Christmas Day - Memphis

Paul Here: We finally said good bye to cousins and pulled out of Atlanta on Monday, December 19, and headed south with the goal of getting through crazy Atlanta rush hour traffic before the end of the day (we tend to get going slowly in the morning and kept finding things to do--like buying plane tickets to Mexico). Suburban Atlanta traffic is huge.

Once we got south of Atlanta it started to feel like a whole different region. We stopped to buy speakers at some auto parts stores in Jackson, GA. Since we finally had a car stereo installed, it was time to replace the junked out speakers. No speakers would really be big enough out back to get through the ear plugs that Ruth and whichever lucky kid are wearing when they're riding back there.

We spent the night at Indian Springs State Park which was nearly deserted. Larry the campground volunteer welcomed us at his site, and shared that his monster rig got 10 miles to the gallon, and all of a sudden the extra 2 to 4 miles per gallon we were getting in our sardine can didn't seem very attractive or necessary. It was still too cold to hook up the water, but the park had a decent shower and bathroom.

Miles was tempted by the sulpher spring water that locals travel far and wide to collect. He swore it tasted OK even though it reeked of rotten eggs.

Tuesday, we were finally on our way to ....... Plant Sherer, the largest coal fired power plant in the United States! (It was my idea.) On our way, after another late rollout, we needed lunch and I happened to see a sign for the Whistle Stop Cafe. Yup! Right out of "Fried Green Tomatoes" in Juliette, Georgia. Naturally, we had to order fried green tomatoes and enjoyed a meal there and watched the empty, 2-mile long coal trains heading north back to Gillette, Wyoming.


We finally made it to the power plant and were provided with a very generous tour. We were dwarfed by the two 1,000 foot smoke stacks and the 4 enormous cooling towers. We ended up on the roof, inside the plant on many levels, and even got to see in one of the burners in action. The numbers are staggering, but basically, it takes a messload of coal, to be transferred a really long distance, to make a bunch of electricity for a lot of people. Better stats can be found at: http://www.southerncompany.com/gapower/about/pdf/Plant%20Sherer%20Brochure.pdf

There's also a decent kids interactive "how electricity works" site at: http://www.southerncompany.com/learningpower/home.asp?mnuOpco=soco&mnuType=lp&mnuItem=oc


Don't worry, the control room is a full scale simulation for training purposes. They don't let casual passersby in the real control room.

We spent Tuesday night on the west side of the state at FDR State Park. There were more RV's there and a few of them had Christmas lights, outdoor decorations, campfires, and loud Christmas carols on the boom box.

Wednesday "morning" on to Tuskegee, Alabama with a stop at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. http://www.nps.gov/tuai/ The site is still in its early stages with the visitors center set up in portable buildings, but it tells an impressive story and drives home how amazing the folks were who fought hard to get into the military only to be treated brutally once they got home despite their status as war heroes.

We ate lunch at a Taco Bell/KFC combo joint and got our first dose of southern fast food mentality (somehow our regular visits to Subway prior to this had been different). The lunch break had an impact on Miles, who didn't want to hang out too long.

On to the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site http://www.nps.gov/tuin/ to learn about Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. To put it mildly, those two guys were amazing!

Miles and Jill are standing in front of an Iron Lung used for polio treatment. Polio victims came to Tuskegee Institute for peanut oil massages among other treatments.



Time to head west. For the record: The Good Sam Club endorsed campground at the truck stop at Shorter, Alabama was misrepresented. Here's the deal. Miles had been aching for me to turn the water on in the camper since Day 1 of the trip, and I had been pushing back because of the overnight freezing temperatures that would burst pipes. (I already replaced a burst water heater tank that made it passed my pre-purchase inspection.) Shorter seemed like the place to try the water, but just in case, the truck stop/campground staff told us that the campground bath house was working fine. Nope, their water was turned off and the toilet was plugged up. But not to worry, we'd have our own water in our rig that night. Except that...after hooking up the sewer line, draining lots of anti-freeze out of the system, and pressuring up the system with water did I discover that our toilet was spraying water all over the inside of our bathroom--and me! You see, it didn't really blow out until the pressure was good and strong and assured that I would get soaked. After a second attempt, with water dripping from our gills, we got a refund from the campground and sought out a hotel in Montgomery.

I used a computer at Kinko's that night and got to weigh the pros and cons of not traveling with a laptop. Pros: nothing to lose or have stolen; no purchase price (maybe I should have invested the savings in an RV toilet); and forced quality time among the 4 of us instead of any of us "disappearing" into computer land. Cons: less writing, journaling, blogging etc. than possible; little time for multiple voices; and a little bit of stress getting caught up on computer needs like banking and blogging (I'm typing like a fiend right now in a hotel business center while Ruth and the kids are asleep).

Lo and behold, in our hotel room in suburban Montgomery, our cell phone rang at 6 a.m. and it was my buddy, Siafa, in Monrovia, Liberia. (How was he to know we were now in a different time zone?) It was the second time on the trip that he had called in, and it's always a bit of a surprise. More Liberian connections coming.

The hotel also provided us with our first view of the innovative hotel lobby waffle maker. I wish I had thought of it!

Downtown Montgomery was superb and we would love to return someday. So much history happened there. In the process of getting lost walking around, we ended up in the Alabama State Archives building asking for directions. The volunteer was so happy to see anyone that he gave us all kinds of information and encouraged us to look around the building. Well, for one thing, the building is made out of Alabama marble. I didn't know they had marble in Alabama. For another thing, I smelled Pork Barrel politics since the huge Archives building didn't get built in the early 1900's until a US Senator from Alabama secured the federal funding. Otherwise, they had a great kids area, and a moving display about Bloody Sunday, the first attempted Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

Next we were at Jefferson Davis's first White House of the Confederacy. Ol' Jefferson Davis was quite the man and had been quite the public servant to the US before becoming president of the confederacy.

Next we were in the state capitol, and my casually remark to the first person we met there was: "I don't expect everyone who works here to be a historian, but I've got a question." Turns out the guy I was talking to had a Doctorate in History and was ready to share all kinds of stuff. He'd been a young black man who marched in Bloody Sunday and the following Selma to Montgomery march and later traveled the world as an Air Force pilot. The capitol was impressive, with a wild double spiral staircase and a traveling Smithsonian exhibit on Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but we were running out of time.

The star at the capitol is where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president and where Martin Luther King stood to address the thousands of people who gathered at the end of the successful Selma to Montgomery march.




Time to hit the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center. http://www.splcenter.org/center/crmc/civil.jsp It's a very impressive building designed by Maya Lin. It was also the only site we had visited with intense security measures because of the fairly recent threats it had received. As the historian at the capitol said, "Most Americans got their first dose of terrorism on 9-11. Black southerners grew up with terrorism." (He also compared George W. to George Wallace, Hoo-yah!)



Finally had to head out of Montgomery north to Oak Mountain State Park south of Birmingham and got our first dose of Hurricane Katrina. The campground was 92% booked by FEMA-sponsored evacuees in travel trailers. How can you tell a FEMA trailer? It's got a huge propane tank out front, it's got a permanent PVC sewer line hooked up with expanding foam sprayed around the hole in the ground, it's sitting on cinder blocks, and the folks who live in them aren't walking to the community bath house in the cold morning, because unlike some chumps from Vermont, their toilets work!

A semi-permanent camper/trailer park also presented a very different view of a State Park, complete with a police car, fire truck, and ambulance roaring up to the camper next to ours in the morning. I could see the person was still alive on the stretcher as I walked back from the bath house.


In Birmingham we decided to ease up on the violence and protest of the civil rights struggle that had been pounded into our kids' heads and visited Rickwood Field instead. http://www.ballparkreviews.com/birm/rickwood.htm This minor league ballpark was used by both white and colored baseball teams and had some unusual ways of accommodating the different races. For instance, when the colored teams played, the whites sat in the right field bleachers, and when the white teams played the blacks sat in the right field bleachers.




In the afternoon, Ruth and the kids hit the McWane Center in downtown Birmingham http://www.mcwane.org/ a hands-on science center for kids. I got an oil change and ran errands.




Birmingham to Tupelo late Thursday afternoon was an uninteresting schlog. Route 78 is the future Interstate 22 and once again, political influence was evident. The road had multiple lanes, beautiful overpasses, exits, etc, despite passing through endless nothingness.

It was a big night at Tombigbee State Park outside Tupelo! I got the water turned on in our rig (sans toilet) and we washed dishes in our kitchen sink. (Sorry, no photos.) Just as well, since the skies opened up Saturday morning and revealed the leaks in our clothes storage cupboards. Info for a parlor trick: Tombigbee, pronounced tomBICKbee is Chickasaw for coffin makers.

In addition to our clothes the pouring rain dampened our enthusiasm for getting out in Tupelo at the birthplace of Elvis Aaron Presley and its accompanying chapel and museum (I worry who folks pray to at the chapel) but we did manage a drive-by.

Christmas Eve and Day in suburban Memphis at a Drury Inn. Hurray for Drury Inn with its outstanding afternoon Happy Hour, morning breakfast with prerequisite in-lobby waffle maker, heated pool and hot tub and free computer in the business center. And most importantly, situated at a location that even Santa Claus could find.

Christmas eve was spent briefly catching up with my old Liberian Peace Corps Supervisor, Coker George who lives nearby, and having a southern culture on the skids experience at the Waffle House next door. Poor Miles, he lost his appetite when the waitress begged him not to move his napkin because she didn't dare set the silverware directly on the table, and the guy 2 feet way from us with tattoos on his face and rolling and smoking his own cigarettes didn't help much either, despite the fact that just the day before had been his birf-day. It was also noteworthy to see how busy Waffle House was at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve. It was standing room only.

Today, Christmas Day, started with gifts under a "tree" that miraculously appeared in our hotel room over night, swimming in the pool, a load of laundry, and me reconciling our checkbook for the first time since leaving home.



We then joined Coker and his large family for a Christmas dinner in the afternoon. Great folks who made these weary travelers feel quite welcome.



Off to Little Rock and points west tomorrow morning (whatever that means).

(And another downside of batch processing at public computers: I don't spend a lot of time proofreading.)

Cheers!

December 18, 2005 Marietta, GA (suburban Atlanta)

Paul Here: Our computer access has been a little less than we expected and our time for writing and posting hasn’t been quite what we had thought as well. We’re wrapping up a few nights in Marietta with my brother and will shoot this off with his high speed access. (I also have photos to post but it appears the computer I'm using doesn't have the necessary "umph" to get them up to the blog. Hopefully I'll get them up within a few days.)

From Leverett, Mass we headed south and spent a night in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey (NW part of the state) with a cousin and among other things got to see what an amazing party palace a young man can make when given a barn, surplus building materials, and numerous neon beer signs from a remodeled tavern. It was impressive.

We then traveled to central NJ and visited relatives in Princeton Junction and stayed with relatives in Kendall Park. I even got to see a picture of my great, great grandmother (I’d be hard pressed to come up with her name.)

Miles and I got to talk trains and electricity with my 3rd cousin at the dinner table. He works in computer security, or maybe computer supported security systems, and spends a lot of time in subway tunnels in NYC. I know we heard plenty of stuff about electricity, but all I really remember is the hand signal for telling a train to stop rather than telling it to keep on going as if the tracks were clear..


From central NJ we took the incredibly inefficient, but scenic route down to Cape May, NJ and then took the ferry across to Delaware. Big seas on the Delaware Bay and, although we didn’t need them, all the sea sick bags on board got used

We rolled into Cherry Hill Campground in College Park Maryland http://www.cherryhillpark.com/ without event and officially started using our camper. As soon as the kitchen table was set up Miles and Jill spontaneously started doing school work. Ruth and I looked at each other in disbelief and bewilderment.

It was there, in our first “setting up for the night in the camper” that we pulled the ReCycle North down comforter out of the garbage bag for the first time. Ruth had assumed I had at least looked at the comforter once before, but I guess I had put a lot of faith in the nice woman who donated it in a garbage bag. I had always been prepared for a blood stain or two since that was what the donor had told me. Instead, the comforter was blood free but had a big slash in it that instantly spewed feathers throughout our camper. A little “duck” tape kept the rest of the feathers in and only a few loose feathers went up in smoke in our electric heater. This less-than-pristine comforter got mangled further the next day when the 3-day old apple cider fermented and let loose out of Miles’s sport water bottle. It left a big apple cider puddle on the comforter which looked an awful lot like urine to anybody passing by the picnic table that I tried to use as a drying rack.

We had a great first evening in DC with cousins before turning in for our very first night ever as a family in the camper at the campground.

The next day, when most people would be sightseeing in DC, we stuck around the campground and took care of long overdue camper chores including buying shelving at Home Depot and stocking up on provisions. At the Home Depot parking lot, a guy with a 4-door full sized Ford pickup with a diesel engine came over to talk “rigs” with me. He had the truck we dreamt of getting if we had wanted to blow a wad of money, and we had the tiny rig that he dreams of getting for a weekend trips to the beach.

And of course, the 6 degrees of separation rule kicked in at the campground on our chores day when I noticed the trailer next to us had Wheatland, Wyoming license plates on it. (Wheatland is about an hour from where I grew up in Cheyenne.) A nice family with 5 kids was in the camper and they readily invited Miles to play on the playground (Jill was back at the kitchen table doing homework).
The Keck family from Wheatland turned out to be great neighbors and invited us to join them on a tour of the Capitol the next day with a house intern from Wheatland. We also got a little time in at the Botanical Garden and the American Indian Museum before doing a covered dish dinner at the campground. We made the BBQ chicken and mac and cheese and they made the potatoes and veggies, and of course, we had too much food.


The campground had a very nice “conference center” with big screen TV, hot tub, laundry, and of most value to us, toilets and showers since it was (and still is a week later in Atlanta) too cold for us to turn our water on. The conference center got used a lot by people who didn’t just need a flush toilet. One night the square dancers met there in full regalia, another night it was jazzercise, and another night it was a holiday party for the campground staff resulting in leftover corn on the cob and burgers being added to our covered dish effort.

We put on too many miles in a day to get from D.C. to Winston-Salem, North Carolina where we met Ruth’s 5th cousin Bob and his wife Brenda. We had 2 great nights there and saw where Ruth’s father went to medical school at Wake Forest University and where his name is prominently displayed on a wall as a distinguished alumni lecturer from the 1970’s. Brenda and I had made similar journeys in Liberia, Guinea Bissau and other west African countries although they were about a decade apart.

We also spent an afternoon at Reynolda House, the Reynolds family (think tobacco) mansion in Winston-Salem. By now, the huge estate is owned by Wake Forest University and it’s not all that different than Shelburne Farms in Vermont. It was originally built in the early 1900’s as a self-sufficient working farm with amazing grounds and buildings. In the sprawling mansion, I was curious to see how the organ pipes in one part of the room were connected to the organ in another part of the room. As I got peered under the organ on my hands and knees, another visitor looked at my rear end sticking up in the air and said, “That’s an interesting view.”

From Winston-Salem, NC we headed SW toward Gaffney, SC. We finally got our tire pressure figured out and I got to use Spanish with the mechanic at the truck stop. (I had been warned that “pencil type” pressure gauges are garbage and it turns out mine was 15 pounds lower than the truck mechanic’s.) With our new, higher pressure, our gas mileage is back up around 12 to 14 mpg. Woohoo!

On to Gaffney, South Carolina with a stop at Kings Mountain Battlefield (http://www.nps.gov/kimo/) on the border of NC and SC. A couple of key things we learned at this Revolutionary War battlefield: The British commander, Ferguson, had had a chance to kill George Washington at an earlier battle elsewhere but chose not to because Washington’s back was turned, and that despite Ferguson’s earlier ingenious invention of a breach loading, quick loading rifle, he blew it at Kings Mountain because he had traditional muskets. So when he secured the top of the mountain, and all of the Patriots attacked, the Brits had to aim downhill and their musket balls rolled out of the barrels of their guns.

In Gaffney we stayed with our superb friends Jima and Steve (Steve test drove our camper in Clover, South Carolina this summer and spent over 2 days in his shop getting it ready for the Big Trip). Jima turned us onto good home cooking and cookie and muffin baking with the kids, and Steve and the kids had fun putting up Christmas decorations including an amazing collection of Santa Clauses made from Mississippi clay. Steve also turned us on to the haute culture of “My Name Is Earl” on television that we all enjoyed despite some of it going over the kids’ heads.

Another “new” cultural experiences is seeing the rash of trashy billboards on the side of the road. Gee whiz, from our sheltered existence in billboard free Vermont, we had no idea of the quantity or disgusting content of billboards targeting lonely truck drivers on the interstate.

We also saw the Cowpens Battlefield (http://www.nps.gov/cowp/ ) in Gaffney on a gorgeous, crisp day. It’s a Revolutionary War battlefield where the Brits got trounced, but much of the interpretive material was taken down getting ready for the battlefield’s 250th anniversary on January 17, 2006.

We learned that there wasn’t much Civil War history around Gaffney because the resident’s back then were too poor to have much to fight over. The rich slave owners lived out near the coast. In fact, most of the richest people in the US at the time of the Civil War were rice plantation owners in coastal South Carolina.

Cashing in on Steve’s excellent connections among auto mechanics in Gaffney, I got a bunch of tailpipe replaced at Nick’s Muffler. I only wish I had brought the kids to experience the muffler shop. They had to turn on the propane fired “salamander” to heat up the outdoor hydraulic lift before they could get the camper up in the air, and it was one of the few shops where the kids could have stood nearby while pipes were being cut and bent. It was the kind of place that had a couple of Bibles and 4 Wheeler magazines next to the big woodstove in the middle of the garage. Nice folks who treated me well and accepted my check based on my connection to Steve.

It was an easy drive down to the Atlanta area and into Marietta. Funny thing about traveling, Ruth’s brother Jim from Colorado is in Marietta this week as well and he joined all of us for dinner for two nights. We were also joined by my nephew Ben, from Casper, Wyoming, who I hadn’t seen in 8 years. (He’s an Audi technician in Marietta.)

As in Gaffney, Miles and Jill have helped put up Christmas decorations here and I believe are baking cookies with Aunt Marcy as I type. They’re probably getting a lot more holiday decorating experience on the road than they would have at home. We’ll have to see what we can come up with to decorate our little camper.

Jill and Miles got to go sightseeing without us yesterday when Marcy and cousin Grant took them out for BBQ and to see the Big Chicken that marks a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint. The Big Chicken was even highlighted at the Georgia Visitor Information Center when we crossed over from South Carolina. Lucky kids, I still haven’t seen it.

The biggest surprise around here was to see Marcy’s amazing bead making shop off the kitchen. With propane and oxygen lines coming in through the window, and boatloads of glass rods, the place is decked out. Jill was in la-la land sorting through all the rejects and brother Jim went back to Colorado with a custom necklace and earring set for a lady there.



After a sluggish start Friday morning (becoming a bit of the norm for us) we decided it was too late to battle traffic into downtown Atlanta for the MLK sights and we instead hit two sites out here in the burbs. We hit the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History http://www.southernmuseum.org/ in Kennesaw and the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield http://www.nps.gov/kemo/index.htm

We spent most of Saturday at the Martin Luther King sites in downtown Atlanta. Very powerful stuff. As part of the impact, we were reminded how much Black Americans gained during Reconstruction including sending numerous Congressmen and 2 Senators to DC, only to lose so much to Jim Crow laws of the 20th century. http://www.nps.gov/malu/

Today, Sunday was a great day spent with Ben Lamberson and others. Ben, a superb auto mechanic, successfully installed our radio/cd player in the dashboard and fixed Grant’s “pocket rocket” that stands about 15 inches tall. We took turns ripping around the subdivision on it before heading out to dinner. Dinner at the Marietta Diner included a whopping portion of broiled scallops that overwhelmed poor Miles and dessert included a trip across the street to Krispy Kreme for “fresh off the belt” donuts.


We head out early Monday morning for a tour of the power plant at Lake Juliette (my idea. I’ll explain later.) And then a turn toward the west to points unknown.

12/4/05

Still in Leverett. We went to the Winsor dam today. One of our favorite story books is "Letting Swift River Go" (I don't know how to underline with this Mac or this blog software) by Jane Yolen. It's a great tale about the flooding of 4 towns when the Winsor dam was built.

It's still snowing around here and we can't wait to head south!

Paul

December 3, 2005 Leverett, Mass

Hello. Right now I, (Miles) am sitting in Leveret, Mass. Our first day on the road was a bumpy, noisy trip. When we finally crossed into Massachusetts it was three or four o’clock, and I was losing it. At one point there was a hairpin turn and since reading “Walk Two Moons” I felt as if I was going to go tumbling of the road and die. Though I didn’t. When I finally got to my mom’s childhood friend’s house I ate dinner, watched a movie with my mom’s friend’s, friend’s child and went straight to bed. Now it is a sunny day and I am about to go to the library next door, and then for a hike to a Peace Pagoda on the top of a hill.

It’s Jill. I’m in Leveret, Massachusetts. Today I went on a hike with Miles and my friend Henry to a Peace Pagoda. We went on a rocky bridge. Some of the rocks we couldn’t go on then we went to this book sale thing and had some hot chocolate. Then we went to the Emily Dickinson museum. Then we went back to Henry’s house again.

Paul here:

We left Hinesburg on Friday 12/2/05 at 2:20 p.m. – a day later than planned, but not bad considering the task at hand. We finally just threw loads of stuff in “the rig” and got going. (Our formerly empty camper quickly resembled our typically cluttered house, and our house looked the best it has in 10 years!) Saying goodbye to the dog was emotional, and the cat was off doing his own thing.

The trip south was uneventful and we were grateful to learn that Ruth and Jill could handle riding in the back of the RV without getting carsick. The configuration of the camper means that the passengers in the back are in the VERY back, behind the rear wheels. They are also very far away from the heat that only comes out of the dashboard.

We ate gas station food in Rutland, and the fact that Miles was then able to ride in the very back of the camper after eating Stewart’s Shoppe’s chili was another encouraging sign.

We hit snow and slush on the Route 7 summit north of Bennington and went through some thick stuff again on the Route 2 summit between North Adams and I-91. All of this muck quickly coated the rear windows making it impossible for Ruth and Miles to see out. At some point, Miles chimed in, “Now I know why they put TV’s in these things.” (We don’t have one in ours.)

We’ve also learned that it’s pretty hard to hear each other from the front to the back of the camper while tooling down the road. It makes for some funny conversations but also provides some excellent 1 on 1 time for 1 parent and 1 kid.

We found our way to our friend Erika’s house in Leverett, MA by dinnertime. As usual, Erika has found a beautiful place to live. An old farmhouse in a great setting with the claim to fame that Van Halen’s drummer used to live in it. I quickly demonstrated my knack for useless information by reminding folks that “the drummer from Def Leppard only has one arm” (this was a college radio song at one point).

We’re spending time with Erika, Erika’s boyfriend Mark, and his sweet 8-year old son, Henry. Miles, Jill and Henry are having a good time, and the grown ups are getting caught up too.

We hiked to a nearby Buddhist Peace Pagoda today and were amazed by its size and location (Massachusetts?!) We also went to Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst.

Ruth got the camper cleaned up inside, and I spent a fair amount of time today trying to locate a key water heater part between here and D.C. and figuring out where we’re going next. It’s still too cold to turn on the water in the camper.

We’ve received reports from home that the dog and cat are doing just fine.

There’s a great support team making this journey possible and we thank each and every one of them!