To Atlanta

We just arrived home from a whirlwind trip down to Georgia to pick up my mom from a conference she was attending there so we could bring her to our house for a few days. Although we had second thoughts about going (we found a plane ticket for less than $150 the night before and it was really tempting) it ended up being a good trip. The kids were so excited to go and were fantastic travelers.

I checked Rachel out from school early on Friday (something she's been dying to experience) so we could leave as soon as Andrew got out of class. We drove straight through the afternoon—stopping only to refill the gas tank and for many, many potty breaks. Benjamin conceded on Thursday that potty training was a good idea (something I've been trying to convince him for months now) and stayed dry the entire day. I was worried about potty training on a road trip but Benjamin really proved his bladder control and didn't have a single accident (though we did put him in diapers just in case).

Benjamin read book after book after book in the car (and by read I mean he flipped through the pages and looked at the pictures), we watched 1.5 movies, Rachel did a lot of reading, Miriam did a lot of drawing. We also packed some magnetic "paper" dolls, some favourite stuffed animals, and lots of snacks.

Oddly enough both Benjamin and Rachel took naps while Miriam did not. That was a little backward from an ordinary day.

Along the way we saw some interesting sites, namely a sign for a place called Grover (in North/South Carolina). There's a place called Grover in Utah that is very close to our heart, which is why we were so excited to see this sign on a road trip:

More of yesterday's Grover

Aunt Shayla posted some more pictures of their adventure through Little Wild Horse Canyon, so here they are:

Dirt don't hurt

Last year we missed out on the Grover camping trip because of Rachel. She was born the day before everyone came back. Andrew phoned his family the day she was born and left them a voice mail telling them so.

They called back, questioning his truthfulness. He told them that we were in the hospital right then. For real. With a baby. I don't think they believed him until they heard her cry. Then they rushed home, showered, and came to meet her.

This year we took her to Grover with us. Andrew hasn't been to Grover since before his mission--it's been five years too long for him. And, I must admit, I enjoy Grover as well.

We weren't sure how Rachel was going to take the whole thing since she was afraid of the tents in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard. Grandpa tried to convince us that we should borrow a pack'n'play and stay in the cabin.

I wasn't too sure about this since the cabin is a little scary (read: mice). I would rather stay in a tent without mice than in a cabin with mice.

We ended up borrowing a tent from my parents (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and a pack'n'play from Heather (thanks, Heather!) so that we could decide on what to do when we got there.

Turns out, Uncle Raymond and his brother, Big Bob, have been working hard on the cabin and they just finished a loft. It was brand new, bright and airy, and essentially mouse-and-spider free.

We claimed it as our home and took Rachel out to play.

I've got a stick, hey, hey, hey, hey!

The first thing she did was find a stick. Then she went around banging everything she saw with it...and no one stopped her. Then she got into all the tent supplies...and no one stopped her. Then she face planted in the dirt...and no one stopped her to wipe off her face. She was, quite decidedly, in baby heaven.

Auntie Em, I think you need this pole next.

What do you mean, "Where are the pegs?" I left them in the bag!

She loved being so messy and touching so many new things. Everyone let her help with whatever she wanted to help with because there was no risk involved. What was she going to do, make the dirt dirtier?

I'm a good helper, Mommy!

When the tents were almost all set up, Andrew and I decided that we should take Rachel for a walk so that everyone else could actually get some work done. Daddy wanted to show her the forts that he (and his siblings, cousins, and friends) would make in days gone by, so we hiked up the hill south of the cabin.

King of the hill

That is where Rachel began her love affair with rocks. Previous to Grover she had enjoyed rocks. She liked to pick them up and put them in her mouth and throw them, but she had never before had such opportunity to so completely surrounded by rocks. She loved it.

Grandpa asked if I brought any toys for her.

"Sure," I answered, "They're in the cabin."

"Outside toys," he clarified, "Like her shovels and things."

"Oh, no," I said, "She didn't seem to enjoy them much at the beach so we just left them home this time."

I think that was a good call on our part. Does this look like the face of a child who needs a toy?

She used the rocks as blocks, drums, hammers, and chew toys. She probably would have taken the rocks to bed with her if we had permitted (we draw the line at whisks).

...and we have here our "rock sandwich."

Mmmmm...Delectable!

The rocks down in the Waterpocket Fold are so fragile that Rachel can actually bite pieces off of the rock. The sound of her teeth grating against the rocks is spine-tingling. She didn't mind the sound, but I think she found the texture to be a little off.

Too crunchy, a little too crunchy!

It was fun for me to watch Andrew and Rachel play together, although I did feel a little leftout. Andrew was reliving his childhood memories with Rachel and Rachel was making her own little memories. I was just holding the camera and trying to make sure that neither of them choked on pieces of sandstone.

Making memories

Rachel could have played up there all day. We had quite the task on our hands to convice her that her life wasn't over just because we were dragging her away from her beloved fort. We promised that she could come back again. We told her there were rocks down by the cabin. We tried to distract her with trees and birds and other rocks.

She screamed the whole way down the hill, and then she kept on screaming.

Only when I showed her the rockwall surrounding the pavilion did she stop screaming.

Now this is more like it!

My sweet little baby turned into a lean, mean, dirt-magnet machine the minute we arrived. We were only a few short hours before bedtime and Rachel was already in dire need of a bath. And it was only our first day...

Grover, Day 1 (Tuesday, July 26)

Well, we're back from camping and I have bucket loads of stories to share. I suppose I'll begin when we pulled up to Aunt Dorothy's cabin. But first maybe I'll say that one day I want a cabin. Or at least yearly access to a cabin. It's nice to be able to go the same place year after year after year.

I first went to Grover seven years ago, before Andrew and I got married, while he was still on his mission, and his family wanted to make me fall in love with them so that I'd fall in love with him. Or something like that. I'm not really sure what their plan was but Andrew and I are married today.

It doesn't really seem that long ago that I infiltrated his family's anual vacation but then I saw Phillip step out of the car. Phillip is the neighbour boy. He also went to Grover seven years ago. Do you know how old he was seven years ago? I'll tell you. He was seven.

Not a whole lot has changed about me in seven years, at least...not that I can tell.

But I can tell you a whole lot has changed about Phillip in seven years.

For one thing, he's not a baby anymore. He's a gangly teenager.

That kind of shook my world. I was like, "Wait! When did he grow up? We just went to Grover seven years ago and he was just a little kid!"

I mean, I knew he grew up because he lives down the street, right? But for some reason realizing that seven years ago he was seven made me feel...old. Except that I haven't changed. Except that now I'm bringing along two little girls to Grover. And where did those little girls come from? Weren't they babies the last time we went to Grover?

Anyway, we pulled up to the cabin and I helped Rachel out of the van and set her on the stone path leading up to the cabin where Grandma was standing in the doorway smiling and waving. I gave her a little nudge forward and said, "Go on into the cabin with Grandma."

Instead of going into the cabin though, Rachel started twirling around in circles, looking rather disoriented. Finally she started walking off to nowhere.

"Rachel," I asked, "Where are you going?"

Packing up camp (Monday, May 21)

I suppose I should finish up writing about Grover before it turns into June. Fortunately, I'm on our last day when all we really did was pack up and head out. The girls were rather opposed to the idea of going home and let their grumpy sides come out for pretty much the first time the entire camping trip.

When Miriam woke up in the morning and we told her we were getting ready to go home she said, "I wish we could go camping all the times!"

Alas, we have other obligations to attend to—like work and church and school—so home we went.

*sigh*

As Karen put it so aptly, "One of the best things about going camping is going home and not having to worry about bugs and mice and things."

Gift of God

We met up with some friends at the museum again this morning and enjoyed wandering through the indoor exhibits, playing on the spaceship, flying paper airplanes, shooting stop motion films, and so forth, until the children started clamoring about going outside. So outside we went, of course, because there is even more to do outside the museum than in.

The children shot off to the playground while I moseyed over to an unclaimed bench and got ready to nurse Benjamin. I pulled out my phone for some reason—I'm not sure why because anyone who knows me knows that my phone is more often than not left neglected in my purse and that's only if I remember to take it with me in the first place. Whatever the reason, I pulled my phone out and saw that I had a new text message from Andrew.

"WHOA!" he wrote. "Sister Gillespie died in Grover. No idea how yet."

Ten words brought my entire world to a screeching halt. Around me children were climbing, jumping, screaming, banging on drums, and ringing bells while parents were scrambling after toddlers and hollering at escaped preschoolers. The world seemed to be spinning a thousand miles an hour (disclaimer: I'm not actually aware of how fast the world spins) but I was frozen in time. All I could do was stare at my phone screen while my mind filled with questions and my eyes filled with tears.

Piece by piece—truncated text by truncated text—the story came to me, while I typed my responses back with shaky hands, begging for more information.

Everyone—Grover, you see, is an annual pilgrimage for the Heisses and Gillespies alike—had gone to Goblin Valley except for Brother and Sister Gillespie. They'd gone hiking somewhere else. Somewhere remote. Sister Gillespie began to exhibit symptoms of heat exhaustion. Brother Gillespie headed out as fast as he could but it was a three hour drive to the nearest town—Boulder, UT (population 180)—to get help. A search and rescue team was organized; they recovered her body around 2:30 this morning.

Frankly, I'm still not sure I've got the story right.

Grover Randomness

The night before we left for Grover, Rachel was too excited to sleep. She determined that she'd sleep in the living room with all the camping gear we'd assembled.

Being the mean mom that I am, I said no.

Grover

We're still alive, though life seems rather surreal right now. We spent the first part of this week camping--it was hard for us to believe that we were in Grover, Utah, when we had been in Cairo, Egypt just the week before. You'd think that they would be very different since one has a population of several million and the other a population of less than 300.* However Grover is rather sandy, which made us nostalgic for home.

Rachel kept saying things like "We must be by the pyramids. It's sandy. But where are the camels?"and she named one of the impressive rock formations "The Sphinx."

I have several stories to share but the girls are competing for my attention by seeing who can scream the longest and loudest over the most insignificant thing. It's taken nearly a half hour to get this far so clearly this isn't the best time to be writing.

I'll leave you with a most hilarious Andrew-ism. At least, I think it's funny.

While we were hiking through Sulphur Creek yesterday, Andrew and James were discussing the water purity of the creek. Since we found a deer leg floating in the water I'm going to guess it isn't great.

Andrew: I wouldn't drink the water, James. You'd probably get gonorrhea.

Me: Ummm...I think you mean giardia...

Andrew: Why?

Me: Because gonorrhea is an STD.

And now a brief message from Rachel, who has been whining about needing a turn to type...

khdxxzzhh trr
t
\
6

*From what I could find, that's the population for the entire postal code and I'm pretty certain that Grover doesn't have its own postal code so this likely contains the populace of surrounding small towns.

Laundry here vs. there

Today I did not one, not two, not three, but four loads of laundry—I washed them, dried them, folded them, and put them away all by myself…with a little help from my amazing husband…and an awesome Auntie Sarah who let two rambunctious children wrestle with her…and some wonderful grandparents who also helped entertained those rambunctious children.

I like these newfangled machines.

The Grover Chronicles are interrupted to bring you this update...

On Saturday morning after packing up camp we went to gas up before heading to Goblin Valley. We didn't get there though because I took the opportunity of being in civilization to check my phone (there's no service in Grover). That's when I found out that there a huge fire burning at Coal Hallow was threatening our use of Highway 6 (which is the road we'd be taking home from Goblin Valley). 

To be on the safe side we decided to skip Goblin Valley and just head home (on I-15). 

We probably would have still made it through the canyon, since they didn't close the highway until Sunday. But it would have been a smoky, smoky drive. 

We had to drive past an older burn getting home, anyway (which the kids (mostly Benjamin, I guess, since the older girls rode in the RV with Grandma and Grandpa on the way to Grover and Zoë is pretty clueless)) had panicked about on the way out to Grover. Benjamin was worried that the California fires had somehow made their way out here. We assured him that this had been a different fire and that everything was fine.

Driving back through that burned out area felt ominous, however, knowing that we were heading home to a raging fire in our canyon. All that remained on the ashen landscape were the blackened skeletons of trees. We passed a highway sign that had been melted and twisted into a misshapen, empty canvas. We could see where the fire had hopped the highway. We could see where it had finally been put out, giving way to mile after mile of bone-dry fields, ready to burst into flames at any moment.

We returned home to a hazy valley. Everything smells like smoke. We can hardly see the mountains. 

Work

What I should be doing right now is packing, but clearly I'm feeling rather deficient in the motivation department. There's a pile of pre-selected, pre-stained clothes sitting on a heap on the floor, ready to be packed...I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. They're our "Grover clothes." We're going camping in Grover, Utah—which is in southern Utah—which means that our children will spend approximately four days rolling around in red dirt.

We don't bring nice things to Grover.

Sulfur Creek

We have, in our possession, a certain category of clothes that not many people have. Grover clothes.

When we were packing a few weeks ago, Andrew took some of his ruined shirts out and said, "Let's pack these. I never wear them."

"Grover," I said.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

It is quite the gamble to take clothes that you like to Grover. Therefore, everyone ends up in grungy (and sometimes interesting) outfits, suited for the red landscape. You've probably noticed that Rachel has a lot of pictures in that peach-colored onesie. That's because she wore it almost every day we were there. I'd just rinse it out after she was in her pyjamas and put her in it the next morning.

Since we knew that we'd be hiking in a "river of Chocolate," Andrew and I were sure to choose our least favorite clothes when we got ready for the hike. Sometimes the water is clear and you don't have to worry quite so much...but since we'd just had a flash flood in that area we played it extra safe.

We debated bringing Rachel with us, but in the end we decided to leave her back at the cabin with Grandma.

For the first little while, the hike was really easy and we were wondering why we hadn't brought Rachel. It was a meandering course through an old, dried up river bed.

Even when we reached Sulphur Creek, it didn't look all that treacherous. The water had subsided and it was a gentle trickle, not even covering our shoes.

"We should have brought Rachel," said Sister Gillespie. I had to agree with her.

But as we got farther on our way, the water got deeper and faster.

"When Suzy was a baby, we were playing in a stream about like this. I was holding her hand and she slipped and fell right under the water. If I hadn't been holding her hand we never would have found her--you couldn't see anything in the water. It's a good thing we didn't bring Rachel," Sister Gillespie amended her previous statement.


Looking down at my feet, I had to agree with her again. The water was so turbid that, even though it was still just past my ankles, I couldn't see a trace of my shoes. If Rachel fell over in the water, she'd be gone within minutes.

The hike also wasn't as easy as it had first seemed, or as people had remembered it in the past. The river was swifter, hiding the riverbed under a blanket of muddy water. The shore was muddy from the flood; everything was covered in a coat of fresh and slippery silt. We had two options.

The first was to walk blindly in the river, feeling your way with your feet, and risking a twisted ankle.

The second was to walk on the bank of the river, squishing through the muck, and risking losing a shoe (and twisting your ankle in the process).

Both paths guaranteed several slips, no matter how careful you were. For the most part, we chose to walk in the river since it didn't grab at our shoes, but when we were tired of stubbing our toes and tripping over rocks we'd hop out of the river to walk in the mud, only to tire of that after a few minutes and get back in the river.

Everywhere we looked, we saw evidence of the previous day's flood. We were glad to be walking in ankle deep water, instead of wading in up to our waists.

Like my pink socks? They used to be white.

Around the first waterfall, there is a tree affectionately called "The Love Tree." This picture doesn't show it the greatest, but the tree actually spells the word love. Andrew and I are filling in for the O, but you can clearly see the L, V, and E. Well, you could see the E, except that it's kind of cut out of the picture.


The first waterfall was pretty easy to hike around. The second waterfall, though, was much more tricky. This was when I was really glad that we hadn't brought Rachel with us.

Reid and me in the second waterfall

There's quite a big gap between the second and third waterfalls. We were beginning to wonder if there really was a third one at all. Finally, there was. And then I was really, really, really glad that we hadn't brought Rachel.

The easiest way to get down the waterfall is to slide down. Poor Matthew was too scared to slide down and so was passed down the cliff with the help of his mom, Brother Gillespie, Andrew, and Reid. He ended up banging into the side, causing some tears. I couldn't see myself sending Rachel down either way without having a fit.

Me about to slide down the falls

Andrew standing on his tip toes

Three hours later and we limped safely, and sorely, to the Visitor's Center and happily reunited with our baby. We rinsed off our socks and shoes as best we could, finding handfuls of rocks in our shoes and spraying red water all over the place. Andrew ended up throwing away his stylish pink socks, but I kept mine to add to our stash of Grover clothes. I may need those socks again.

Grover, day one

We stayed in Andrew’s cousin Ken’s trailer instead of pitching a tent. For some reason this seemed easier. By the time we had finished unloading the van and eating dinner, though, it was dark and we hadn’t been able to figure out how to get the electricity in the trailer working so we had to get ready for bed in the dark.

I held a flashlight in my hand and bent over to search through our bags to find pyjamas for everyone while Andrew wrangled the girls. When I stood up my head connected with the corner of an overhanging cabinet I had been unfortunate enough not to notice.

In short: blood, swelling, massive headache. And it was only our first day.

Other than that and the occasional bug bite…and the Zander boys popping a tire and second degree burns covering half the back of certain boys in our family (I won’t mention any names—if only, if only there was some modern invention to prevent such a thing from happening…oh wait…sunblock), a few people bonking their heads on overhanging rocks while climbing up waterfalls…nothing bad happened.

We played Rummikub with Andrew’s parents that evening after we had gotten the girls to sleep and I had sufficiently iced my head. Karen and I had a hard round—we had drawn all the tiles and still couldn’t go down. It was so sad and we begged to start a new round and because we’re spoiled Andrew and Reid gave in.

Interestingly enough Andrew’s family plays Rummikub with house rules and those house rules are virtually identical to the house rules I grew up with, which is nice. Andrew and I both enjoy Rummikub and never even discussed the rules when we started playing together. I hadn’t even realized that I grew up playing house rules until I played with some friends in Egypt a few weeks ago. That game was rather confusing for me. I think everyone should play by our house rules, except that because we play only after we’ve accumulated 50 points we apparently run the risk of drawing all the tiles and never being able to play.

That’s only ever happened to me once, though, so I still think our rules are good rules. The next round went much better.

We went to bed, freezing cold, and fully expecting to be woken up early in the morning due to sunshine or birds or babies or some other natural alarm clock, but we weren’t. Our whole family slept in until Miriam cried out to nurse. I heard Karen honk the horn on her way out of camp to go grocery shopping so I woke Andrew up to see what time it was since we were supposed to go hiking. It was 9:30!

I don’t think anyone has ever slept in until 9:30 in the whole history of Grover trips—and there have been 17 years of them. That’s right, year marks the heptadecennial anniversary of Heiss Family Grover Trips…and we spent the first morning sleeping in.

The faces of Grover

We just got back from Grover and, boy, do I have stories to tell! It is rather late, however, so in following Elder Eyring's advice to never miss a day, "no matter how tired I [am] or how early I ... have to start the next day," I'm going to go ahead and post a little bit today (and I know I didn't technically write while we were camping, but I did take notes and that's just about the same thing).

Grover is heaven for mess-loving children like mine. There's rocks, there's sticks, there's dirt. There's sticky treats and sweaty feet and sappy trees and a dusty breeze and...all things dirty. 

And they love it. 

While my older girls have somewhat outgrown little kid messes and managed to survive the entire trip looking somewhat glamorous, their younger siblings did not fare so well. In fact, they're well-practiced, rather accomplished mess-makers.

Here are Miriam and Rachel, looking fabulous (in spite of having boycotted both showers and hairbrushes for the week):

 

Last Grover Day

How far behind am I? Let’s see. Our last day in Grover was June 30, so I’m only eleven days behind. A lot can happen in eleven days, but I may as well start at the very beginning—the end of our Grover trip.

We woke up early-ish to hike through Sulphur Creek. We brought our hiking backpack with us but in the end decided not to take Rachel with us and left her and Miriam behind with Grandma. We also didn’t take our camera because we had remembered the hike being rather wet.

This year, however, the water was rather low. The hike seemed so much easier than we remembered it being, probably due to the fact that the water was running clear instead of chocolate red and that it was only ankle deep instead of knee deep. We were so looking forward to getting to the third and final waterfall—when the water is high enough you can slide down the waterfall and swim to shore. That’s what we did last year. But when we got to the waterfall we saw that the pool at the bottom was only knee-deep, so instead of sliding we just climbed down.

We arrived at the visitor’s center mostly dry and hardly even exhausted, but that was alright because we still had to pack up camp. By the time we had finished loading up the vehicles we were all worn out.

It’s only a three hour drive and we stopped three times, mostly to deal with some little girls (and to switch up drivers). We stopped in the middle of no where to get Miriam settled down and while I did that Grandpa took Rachel to visit some sheep he spotted in a pasture. Then we stopped at a gas station to use the restrooms and switch drivers.

It was decided that Grandpa would drive the van and Daddy would drive the car, so Grandma and Grandpa got in the van and started driving away and Daddy hopped into the driver’s seat and went to get the keys out of his pocket but found his pocket to be empty.

He got out of the car and started chasing down the van. He caught up with it shortly before it turned out of the gas station lot and started banging on the side, but Grandpa didn’t stop. Andrew kept chasing the van all the way to the entrance of the freeway before he got Grandpa to stop so that he could get the keys.

That was rather comical and we thought that the rest of the trip would go off without a hitch. We were wrong.

When we were about an hour away from home Rachel started complaining that she had to go to the bathroom.

“We just stopped like twenty minutes ago and you went then,” I told her.

“But I only went pee pee, and now I need to do poo-poos!” she wailed. “My tummy hurts so bad!”

“Can you hold it until we get to the next town? There is no where to stop here.”

“I have to go right now! Please!”

By now she is crying and carrying on but we make her wait until we make it to Nephi and then we pull off and Andrew rushes her into a restaurant to use the restroom.

There she perches on the toilet and a wicked grin spreads across her face. “I didn’t really have to go,” she giggled, “I just wanted to get out of the car!”

Andrew told her that she was in big trouble and that he was going to put her back in the car and that he didn’t want to hear a peep out of her until we got home. She was very remorseful and when he put her in the car her head was hanging in shame. She reached over and grabbed her favourite blanket from my lap and pulled it over her head and sat like that for the entire hour ride home.

Granted, she fell asleep, otherwise I don’t think she would have been able to maintain her silence, but still.

It was a good camping trip, we’ve been home for nearly two weeks now and have been battling constant colds the whole time, which probably explains some of the lack of blog posts.

Grover and Capitol Reef (June 7–9)

We left the Grand Canyon around noon, stopping in Kanab around 3:30 for our traditional lunch of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, as well as a quick grocery run so we could eat while we were at Grover.

Here are the kids enjoying their food:

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...

Sunday pants problems

This morning Karen posted a picture of the kids before they headed off to hike Little Wild Horse Canyon with Grandpa, Uncle Jacob, Aunt Shayla, Carter, Uncle Todd, and Kayl.

Uncle Todd, Kayl, Grandpa, Benjamin, Rachel, Miriam, and Uncle Jacob

Grover 2012 (Thursday, May 17)

We spent the weekend camping in Grover, which is why I haven't blogged since last week. We're home now and have many stories to share. Andrew has, of course, left all the Grover-blogging up to me.

"Boy, you sure have a lot to blog about," he said last night.

"I sure do," I told him, "But not as much as you!"

Hopefully while I write about Grover he'll finish writing about Ghana.

After packing up the vehicles on Thursday morning, we departed for Grover. It's only a 3.5 hour drive but it definitely took us more than four hours to get there. Grandpa followed the van, which Grandma drove, all the way down so that he could stop whenever we had to go potty. And we had to stop to go potty so many times—we stopped three times in one hour just for Miriam, who had to go #1 (everybody out of the car, everybody goes—that's the rule, so that's what happened) and then twenty minutes later declared she had an urgent need to go #2 (this time we didn't make everyone get out because we'd just done that, right?) and then twenty minutes later she had to go #1 again (everybody out, everybody goes). She's going to have to work on coordinating her #1 with her BMs or that drive to North Carolina's going to be really long.

Eventually we made it to the cabin and started setting up camp. Aunt Dorothy warned us that we might find a few mouse carcasses about the cabin—we were the first ones to "use" the cabin this season, though Dorothy and Raymond went last weekend to make sure everything was working and to set out some mouse poison in order to evict their winter visitors.

We opened the door to the cabin and, lo:

A lick of our trip (in numbers)

When I think about this trip, I think about taking a long lick along one of those popsicles that has layers of flavour. You know, like the red, white, and blue ones? Or rainbow pops? Or something. There was just so much to see, so much variation in the landscape, so many different ways of living. We didn't get to dive in deep anywhere, but we saw a lot.

So I offer to you a lick...of our lick...of the United States. In numbers...