Montgomery Day 1 of 2
Vivian:
Hello friends! (And fam!) today is Saturday and it involved a lot of walking. When we woke up we ate breakfast and left the RV. We got an Uber and the driver drove us to the civil rights museum, I got a little mad but only because they had a list of a fraction of Black people killed by white people.
Photo by Stephanie. They also had this temporary exhibit outside the museum, which was meant to be a monument to counter the typical Confederate war hero monuments and as a “tribute to African American history in the face of the Confederacy.” https://blankslatemonument.com/
Anyway next we went to the Rosa Parks museum and walked around and learned a lot of interesting things about Rosa and what she did after the whole bus thing died down, like how she was awarded a medal for honor and bravery from Bill Clinton.
Photo by Vivian.
After that we walked to this 100-year-old hotdog restaurant. It was very small, but the food was good. I had a cheeseburger with fries, Dory had chicken tenders, and Mom had a cheeseburger with fries as well. Notice none of us got the famous hotdogs. Soon after lunch we went to the old greyhound bus stop, it had been converted into a freedom rider’s museum. I didn’t know what a freedom rider was, so I learned. A freedom rider was a Black or White person who wanted to change the bus segregation law by sitting in the wrong places.
Photo by Stephanie. They didn’t allow photos inside, so this is the only one we have.
After that museum we walked to the Mothers Of Gynecology art installation. The Mothers Of Gynecology are three statues of Black enslaved women that had complications with childbirth.
Photo by Stephanie.
They were basically experimented on by J. Marion Simms, the so-called “father of gynecology” which, when you learned of what he did was called “father butcher”.
Photo by Stephanie.
The artist’s name is Michelle Browder and she was nice enough to show us around. After she showed us all there was to see it started raining hard. We managed to somehow call an Uber to take us back to the RV park and spent the rest of the day chilling.
Dory:
We went to the Civil Rights museum where I watched a movie about the Black Lives Matter and I liked the water feature outside.
Photo by Stephanie. This is not the water feature he liked best, but it was close.
Then we went to the Rosa Parks Museum where I got a stylus and I was disappointed with the video reenactment of the bus encounter because I could not go inside the bus.
Photo by Vivian. Dory had seen a video in which Henry Louis Gates, Jr. toured the actual bus in a museum, and so he had it in his head that he would be able to do that, too. But it turns out that the actual bus is in the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan.
Then we went to the Freedom Riders museum that used to be the Greyhound station. It used to be segregated and you could see where there was a Black only door. The Freedom Riders were activists who rode on buses through the deep South to go and protest segregation on Greyhound buses. I enjoyed the Freedom Riders because they campaigned on and on and never lost hope.
Photo by Stephanie. We don’t have another photo of the Freedom RIders museum, so here’s a photo of Dory examining a grate with the Alabama state house in the distance.
Then we went to the Mothers of Gynecology where it rained. One of them had a hole in her middle because it symbolized a fistula. That made it so they couldn’t hold their pee.
Photo by Stephanie.
Then we went home.
Travel Day: New Orleans to Montgomery
Stephanie:
I told the kids they did not need to write an entry for this day, but Dory wanted to. Also, he has been pestering me about the car I didn’t buy him at Cracker Barrel ever since.
Dory:
There is not a lot of things to discuss here except a Cracker Barrel in which I found the world’s smallest remote control car. It was small enough to fit in a Hot Wheels™ track, so I am going to get it when I am back home online and race it around a Hot Wheels™ track.
Photo by Vivian. He was probably talking about the RC car at the moment this photo was taken.
New Orleans, Day 3 of 3
Dory:
Photo by Stephanie. The St. Charles streetcar line is kept vintage, which includes no air conditioning. Luckily it wasn’t too hot while we were there.
We rode the oldest continuously running streetcar in the world to the WW2 Museum and I watched a 4-d movie which was 2D and sensory effects mixed. And the movie made me understand how many people died in the war. And I got a pinball game and army men at the gift shop and then we had to double back to the gift shop to see our dog tag’s endings. The dog tags were part of an experience where we had real-life stories to follow around.
Photo by Vivian. This was one of many cases filled with guns that Dory was very interested in.
Photo by Stephanie. I found our local (Waco) hometown hero at the National WWII Museum!
Then we went on a ghost tour that had history in it and was fun and we tried some EMPs which probably don’t measure ghosts.
Photo by Stephanie. These devices may not have detected ghosts, but the kids seemed to have fun with them anyways.
And then after we got beignets and hot chocolate but I did not drink it so my mom drank it. Then we got home and slept.
Vivian:
Hi friends! (And fam!) Today is Thursday and we were tested a lot. We woke up and got up (in my opinion two very different things) and got out the door in a timely fashion, then we rode on the oldest running street car IN THE WORLD.
Photo by Vivian. No idea why I’m clutching my pearls.
We got off and went inside the national WWII museum. It was eventful and we learned a lot of interesting things about death! ( do you hear the sarcasm?) We went to a 4-D movie and I might or might not have cried, but never mind that.
Photo by Vivian. The photo doesn’t really do it justice, but this room was meant to convey the magnitude of the Allied invasion forces during D-Day.
Photo by Stephanie. She may have found the WWII museum depressing, but at least she got this cute T-shirt!
After lunch and leaving the WWII museum we went and participated in the ghost tour with Charlie and his family. There was a very interesting story the guide told about how the first people here had been prisoners and nuns, sent by the French government. The government then sent 12 year old orphan girls to help… make the colony bigger, let’s say. They brought along boxes filled with clothes, the boxes were called caśket boxes and so the girls were called the Caśket girls. Notice caśket sounds a lot like casket. As in vampires.
Photo by Stephanie. This has nothing to do with the Casquette Girls. It is a mourning doll, which our guide used in her explanation of the mourning rituals of Creoles in early New Orleans, when there was plenty of death to go around. She also showed us a necklace made of hair and several photos of people posing with the corpse of their loved one.
Anyway after the tour we went and got beignets, which were delicious with Charlie and his family. Following that, we went back to the RV resort and changed into bathing suits. Charlie and his fam came over again and we had another pool party, it was very fun to talk and splash around. He left, we left, and we went to bed.
Photo by Stephanie. The famous homeschool friend Charlie, in front of a haunted hotel.
New Orleans, Day 2 of 3
Dory:
Day 2: This day is more detailed, as this is the previous day that I am writing this blog (not the current). The day started off with a Lyft to The Yard, to the van that took us to a bayou, and then we kayaked forward and then backward to the start.
Photo by Vivian.
In the swamp we saw many alligators and some juvenile bald eagles.
Photo by Stephanie. The clump of branches and Spanish moss (which is neither Spanish, nor a moss, as our guide explained. She said the story goes that the French named it that as a way to mock the Spaniard’s beards.) at the top of the tree is a bald eagle nest.
Photo by Stephanie. This is a very blurry photo of one of two juvenile bald eagles who were just learning to fly and were circling their nest above our heads.
Then we got some lunch because reason was in fact out to lunch, too. And I got some fried shrimp which I never tried before and I loved it. The next part of the day took us to the Whitney Plantation, and I learned that many Black children died at the plantation.
Photo by Stephanie.
Photo by Stephanie.
Then the day ended with us going to the RV Resort and got in the pool with our homeschool friend Charlie.
Vivian:
Hewo friends! (And fam!) on Wednesday, we went on our swamp tour! I had been anticipating this tour since the day before, and it did not disappoint! We kayaked down a river and saw many alligators and other species.
Photo by Stephanie. Vivian did such a great job kayaking on her own! She got hung up on a few submerged trunks, but that was everybody.
Photo by Stephanie. It was a great day to see alligators because it was sunny and warm.
Photo by Stephanie. Our guide explaining that there aren’t so many old growth bald cypress trees because many of them were milled for building material.
When we were done we went to this awesome restaurant and ordered our food! I got a hamburger and fries. (Yum!) Then we loaded into the van with the other tourists and our guide and drove off to Whitney plantation. It was an audio directed tour and was very informative, I especially liked looking at the exhibits that were near perfectly preserved.
Photo by Stephanie. I don’t have a photo of the buildings at Whitney Plantation, but I wanted to share this one, which is a memorial to the enslaved men who participated in the1811 Slave Revolt. They were captured and executed and their heads were placed on poles as a deterrent to others. I chose for us to visit this particular plantation because it centers the experience of the enslaved people who lived there, rather than focusing on a beautiful house and/or grounds. https://www.whitneyplantation.org/history/slavery-in-louisiana/resistance/
When we were done we drove back to the RV resort and awaited Charlie, our friend from our homeschooling group who would hopefully, decrease the strain on all of our’s nerves. He did and we fooled around in the pool until it was time to go to bed. And with that we put a close on our day.
New Orleans, Day 1 of 3
Dory:
So, this blog talks about three days of adventure, and is split into three chapters: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. Day 1 starts now. The memory of the previous day is this, as far as I can remember: We went on a walk around the French Quarter with a woman called Robin, and I thought the tour was boring.
Photo by Stephanie. Robin, the guide, whose tour was not boring. She narrated the founding of New Orleans, and how the “gumbo” was made—how the mixture of all kinds of people came to be in this place. In the distance is St. Louis Cathedral, which Vivian references below.
I thought it was boring because it was a bunch of old stuff in like, 1888 and 1777. We rode a streetcar that was fun and interesting, and then the day ended without seeing our friend.
Vivian:
Hullo friends! (And fam!) sorry this post is a bit late, the last few days have either ended way too late or had too little Wi-Fi. I will do my best to describe what the previous days were like. On Tuesday it was our first day in New Orleans and we were excited to go on the walking tour our mom had booked for us. The tour guide was very nice and her name was Robin, I always thought that was a very pretty name. We went from the meeting place to the Mississippi River, to the immigrant monument,
Photo by Vivian.
to a very interesting tree,
Photo by Vivian.
to another big statue with a church person, a native person, and the so called “founder” of New Orleans named Beinveille all facing different directions,
Photo by Vivian.
around to a lot of big buildings, and finally to a catholic cathedral that was very ornate.
Photo by Vivian.
The walking tour ended and we walked around on our own for a bit. We realized that we were getting hungry so we went to a cool looking custard place. (for those who don’t know, custard is basically ice cream without the bubbles) After we got back to the RV resort we went swimming in the pool, which was very nice. And we put a close on the day.
Waco to Big Thicket National Preserve
Vivian:
Hello friends! (and fam!) today we’ve come from Waco Tx to near Big Thicket National Reserve, also in Texas. When we started off today I was super tired and irritable, since we had woken up at 7:56 which is early for me. The takeoff wasn’t too bad, but someone *Dory* had to take extra long when eating his breakfast. Somehow we still managed to leave a little before nine. We drove for a while, then we stopped at Buc-ee’s (which we never do) and things escalated. Keep in mind, it had been raining since we set off and it was thundering and lightning-ing like crazy. Anyway, the power went out and everyone was like “oh” and we all filed out after paying for the snacks we got. Driving, Driving, Driving. Then we got to the Big Thicket place and went into the visitor center, Dory got a whistle or something.
The whistle/compass combo that Dory chose from the Big Thicket gift shop. Photo by Dory.
Then, we walked on the Sundew and Pitcher Plant trails, the Sundew one was uneventful, and we couldn’t spot any Sundew plants. The Pitcher Plant one was beautiful and we took a picture.
Photo by Stephanie. If I take the photo from behind, Dory doesn’t have a chance to scowl. Also: it was an ENTIRE BOG FULL of pitcher plants!
We then left the forest and rushed to our rv park just in time. Then we chilled for the rest of the day until now. It is currently 9:00 PM exactly, and we just finished dinner. Tomorrow we’ll have to get up early to go to New Orleans. So I need a full nights sleep. Goodbye. -Vivian
Dory:
“We have come many places, and we have traveled from point a to point b, on the way to Naw’lins.” Quote from me, Dory, traveling to see pitcher plants. So, where do we start? So much stuff happened with so much stuffing as information. Well, there was the Buc’ee’s (buc’ee’s? or buc’ees?) power outage in a storm where CAPITALISM KEPT GOING, NOTHING CAN STOP GENERATORS POWERING THE CASH REGISTERS. Or maybe the BAD WI-FI THAT WAS IN THE RV PARK WE GOT!! ARGH!!! Or maybe, just maybe, the graphing calculator that saved my life, here I have a picture.
I have always wanted a graphing calculator, and I finally got one! YAY!
Stephanie:
He hasn’t always wanted a graphing calculator, but he has been pestering me for weeks. So I finally caved and got him one to distract him during the long hours of driving.
Also: I would like to point out that despite someone *VIvian* predicting that our departure would be hectic, it was, in fact, not. So there.
I agree that the wi-fi here is abysmal. It is so bad that after several attempts at loading the photos, I gave up and that is why this entry is late.
Testing, testing...
We are getting ourselves good and ready for our Mega Midwest RV Jamboree! We leave on Monday.
This trip is technically still part of our school year, so the kids have assignments to complete on this massive, 3-week field trip. One of those assignments is to write blog posts about all the places we will go and things we will do. I figured it would be smart to work out the kinks with a little trial run here, since they are writing on their iPads and taking photos on Dory’s iPad and Vivian’s phone. Getting those files all transferred here did take a little tinkering. But as you see, we were successful!
I asked them to respond to these two questions:
What are you most looking forward to? Why?
What are you dreading the most? Why?
Their answers appear below, underneath the photo that their sibling took of them.
Photo by Dory
I am most looking forward to going to Dollywood so I can ride the roller coasters, which I love. I’m most dreading the departure onto this journey because it’s going to be really hectic.
Photo by Vivian. This is exactly the look he was going for.
I am looking forward to meeting one of my homeschool friends in the French Quarter in New Orleans because then I can talk to him. I am dreading the long hours of driving through endless roads to get to our destination because it is endlessly boring and mind-numbing.
The map below is more or less the route we will be taking. Not all of the points marked are places we will sleep, some are just stops. And we may make adjustments to the route as we go (for example, I don’t think I will opt to drive through Houston to get to Big Thicket from Waco). But this gives the general idea.
Our next post will be Monday evening, from an RV park near Big Thicket! And Vivian can tell you whether our departure was indeed “really hectic.” I don’t know why she thinks that will be the case. I mean, our every other departure has always been super smooth. 😅
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Taos is Snowy, Amarillo is Windy, and a Mystery is Solved.
By far everyone’s favorite day was the one in which we didn’t drive for hours upon hours. The snowstorm I drove into the night before dumped a bunch of snow in the night, and we woke up to this:
This is the view out the front window of the RV.
And out the passenger side window. Note the child sized footprints in the snow, where the kids had already gone out to throw snowballs at each other.
After borrowing a ladder from John (good man!) and knocking the accumulated snow off the roof of our slide out so we could slide in (does it ALWAYS take an hour longer to leave camp than I think it will? Does that get better?), we drove into town for provisions. Thank you, New Mexico, for the liberal use of snowplows and sand on your roadways.
We paid the Catholics to park in their lot, wandered around the heart of Taos, and ate lunch in a nice restaurant. It was really lovely. More than one person insisted that we must view the Gorge Bridge, so we drove out to witness it:
Vivian took this picture and look at how amazing the colors are! And also the bridge is quite impressive, as is the extremely deep gorge that just appears out of nowhere.
And before we headed back to the RV park, we filled up the propane tank. Heaty had kept us from freezing the night before, but we weren’t what we’d call sufficiently warm. It turns out we were completely out of propane, and when we turned on the heater, it worked!
The next morning we moved on, back through the mountains—but a slightly different route that was not so terrifying. Many hours and empty fields later, we arrived in Amarillo. We didn’t let a little wind (ok, a LOT of wind) keep us from contributing to the weirdest and most wonderful art installation ever located in a random corn field: Cadillac Ranch. The kids were really into it.
The man who checked us into our RV park said that Amarillo is the windiest city in the US—even windier than Chicago. This doesn’t seem like it should be right, and probably them’s fightin words for Chicagoans, but I can attest to the fact that it was excessively windy.
As we were getting hooked up to the amenities, we solved the mystery of how in the heck we were able to burn through all of our propane before we had even spent one full night in the RV.
This is the photo I sent the RV rental guy. There’s no needle! How am I supposed to tell how much propane is in there?!?
I assumed that once I plugged the power cord in to both the RV and the plug at our site, then power would be flowing, and we would be all set. It seems logical, right? BUT NO. There is another step: you have to find the breaker switch on the post where you plug into the RV park’s power and TURN THE SWITCH ON, or else you are still running on propane and not getting any electricity at all. Total rookie move. I had no idea.
Thomas had figured out about the breaker switch by the time we hooked up in Taos and informed me of my oversight when we hooked up in Amarillo. Then the light bulb over my head switched on, and I realized what had gone wrong back in Lubbock. Sigh. Add it to the long list of Things Learned .
A friend who read the previous post asked if I was too traumatized and was going to cancel our big trip coming up. I responded with a resounding, “NEVER.” The Mega Midwest RV Jamboree is still on, folks! I have learned so much that will make the next go round even better. Watch this space for more RV blogging beginning the last week of April. I am going to make the kids write their own posts, so it will be extra entertaining. ♡
The longest day of my life
We arrived in lovely Lubbock on Sunday evening in time to make a quick stop at Prairie Dog Town.
We loved their little yips and their flapping little tails! We also found it extremely amusing to see the golf course next door fighting a losing battle to keep the little diggers off their greens.
This is a hole in the ground. I thought I was taking a photo of a cute little Dog poking out of a hole, but there was too much glare so I got confused on which hole to focus on.
This is a Prairie Dog eating a carrot that Vivian hurled at it. She used the word “hurled,” which made me giggle.
We made it to our RV park just in time to get in, hooked up, and connected to not-the-greatest wifi. But it was sufficient to allow me to teach my childbirth class. I am so committed to childbirth education, I brought my pelvis and baby along on my vacation.
After my class, we had dinner and went to bed. All good!
BUT THEN. At 4am we woke up frozen solid. It was in the twenties in Lubbock that night, and our heater had gone out!!! We piled on extra clothes and tried to get more sleep. But really, this was the beginning of The Longest Day of My Life.
We gave up on sleep by 7am, got up and starting messaging Gary, the RV guy. Who didn’t immediately return my messages. We didn’t know what to do. Should we turn back? We were still able to light our gas stove top burners, and Gary told me the tank was full when I got the RV. Surely we didn’t run out of propane? We were so lost and confused. And really, really cold.
I called my bestie, who is working in San Francisco. I knew I was waking her up, but we were desperate. She and her bf are the only RVers I know. Plus her bf is super handy. I needed to talk to him. Unfortunately, he was as stumped as we were. But, they gave us the golden suggestion to get a space heater. Since we are camping at RV parks and have electricity, we could just use a space heater and not freeze. AND we could continue with our trip!
Gary the RV guy finally got back to me, and he said all we needed was more propane. Which I tried to do! The dang Love’s down the road had a broken pump, which I found out after wasting 20 minutes waiting on the guy to come out to fill the tank. I figured we could find some propane on the way, so we struck out for Taos.
Only all this dithering about the heat put us a couple of hours behind schedule. So I called ahead and spoke with the manager at the RV park in Taos. John was extremely kind and said he would meet us up there an hour or so after the office closed to let us in. He did ask what route we would be taking and mentioned a chance of snow, but I was having a hard time understanding him, so I just said we’d see him and carried on with what Google maps told me to do.
It turns out there’s hardly anything in between Lubbock and Taos by way of actual towns. We rolled into Clovis, New Mexico, STARVING and cranky. We stopped at the slowest IHOP in existence. I was getting nervous, because our schedule was already tight, and John was waiting for us!
Google lied to me and said that Wal-mart in Clovis had space heaters. They did NOT. More time wasted. Feeling a little panicky now, I ran into Lowe’s and bought the very last space heater in Clovis.
Meet Heaty, the tiniest space heater ever.
We were really pressed for time now and couldn’t justify stopping for propane, so we carried on toward Taos.
This little trip was meant to be a practice run for a much longer trip I’ll be taking later with just me and the kids. We thought it would be smart to work out the bugs and figure a few things out with another adult around, before I try doing this as the only person over 12 years old. Here are some things I have already learned:
Six hours is too far to drive in one day, especially if you’ve driven that far the day before as well. And that is six hours according to Google (whom we have already established as a liar). RVs are slower than regular cars. Also, children have to stop to pee a lot. So, it is much more than six hours on the road.
You should buy propane when you can.
Space heaters do work, but the floor is still EXTREMELY cold.
Listen to the man who is trying to tell you not to drive through the mountains during a snowstorm.
The drive from Clovis to Taos is empty of people (though there are plenty of feedlots packed with a lot of cows and giant piles of manure covered with huge sheets of plastic held down with old tires) but it is lovely. It changes from cotton fields to desert to low hills to mountains.
By the time we got to the mountains, it was getting pretty late. And also, it was starting to snow.
What followed was an extremely harrowing drive through darkening mountain passes that were starting to accumulate snow. And I was driving a big ol RV full of my family. It was frankly terrifying, and something I never want to experience again.
We finally got to our RV park, fully two hours after closing, in the pitch dark, in a snowstorm. But there was faithful John, who was so nice and really was just glad we hadn’t died getting there. Same, John. Same.
I managed to get the RV partly into my driveway!
Preparations are underway
The nice fella we are renting from gifted us an extra day with our RV, so we were able to spend all of Saturday getting prepared for this trip. We got her from a place in Liberty Hill, which I don’t think I had ever actually been to before. In my mind, it was a sleepy little country town, but I clearly had forgotten all about Austin Sprawl. Making a left turn into 5pm traffic as my first experience driving this beast was a harrowing experience.
But with the help of my trusty co-pilot, Dory, we made it home and got her packed, and we are leaving in just a few minutes. First stop: Lubbock.
Dory is so excited he forgot to scowl for the photo!