Long Hunter State Park

During quiet time/nap time one afternoon, Auntie K took us to Long Hunter State Park so we could do the Storybook Trail. We got off to a bit of a rocky start because we made it to the visitor's center just as it closed for lunch—and they were very serious about closing for their lunch break. We could see them all in there...and they could see us...but there was no way they were going to ask us if we needed help with anything. 

The bathrooms were locked from the outside, only accessible through the main entrance (which was locked). We had a map, but weren't quite sure what we were looking for because the Storybook Trail wasn't on the map. 

So we had our lunch and waited for the doors to open. 

An Amazon delivery person came by with some packages and they opened the door for them and while the door was open I passive-aggressively made a remark about how I couldn't wait for the next five minutes to be up so that we could finally take our toddler to the bathroom...

And the lady working inside must have heard me because after the five minutes were up and she finally unlocked the door for us, I took Phoebe to the bathroom and the lady made a point of finding Kelli to tell her that the bathroom doors were open, should we have needed to go. 

They weren't. 

But that's okay. We went potty and figured out where to go (kind of). When we got to the right parking lot we just had to find the "hidden" trailhead for the Storybook Trail. It, again, wasn't on any of the park maps. But we were pretty intimidated by the bulletin board, so perhaps we didn't look closely enough...

Why nobody lives here?

Miriam found Cannonsburgh Village while she was researching things to do around Murfreesboro. It has historical buildings that have been moved to the site or replicas of historical buildings (often made of reclaimed materials so they look as if they're from the time period). 

Here are the kids working on some of the "backpack program" materials...

Ruby Falls with Auntie K

Zoë writes: 

My favourite part of Ruby Falls was finally getting to the falls. The falls were beautiful, even more so because of the lights and music put on.

Beautiful Butterflies at Cannonsburgh Village

This morning we took the kids to Cannonsburgh Village, a little tour through history constructed to celebrate the 200th Independence Day back in 1976. It was a pretty neat place to visit, I think! They had all sorts of buildings—a telephone operator's house, a school, a chapel, a blacksmith shop, a mill, and more. They had live chickens. They had checkerboards. They had about a million organs (just about every building had an organ in it, I think). 

For right now, I thought I'd share pictures of the kids by this butterfly wing backdrop:

 

Zoë holding Oaklyn

Home from London

Rachel and Miriam arrived home from London on Monday. 

Grandpa and Darla stayed behind to do a bike tour through France and Germany, so Rachel and Miriam travelled home alone. They all went to the airport together—both Miriam and Darla got pulled aside for extra security—before going their separate ways. Poor Miriam had applesauce in her liquids bag and apparently it didn't pass the vibe...so after running it through several tests, security had her toss it, and then gave her a pat down. She was rather upset by the whole ideal (especially since she had brought the applesauce from the States...bug couldn't take it back to the states). 

Anyway, the girls had quite the journey—their flight ended up being delayed, and then they were switched to a new flight, and then their flight switched back. They finally arrived home about four hours after they were supposed to. 

We made a poster to welcome them home:

Flying to London and Fireflies

On Sunday afternoon, Rachel, Miriam, Grandpa, and Darla piled into Grandpa's car to head to the airport. Andrew was their chauffeur. 

They made it to London without a hitch...except for the fact that their accommodations fell through. 

Allatoona Falls

I do need to write the introduction to a paper this evening, but Blogger uploaded my pictures in the exact order I wanted them (instead of the exact opposite order, which is what usually happens) and so to reward the system for doing a good job, I will write a little bit about today.

Evidently we didn't communicate things very well and so weekend plans got a bit complicated. I think Grandpa texted us rather early in the week about weekend plans. Tuesday, if I believe, which is one of our busier days around here. I was already nagging around about it on Wednesday morning. And at some point he wrote to his dad and made a plan.

The plan was that...because Andrew had taken so long to write back to his dad...and then his dad had taken so long to write back to Andrew...that Rachel was busy babysitting on Friday night and then on Saturday night the girls planned a wild night of crocheting with their friends, so if the kids were going to squeeze in a sleepover at Grandpa's house it was going to have to be Sunday to Monday (because it's a long weekend). 

So they planned to go up on Sunday for dinner with some of Darla's kids and grandkids. And then they'd watch some movies (a kid movie before putting Zoë and Alexander to bed and then a scary movie with the big kids because Grandpa likes scary movies (he calls them "suspenseful")) and then sleep over. 

In the morning, we'd do a hike...and then return for lunch at Grandpa and Darla's and then go swimming. 

Boom—weekend planned.

Benjamin informed me at church that he'd forgotten his pyjamas. This was slightly problematic because in order to get to Grandpa and Darla's house in time for dinner, the kids had planned to leave directly from the church building. But, I mean, pyjamas aren't the end of the world, so I was like, "Well, deal with it."

It's not like we hadn't told the kids precisely what to pack—a change of clothes (with underwear! because Alexander forgot underwear the last time he slept over at Grandpa's house...but had arrived in his swimsuit...so he just wore his swimsuit all weekend), pyjamas, toothbrush, swimsuit. I mean, they were all bustling around packing things Sunday morning.

"Who is going to pack the toothpaste?" I heard Benjamin.

"I will!" Zoë volunteered.

"I'll pack the melatonin!" Alexander offered.

He got out a ziplock bag and counted out three doses of melatonin. One for Zoë (the most important dose) and then one for him and Benjamin...just in case.

They seemed to be doing well.

But it turns out they all forgot their pyjamas! 

And then Rachel and Miriam somehow didn't get the memo about bringing swimsuits!

And then, Andrew and I left the house en route to the trailhead, thinking that everyone else would be meeting us there. But they were blithely sitting around playing "Happy Salmon" (a card game), thinking that we were going to drive all the way to them before we all drove to the trail head together. But the park is between our house and Grandpa & Darla's house, so we had no intention of doing that.

Luckily I texted Rachel to tell her we were running a bit late but would be at the park in 5 minutes or so and she was like, "Wait...at the park??"

So they all scrambled to rush to the park (where the trailhead was) and we took our sweet time to get there (stopping at a gas station to fill the van and take Phoebe potty). We arrived within minutes of each other. 

I got out of the van—in my swimsuit—and the kids were all like, "Why are you in your swimsuit?!"

"There's a waterfall at the end of the hike," I said. "Remember...we talked about this..."

"We did not!" Rachel said. 

"Benjamin—we totally talked about this!" I said. "Because remember you wanted to do that other hike."

"You can't swim at that hike."

"I know! But that other hike was farther away for Grandpa and Darla, so we picked this one and you can swim at this hike. I showed you pictures. I told you to pack your swimsuits for the hike..."

"Oh, yeah..."

So, it was a morning filled with miscommunication, but in the end we made it and it was a beautiful day for hiking, given the season (which is still hot). 

Our first point of interest was this sand mine:

A day in Charleston

We had initially talked about attending the local ward while we were on vacation, but the closest ward is over an hour away from where we were staying...so we opted to Zoom into our own ward instead. We spent Sunday morning reading, crocheting, resting (for those of us who were up all night with an upset toddler), and then holding primary and priesthood lessons. 

Here's Rachel working on a crochet project in the sun room:

 

Cooper's Furnace

Last night for FHE we reflected on the goals we made in 2023 and discussed our goals for 2024. As usual, we listed a number of "Georgia Adventures" to complete (in the past these have been "Utah Adventures" or "North Carolina Adventures"; anything that gets us out exploring our own state (usually for free) so we gain and maintain an appreciation for our immediate surroundings). We also split up "hikes" and "Georgia Adventures" this year, so that hikes can't count as adventures (I guess because I've been craving wilderness lately, though I recognize that history and culture and civilization and things like that are also valuable).

Anyway, today we thought we'd get started by checking off both a hike and an adventure! We headed out towards Cartersville to hike the trail to Cooper's Furnace. We first stopped at the Allatoona Lake Visitor Center & Museum (which was really marked as the Land Bureau or something like that, so we were a little bit timid going inside) so that we could use the potty.

Very technically, we stopped at a random gas station about 10 minutes prior to arriving at the visitor's center so that Phoebe could make an emergency potty trip. When I ran up to the gas station shop with her, however, the doors were locked! A man ran up behind me and when he saw that I had trouble with the door he said, "It's locked?! You have got to be kidding me! It's 11:00 in the morning!"

Fortunately, the worker came to the door, removed a sign (that she'd taped to the top corner of the door, above all the other signs and stickers on the door, that said she'd be out momentarily) and let us in. That man busted past me and Phoebe to the restrooms, so evidently he was in some dire straights. 

Phoebe did her business and then we went to the visitor's center where Phoebe did some more business of a different nature. And then we were ready to begin our adventure.

The museum is small, but interesting. We learned about pig iron (so called because the cooling forms look like piglets nursing a sow), the Allatoona Dam, the Civil War, and some of the local wildlife. (We also were lambasted at every turn by reminders to wear our lifejackets—with catch phrases like "Lifejackets worn, no cause to mourn" and other cheerful things like that. 

Nauvoo (June 24)

I roped the kids into helping me write about our summer road trip because (1) it's good to hear their perspective about these things as well—they depend on me to record memories far too much and as much as I've tried to cultivate a passion for journal keeping within their little hearts...somehow I have, so far, failed (but Zoë has started watching the Victoria series and was very impressed by Queen Victoria's record keeping skills, so I have hope that the journal writing fire will kindle within her yet).

I've rambled so much that I'm afraid my list is completely lost, but my second reason (2) is because we did so many amazing things that truly did need to be documented, and I was so swamped with getting my thesis finished that I knew I couldn't manage to write about everything in a timely manner all on my own. I mean, here we are, having been home for 46 days already and we're still not quite done (though we are so very close). 

However, I think the kids are running out of steam. Zoë said she'd write about Nauvoo and this is what I managed to extract from her:

Nauvoo was our last stop on the way back to Georgia. Nauvoo was very pretty! Even Phoebe thinks so! We slept in a brick hotel, and on the outside, it looked very old. On the inside, not so much. We saw Sunset on the Mississippi, and got to dance on a stage. At first, I didn't want to dance on the stage, but then Mom said that it was my chance to be on the stage! We went to the temple at Nauvoo, and saw the real Sunset on the Mississippi. After that, we went to Carthage Jail. At Carthage Jail, I wanted to stay as close to the sister missionaries as possible. I don’t know why I did that, or I just don’t remember why, maybe it was because I thought they were pretty, I don’t know! But I do know that I was right behind them pretty much the whole time.

She didn't mention that I went up on stage with her because she was too afraid to go up on her own! Here are a few more pictures of the 'Sunset on the Mississippi' from Andrew's phone:

Winter Quarters and Sunset on the Mississippi (June 23, with thoughts by Alexander)

Winter Quarters was a slight deviation from our route to Nauvoo from...one of the Sioux places (I can't really remember whether we stopped in Sioux City or Sioux Falls, though I do remember that it was dark and storming and the roads were slick and completely dark because they'd recently been repaved but hadn't yet been repainted and we were just so glad to reach the hotel alive), but we though it was worth the extra half hour of driving to make the stop at the visitor's center. 

As one of Andrew's friends commented on Twitter—they have better bathrooms than any gas station around! They're clean, they're fully functional, and you'll be greeted by no fewer than six smiling faces on your way in!

We didn't stay long, in part because we still had five hours left to drive to Nauvoo (and we wanted to be sure to get there for the 'Sunset on the Mississippi' show), but also because Alexander had just thrown up in the car the day before, if you recall, and we were nervous about whether any other kids were going to...also be sick. 

Fortunately, it just seemed to be a him-thing. Everyone else was just fine!

Here are the kids exploring some pioneer things:

The High Museum of Art

On Friday we took a field trip to the High Museum of Art to see the Samurai exhibit that has been running this summer. 

It will be there until mid-September and if you haven't gone to see it, you should...because it is pretty spectacular!

Yellowstone: Fountain Paint Pots, Black Sand Basin, Emerald Pool, and things (June 21: coauthored by Benjamin and Mom)

On Tuesday night (June 20) we slept in Rexburg, a city in Idaho, at the AmericInn where I slept on a couch. The next day we had a two hour drive to Yellowstone. It took us a long time to get to the entrance gate, but once we got inside the park things were smooth sailing. 

We started to drive a twisting mountain road. A few moments later we saw steam rising off of the hills. 

Mom said we should probably pull over to explore, so we drove down the road to investigate and stopped at a parking lot next to a trailhead. 

Mount Rushmore (June 22)

The drive from Devils Tower, WY, to Mount Rushmore, SD, is only 2 hours and 20 minutes (130 miles or so). Alexander, who had been feeling find at Devils Tower began wilting at Mount Rushmore. 

It's been so long now that I can't quite remember which of the children got sick when. Phoebe got sick first. On a Sunday? I feel like it was on a Sunday. Was it on June 18th? Andrew ended up going home from church early with her because we realized part way through sacrament meeting that she had a fever. She was a miserable baby all day Sunday, but woke up feeling better on Monday. 

Zoë was the next child to get sick. I can't quite remember when she got sick, but her illness followed the same trajectory as Phoebe's. She felt sick for a day and then felt better. She must have been sick on Monday because I don't remember her feeling sick while we were traveling and we were counting our lucky stars until Alexander started feeling sick at Yellowstone (June 21). 

At first he attributed his feelings of malaise to breathing in vapours from the geysers and things, so he kept saying that he wanted to "get out of here," away from all the steam. Now, granted, "toxic gases may accumulate to dangerous levels in some hydrothermal areas"so he his assumption wasn't necessarily unwarranted. But everyone else seemed fine, so we were pretty confident it wasn't toxic gasses (and we didn't spend a ton of time at any particular hydrothermal area). 

But, boy, that steam was just blowing into his face and stinging his eyes! And that sulphur smell sure was giving him a headache!

It took us an embarrassing long time to realize that he had, in fact, spiked a fever and was downright miserable. (Fortunately, all our activities were outside, so we felt we were giving others plenty of fresh air around us). 

He was so happy when we finished dragging him in and out of the car at Yellowstone and let him have a big, long rest in the car while we drove through Wyoming!

The next morning he was feeling much better, as we assumed he would be (if his illness followed the same course his sisters had experienced), and was running and climbing all over everything at Devils Tower. As I mentioned, however, he began to wilt at Mount Rushmore.

Here we all are standing in front of the monument (you may also note the thunderstorm gathering behind the hills):

 

Goblin Valley (June 9)

First, I should warn you that there are a million pictures from our short stop in Goblin Valley. And although Goblin Valley is a whole lot of fun to visit...there's not really a big variety of things to do there. You just kind of...run around in the desert...and climb on hoodoos and things.

This means that pictures will very likely outweigh my text. This happens routinely with my Goblin Valley posts.

To quote from my 2012-self: 

Even though Goblin Valley is an interesting place to hike around and explore it's apparently not a very interesting place to write about—I believe I ran into the same problem while discussing Goblin Valley last year [when I said "the trip could be summed up as: we climbed on rocks—a lot"].

In short, we climbed on things, we jumped off of things, we played in the dirt, and we got hot and sweaty.

This year was no exception. We hiked around. We climbed on things. We had a blast. And...yup.

There are, however, a few important stories to share...

Loveland Living Planet Aquarium and visiting Kayl (June 17th; A guest post by Miriam)

The drive to the Aquarium was pretty smooth. Even though it was our first "long" drive all being crammed into our van together, there wasn't very much fighting, and Phoebe was pretty good. We got there a little earlier than Naanii, Bumpa, and Josie, so we were walking around the outside, which had an interesting structure, a surplus stage from a U2 concert that the Aquarium bought.

Devils Tower (June 22, a guest post by Benjamin)

The time that we arrived at the monument was just perfect it was approximately two hours before all off the people and tourists started to arrive. We could just park literally anywhere, so we chose a parking spot a little walk away from the visitors center (we did not go in it; we took the booklets from a news stand outside, and mom took the badges from a box that said Junior Ranger Supplies (Mom edit: Hey, if they didn't want us to take them, then they wouldn't have left them out in public like that (and I made sure the kids did the work))).

One interesting thing is that more than twenty tribes in the area want to rename the monument because the tower which they call Bear Lodge is a sacred place for them so the word devil in the name is offensive to them. A misinterpretation made the name Bear Lodge into Bad Gods Tower, which was made into Devils Tower by some dumb interpreter.

After we got the books we realized that there were no pencils so we decided to do them in the car after we were done at the monument. 

At 865 feet tall it is a behemoth but people still climb it! Wow! 

It does not take days to climb but if you are adventures and like climbing and have a few spare hours on your bucket list then do it with the help of a ranger. 

Another cool thing to see in June is all of the healing prayer cloths. 

I know they are pretty  but do not take pictures with them; it is disrespectful. The National Park Service even put signs down so that people will not do that in June, which I think is like prayer month or something (see above for a picture of one of the signs). 

Another thing you can do is try to see the aliens (which Grandpa joked about a lot).

________________________________

The following is by Mom, not Ben

Roadtrip Day 3: San Antonio, June 5 (a guest post by Miriam)

We started bright and early; we had a long drive ahead of us, and we wanted to get to Downtown San Antonio before it got too hot, and we had tickets to go in the church at 9:00. The day before, we read about Davy Crockett and the Alamo (the "Who Was" books for them), so we considered ourselves well educated about the subject. We were down in the lobby eating breakfast by 7:30, with the cars already packed. We weren't super worried about it getting too hot, because that morning it was in the 30's, and Dad could see his breath, but by the time we got there, it was the perfect temperature. 

It took us a little while to figure out where to park, but we eventually found some parking on the street. Here's Zoë pretending to drive the car while Mom was executing a diaper change (Phoebe got really good at car diaper changes while we were on this trip!).

You can see Dad and Grandpa figuring out how to pay for parking while all this was going on.

The Grand Canyon (June 7; a guest post by Benjamin)

The drive out to the grand canyon was pretty bleak for the last half of the drive the first half we were driving on this mountain road with trees all around us then about an hour on that road we started to descend and suddenly we were in a beautiful mountain meadow with only a couple houses scattered about. (we were on the Indian reservation) and I just thought “this is so peaceful.” With some cows in the distance grazing it was a sight to behold. Then a few moments later we smelled smoke and thought, “What!? Smoke!” Then we realized that it was probably prescribed burning to protect from even bigger fires. 

When we got to the canyon we could not go to the visitors center because it was closed so we had to go to this bookstore that was open to get our junior ranger books. 

Carlsbad & Caverns (June 5th and 6th, a guest post by Miriam)

After we got out of San Antonio, things got really boring. It was all just flat and desert-y. I don't remember a lot of Texas, as it all looked the same. I remember that we got of the car at least twice, once for a bathroom break, and once for lunch. I don't remember lunch at all.

During the bathroom break, we got out and walked around the gas station, and then stood next to a rock bed to let the little people play for a while. Phoebe loves rocks, so she was enjoying herself. She was picking up rocks saying "This? This?" She picked up a somewhat sizable rock and was struggling to hold it so we told her to put it down. She very obediently said: "Bup!" (which means yes), and then summoned all her strength and chucked it at Alex's head! Luckily, she is a baby and can't aim very well, but we were inches away from disaster!

When we got to New Mexico, everything looked the same as Texas, there were just more trains and oil/gas pumps out in the desert. There were still billboards though, for things that were 60 or more miles away.

We got to the hotel at a very reasonable time, around 5:30, so we had dinner, and got ready to go to the pool. I didn't, as I was going shopping for sandwich supplies for the next day with Grandpa, and it was a very good thing that I didn't, because when we got back, I went to the pool and it. was. disgusting. It smelled like cows, the water was tinged brown, there were multiple cigarette butts and bandaids, and it was just gross. I didn't get in, but all the kids did, so they all showered when we went back to our rooms.

The next morning, we all got up and packed up the car (as much as we could) and headed to breakfast. Then we piled in the car for a 30 minute drive to the actual Caverns. We got there at like, 9:00, which is half an hour earlier than our allotted entrance to the Caverns, so we were able to do some of the Junior Ranger booklets. We also enjoyed the view and spotted some wildlife.

[Mom edit: We were all blown away by how far we could see from up on the mountainside. We've been living in such a tree-filled area of the world that we're not even sure what a horizon looks like. This view took our breath away.]