with out looking at it. Cool.

 Oh the air. The light. Everything got eirily dark and spooky. Like a dream was happening. Like you didn't know what to expect, and it would all be ok. Like there was a mystery about to be solved. It really did feel like the stars were aligning.

 And the community. Everyone was in absolute awe. More than the overused Awesome. Simply complete awe.

 Again the light in the sky. The eclipse in full effect, with out the glasses over the camera. A little tricky to take this photo since I couldn't really look in the camera either.

 Burn, burn, burn. The ring of fire.

 She even noticed it.

 On the projector.

 Blue belly skink "in paradise", no not the after life, paradise, the either playing dead or euphoria paradise. He ran away moments later into the fields.

 It's not just about the eclipse.

It's searching for something unknown and mysterious and amazing and loving every moment of it.