Yello!

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
~St. Augustine

The past week found Kalie, Shawn, Jesse and me on an adventure as we drove to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville.  The trip took us over 3,000 miles in six days through eleven states.  In addition to the 26-21 win over the Clemson Tigers, we made stops along the way to experience a bit of the local culture and attractions.  Highlights were visits to Mammoth Springs, AR; B.B.Kings Club on Beale St., the Civil Rights Museum and site of Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis, TN; the birthplace of Elvis in Tupelo, MS; the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL; the Alabama statehouse and the first White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery, AL; the FSU campus in Tallahasse, FL and the Jacksonville Beach in Jacksonville, FL.  We spent New Year’s Eve watching fireworks and listening to live music at The Landing in downtown Jacksonville and New Year’s Day at the Gator Bowl.  On the return trip home we had lunch at The Varsity in Atlanta, GA (the world’s largest drive-in hamburger place) and dinner in Nashville, TN.  After spending the night in Paducah, KY we continued on and came upon the little town of Cairo, IL which is sandwiched between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and has an interesting history.  We had lunch in St. Louis, MO and dinner with Jesse’s friends in Kansas City before finally making it home.  We had a great time and got to see many new places.

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.”
Francis Bacon, Sr.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to take 19 of my students to Dallas for one of our national Cluster Meetings. I have taken kids to these meetings every year for the past 20+ years to destinations all over the midwest. This trip, in a big yellow schoolbus no less, was one of the best! The speakers were great and the kids were awesome too. On the way down we stopped for a break at the Oklahoma City National Memorial which was created to honor those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever by the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Rows of chairs are arranged next to the pool that defines the footprint of the destroyed building according to the location of those who died when the explosion occurred. Larger chairs represent adults and the smaller chairs are in honor of the children who died, most of whom were in daycare on the first floor of the building. If you’ve never been there, it is definitely worth the stop.

While in Dallas we also visited the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza that chronicles the assassination and legacy of President John F. Kennedy. It sent chills up my spine to stand near the very spot that the assassin assumed when he took aim at our president so many years ago. We were there on the 45th Anniversary to the day of the event that caused those who were alive at the time to remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the dreadful news. Again, the kids who were with me could easily grasp the significance of what they were seeing and appreciated the chance to be there.

Our meeting was great too. One of the best speakers was a man named Ben Glenn whom I have heard several times before. He has a great message and also entertains with a zany sense of humor. His presentation always starts out with the creation right before your eyes of a magnificent chalk drawing.

We were surprised to see a piece of the Berlin Wall at the hotel were our meeting was held. As we walked by it, an exchange student from Germany who was along on the trip with us, recognized it! I think he was surprised to see, literally, a piece of his homeland right there in Dallas.

And what would a trip to Dallas be without a stop at a mall. I drove the bus to the Galleria Mall, complete with an ice skating rink and the biggest Christmas tree you’ll probably ever see. By Sunday, we were ready to head for home and started the trek back north. I think everyone who was along on the trip had truly been dazzled by Dallas!

Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.  ~Author Unknown

Bike Week 2008 has come and gone.  Even though we make no claims of being real bikers (or campers!), we ventured west to Sturgis for the fifth year of adventure in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  For those of you who have followed our trials and tribulations with the air mattress (see http://www.whiddenfarm.com/yello/2007/08/21/the-saga-of-the-air-mattress-continues-on/), you’ll be happy to know that we got a larger tent on sale in January and our queen-sized Bed-in-a-Box fit perfectly with room to spare!  No more getting wedged between the bed and the side of the tent – it was great!  🙂We weren’t sure we had chosen a good camping spot after we pitched the tent and then read the sign saying something about live fire. Hopefully that was intended for off-season visitors to the Buffalo Chip campground.

One of the highlights of the Sturgis Rally for us has always been the Custom Bike Show on Thunder Road and this year was no different.  We saw awesome custom-built motorcycles that were more like works of art than modes of transportation. 

Another highlight from our day on Thunder Road was the opportunity to meet well-known bike builder, Billy Lane, and seeing Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, who also has his own line of custom bikes called Red Wing Motorcycles (http://www.redwingmotorcycles.com/).

And we always get a laugh when we look for our favorite little saying posted on the wall at Thunder Road…

It does make you stop and think!!!  🙂

Of course we had to stop in downtown Sturgis to take in the sights and sounds.

Another of the highlights of Bike Week has been the great music.  This year the Buffalo Chip Campground had a phenomenal line-up of entertainers, from Kid Rock to Alice Cooper to Three Doors Down to Kelli Pickler!  Unfortunately we weren’t able to be away from the farm to see all of them (or even most of them!)…but, we did see some of them.  Sugarland and ZZ Top drew a huge crowd on Thursday night and it was difficult to get very close.  Friday afternoon I happened to be there when country singer Dierks Bentley and the alternative band Staind was there for their sound check and got to listen to them both later that evening at their concerts.  Pictured below is Staind’s lead singer Aaron Lewis.

We had other adventures while at the Rally.  The Full Throttle is always a fun time with great music.  We even went back one morning for a huge all-you-can-eat breakfast.  Someone told us about the Extreme Fight Nights at the Knuckle and so we checked that out one evening.  I’m not sure why anyone would put themselves through that, but I suppose it must be a guy thing.  Although, one girl challenged any guy willing to step into the ring with her in the 185 pound division.  We didn’t stay long enough to see if she had any takers.  We headed up the road past Bear Butte one afternoon and came upon the new Broken Spoke where the bikes enter by driving right through the place!  Some amazing sights there were the motorcycle engine blender and the bike with the see-through gas tank.  There would be no excuse for running out of gas with that bike.

One of the best parts of going to Bike Week each year is the people.  We met very interesting people from all over the world.  The greater part of one afternoon was spent just sitting and talking with a radio DJ from Oregon and a guy from northern California, trading stories and coming up with solutions to most of the world’s pressing problems.  We’ll look for them again next year.

Too soon it was time to head for home.  We stopped past the Harley store and the newly opened Cabela’s store in Rapid City to admire their display of trophy animals.

One last stop was for lunch in the tiny town of Scenic, SD – home of very few people and several young ducklings.

So long Sturgis…until next year!  🙂

Family faces are magic mirrors.  Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future.  ~Gail Lumet Buckle

Ok, so this post is about our week-end trip to the above mentioned places (the mice part I’ll explain later!).  Five of us ventured back east for the long holiday week-end for the main purpose of visiting my Uncle Johnnie.  He’s eighty-seven and my mother’s only sibling.  He is a real gem – they just don’t make ’em like my Uncle Johnnie any more.  He is still very sharp – able to navigate a car around the area where he lives in southern Maryland and maintain the home he built himself years ago (he cut the trees down himself and hauled them into a mill in town to make them into the lumber he used to build his home).  We enjoyed our visit, even though it was only a couple of days – it was great to see him and his friend Kitty.  He reminds me a lot of my mom.  I wish we lived closer so we could see him more often.

While in Maryland we had the most fantastic seafood at the Captain’s Table (http://massarosrestaurants.com/captainstable/ )  and Catamarans Restaurant (http://www.catamarans-restaurant.com/ ), both located in nearby Solomans Island along the Patuxent River in Maryland.  We also drove over to Piney Point, MD to spend a little time on the beach and see the old lighthouse.  While there I had to admonish Francis to follow the sign that read “no crabbing!”  🙂

Before going down to Maryland, we spent July 4th at the Smithsonian’s Folk Festival and Washington’s Independence Day parade.  Along with tens or perhaps hundred’s of thousands of others, we braved the warm, humid, and sometimes rainy weather to take in as many of the events as we could manage.  The evening was spent sitting on the steps of the capitol for the hour-long “A Capitol Fourth” concert (http://www.pbs.org/capitolfourth/ ) broadcast by PBS listening to Huey Lewis and the News, Taylor Hicks, and Jerry Lee Lewis followed by some pretty big fireworks. Although some of the Smithsonian buildings were closed, we did get to visit the new National Museum of the American Indian, the Air and Space Museum, Union Station, and the National World War II memorial (http://www.wwiimemorial.com/ ). 

And now for the part about the mouse!  As we waited a few hours in the Ronald Reagan National Airport for our rain-delayed flight, we were startled when Kalie alerted us to the fact that a mouse was just standing on the floor right in front of us near our carry-on luggage.  It wasn’t moving or causing any problems, but it still was a bit unnerving just having it stand there looking at us.  I went up to the airline desk to let them know that a mouse was standing guard in their waiting area, but the man in charge just sort of shuddered and said he couldn’t do anything about it because he had a fear of mice!  So I went over to where Francis was standing visiting with an old college acquaintance and told him about the mouse and then went looking for an airport maintainance worker to see if they’d have a solution to the mouse problem.  And that’s when my fearless husband decided to take matters into his own hands (umm, I mean feet, I guess).  He considered picking it up by the tail to dispose of it, but the prospect of many people screaming in an airport if he did that caused him to go to Plan B. He just walked over to the mouse, stepped on it and kicked it into the corner in one smooth move… but much to both the dismay and delight of interested onlookers!    He was proclaimed a hero by the airline desk attendant who was afraid of mice and the offensive mouse was still belly-up in the corner as we finally boarded the plane.

“Ya mon, no problem.”  …Everyone in Jamaica we talked to!

We recently returned from a quick four days in Jamaica.  The reason for going was to celebrate the wedding of friends Mitch and Susan.  While there we enjoyed the beautiful beach at Negril, ate many new things, and met some very nice people.  Over fifty friends and relatives of the couple traveled to Jamaica for the wedding (which was also witnessed by one very curious Italian tourist!).  We found the people of Jamaica to be very warm and friendly, even though the poverty evident as we traveled to Negril was in stark contrast to the conditions at the Rui Tropical Bay where we stayed.  We came back with a rather large wooden parrot which was the result of some good salesmanship and some intense bargaining with a Jamaican vendor.  We found that the airline will check practically anything as luggage and “bird” showed up at the airport baggage claim in Omaha with “no problem”.  We now have a huge souvenir and some great memories of our trip!

It was a beautiful fall week-end to venture out to visit the kids in Rapid City. We also took a Saturday morning drive over to Devil’s Tower just north of Sundance, WY. The fall leaves were in full color and we had a great time!

In the midst of wedding preparations, we slipped away during Bike Week for a couple of days at Sturgis. Francis protested that we really didn’t have the time to go, but I really wanted to and he finally agreed that we just needed to take the time for us. We had a great time – Thursday evening at Full Throttle listening to Jackyl and Friday night at the Buffalo Chip listening to Blue October and Chris Daughtry. A trike show was featured at Thunder Road. The music was good, the bikes were fun, and the people were awesome as we made some new friends and connected with some old ones during our stay at Sturgis.

We laughed the hardest though over the continuing challenge of camping and dealing with an air mattress. To give you a bit of background regarding our camping experiences at Sturgis…two years ago we borrowed an electric pump and adapter to plug it into our pick-up only to find it didn’t seem to work. Francis spent about 20 minutes blowing the air mattress up the old fashioned way and had to rest for another 20 minutes after becoming lightheaded!!! Last year, we thought we were smart when we stopped in Rapid City to pick up a bicycle pump to alleviate our air mattress blowing up dilemma…only to find that someone had neglected to put the plug back into the air mattress after they had used it last. So we took the plug off the end of our ice cooler and wrapped masking tape around it in an effort to wedge it into the hole in the air mattress as a make-shift plug. Well, it worked pretty well except that a few hours into the night we steadily kept losing air until we were laying flat on the ground by morning! So this year, we thought we finally had figured this air mattress problem out. Francis got me a 4-minute bed-in-a-box for Christmas with the intention of taking it along to Sturgis this summer. It had a pump with it and built-in plugs that fit – our mattress problems were over… or so we thought! We first put up our small four man tent and then starting blowing up the new air mattress outside the tent. To our surprise the air mattress quickly blew up into a tall, queen-size inflated bed! Now our problem was getting this monstrous air mattress into our small tent. I tugged from the inside and Francis pushed from the outside as a neighboring camper wandered over laughing hysterically as he snapped pictures of our futile attempted to get the giant mattress into the tent. So Francis decided to let some air out until it was spongey enough to push it into the tent. So when it was time to retire for the night, I crawled into the tent (which was entirely consumed by the air mattress inside) and immediately rolled off the squishy, partly deflated mattress and got wedged between the mattress and the tent wall! Francis answered my yell for help and dived into the tent to rescue me which only caused me to become more tightly lodged between the mattress and the tent wall. He couldn’t even see me!!! He finally got me pulled out and the rest of the night was spent trying to sleep on the squishy mattress without getting rolled off again. Next year we need to try again to finally get this air mattress thing right – I mean, how hard can it be? Any suggestions?

The family just returned from 11 days in Scotland. I think we may have found the most beautiful place on earth…but then, I just thought that until I saw the next most beautiful place…so now I’m not sure. Anyway, we did enjoy the sights of Scotland. We spent a week at Delgatie, an ancient castle associated with the Hay clan near the small town of Turriff in Aberdeenshire, northeast Scotland. We ventured away from the castle each day testing our driving skills and seeing such sights as Loch Ness, Scotland’s coast along the North Sea, the Scottish Highlands and Balmoral (the Queen’s vacation home), The Glenlivet whisky distillery, and the cities of Aberdeen and Inverness. The kids were pretty pumped that we got to see the new Simpsons movie on opening day in Aberdeen (six hours before their friends back home even!). After our week’s stay, we took in the Highland Games at Dufftown before staying one night at Fort Augustus just south of Loch Ness. We drove over to the beautiful Isle of Skye on the western coast of Scotland before heading southeast to Edinburgh. There we spent a day shopping and catching a glimpse of the imposing Edinburgh castle, the Royal Mile, and the nearby monument at Stirling in honor of Scottish hero William Wallace, as portrayed in Braveheart. A few things we learned included how many twists and turns there are on the roads in Scotland and exactly how efficient round-abouts are. We also found out that most restaurants and public toilets close at 5 pm in small Scottish towns. I loved the beautiful wild flowers, expecially the purple thistles which are a national symbol of Scotland. The people were especially friendly and we had a great time. What a trip!

Last week I headed off for Tucson, AZ for a four-day Family Economics Financial Education (http://www.fefe.arizona.edu/index.php) conference. I arrived on Sunday and spent the afternoon in a rental car seeing some of the sights of the city and Mount Lemon, which is just north and east of Tucson. Once the conference actually started on Monday, there really was not much time for sightseeing, although we did slip off to the mall and drove past the University campus. We stayed at the Westward Look Resort (http://www.westwardlook.com) which was a wonderful, historic place that housed all of our meetings and offered many things to do in our free time. The speakers and the program were outstanding and I learned many new things that I hope to incorporate into my classes this fall. It was the wee hours of Friday morning when I arrived back home – glad that I had gone, but equally as happy to be home!

Yesterday I returned from a 5-day adventure to Atlanta where I attended a teacher’s meeting. The speakers were great and the people were among the friendliest of any city I’ve visited. I’ve attached some photos to this post to help tell the story of the sights I saw while in Georgia. We took a tour of CNN, visited the Carter Presidential Library, stopped by the Coke Museum, watched the Christmas Parade, and cheered on the Huskers via television in the company of the Atlanta UNL Alumni Association. The main speaker at our meeting was Chris Gardner, a man who was homeless on the streets of San Francisco for a year with his young son before making his fortune in the stock market. A movie of his life’s story is coming out in theaters soon starring Will Smith. We sampled some great southern food while we were there and enjoyed seeing all the football fans from Arkansas and Florida who were in town for the SEC football championship game. To top it all off, I was excited to visit the new aquarium with my nephew and his family who live near Atlanta. All in all, Atlanta was awesome!