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by Matthew | Jun 14, 2015 | Family | 0 comments

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Here’s a photo I should have posted a month ago,

Here’s a photo I should have posted a month ago, the mural as it stood on March 1.

I’ve been dragging my feet for a number of reasons. Long and tiring days. The (self-imposed) pressure to say something meaningful and conclusive). The math involved to see how many miles we’d travled in February.

But mostly because March 1 marked six months since we left home. Which meant our adventure was more than halfway done. Which was not something I wanted to admit.

This trip has been the greatest six months of my life, and it’s hard to imagine anything that happens hereafter measuring up.

I’m already nostalgic for September when we were just getting started. I’m already nostalgic for yesterday.

This photo is badly outdated, but I’m putting it here for the sake of posterity. I don’t have the energy to process our travels on a day-by-day basis, so these posts will be the record I’ll return to as I try to make sense of all this once we’re sitting still again.

Breadcrumbs in the woods, leading me backward to the place and the moment we started.

#busloadofbooks

Good night from Milford State Park in Milford, Kan

Good night from Milford State Park in Milford, Kansas, where we were not planning to sleep tonight.

We started the day in Oklahoma and loafed a while before driving north to Tanganyika, an interactive wildlife park in Goddard, Kansas. We fed romaine to giraffes, tortoises, and guinea pigs, little tubs of milky fluid to lorikeets, and craisins to lemurs. We pet kangaroos (who were surprisingly chill). Kato fell in love with the lorikeets and Augie with the guinea pigs. I’m guessing there will be another power point presentation in my future.

Afterward, we drove to Wichita and found a grocery store. The kids stayed in the bus to do their homework, and Robbi and I spent a few minutes strolling the aisles, totally alone except for the other hundred or so people in the store. It was the closest thing we’ve had to a date in a while. We were hungry and probably bought more food than we needed, including an inadvisable box of Peeps-flavored cereal.

Then we drove two hours to our next campsite, a lovely spot on the banks of a lake, where we parked and set up camp only to discover the bathrooms were locked for the “off season.” The “off season” ends in two days, but Robbi couldn’t wait that long. She scowled profoundly by the lakeside as I packed up the bus for departure. She consulted the Google and found a new park an hour down the road.

On this drive, I made a terrible error, opening my driver window at the wrong moment and creating a draft that blew my favorite lei from Hawaii out the window. I despaired, but Robbi did not. We turned around, found my lei, and rejoiced as the sun set.

Then we drove another hour to a new park where we poked around in the dark for a bathroom that worked. The first set of bathrooms we found was also locked, but we persisted and finally found a set with doors that actually opened. More rejoicing transpired.

Now we are parked and Dumbles is getting his frisk on. Robbi is making a salad, and soon we will all pile onto the mattress on the back and watch TV.

It’s good to be back in Kansas, where I lived from sixth grade through the end of high school. Stay tuned for blasts from my past.

#busloadofbooks

The Daily Minute: 3.29.23 In which we get up close

The Daily Minute: 3.29.23
In which we get up close and personal with a pack of peckish lorikeets.

#busloadofbooks

Good night from Coon Creek Cove in Newkirk, Oklaho

Good night from Coon Creek Cove in Newkirk, Oklahoma. Some days we wake up with a clear sense of what’s going to happen and other days we’re utterly surprised as weather shifts or opportunities present themselves.

Today was some of both. We spent much of the day at Olive Elementary, hosted by librarian Barbara Smythe. It’s a day we’ve been anticipating for 18 months, and it was just as fun as we’d hoped. We’ll tell you all about it soon.

What surprised us was what Barbara said as we were leaving. In addition to being a librarian, STEM teacher, and mother of four, she’s a volunteer firefighter and wondered if we might want to tour the fire station on our way out of town.

We nodded enthusiastically and Barbara called the chief to set up a tour. As it turns out, the chief was her husband Tim, who has recently taken over for his dad who had been chief for forty years prior.

Tim couldn’t have been more gracious or warm. He spent almost two hours showing us the various trucks, opening every compartment, demonstrating where the various hoses, ladders, tanks, and tools are stored and how they’re used. He let us sit in the cab, turned on the sirens, and gave us a demo of the heat sensors the firefighters use to find people or animals during a search and rescue.

All of the vehicles are customized to the specific needs of Tim’s community. In addition to two decommissioned military trucks Tim has converted into 2,500-gallon tankers, there’s a fleet of pickups set up to combat brush fires, which are the most common call for the Freedom Hill Station.

Tim showed us the office, the classroom where he runs trainings for firefighters from other towns, and the bank of lockers where the firefighters have their coats, pants, and boots carefully hung and folded for easy access at a moment’s notice.

I’d never known how much goes into setting up and running a fire station. It was incredible to hear someone so knowledgeable walk us through how everything works. Thank goodness there are people like Tim and Barbara willing to devote so much time and energy for the good of their communities. It was an honor to meet them both today.

#busloadofbooks

The Daily Minute: 3.28.23 In which Olive Elementar

The Daily Minute: 3.28.23
In which Olive Elementary’s librarian Barbara Smythe is also a volunteer firefighter (as is her husband Tim!).

#busloadofbooks

Hallo all. It's Isabel :) We’ve jaunted across m

Hallo all. It's Isabel :) We’ve jaunted across more than 40 states, believe it or not! Today, we saunter over to one at the heart of the Great Plains. Its official languages are English, Choctaw, and Cherokee. Its state instrument is the drum, its state mammal the bison.

Today, friends, we're in Oklahoma.

OK has an official state meal too: fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken-fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas… Sounds scrumptious!!

While people have lived in this area since the last ice age (!) much of its population arrived as a result of the Trail of Tears, when, during the early 1800s, Native American tribes across the eastern US were forced to relocate to what was then-called “Indian Territory," joining the tribes who lived there already.

Oklahoma became a state in 1907 — the 46th! Just a couple decades later, OK was severely affected by the Dust Bowl, when it didn’t rain enough for several seasons, and dust and wind gusted through. Times were hard, but the people of OK are resilient.

Today, the state flag is one of only two to include distinct Native American images. On it, a bison-skin shield overlaid with symbols of peace sits against the background of a blue sky.

It's not hard to understand why the bison was chosen to be OK's state animal. It's the biggest land animal native to North America, and it is impressive. They can grow almost 7 feet tall, weigh 2800 pounds, and jump 6 feet in the air.

You might also run into pronghorn antelopes, bumpy, balled-up armadillos, road runners, or wily coyotes on the road here.

If indoor exploration’s more your thing, visit the American Banjo museum in Oklahoma City. Oh! And also, of course, let us not forget, the American Pigeon Museum.

If you stop at the store on the way, you’ll probably use an OK invention — the shopping cart!

And finally, as you drive, you might pass one more OK invention: the yield sign! And when you pay and park? That's an OK gizmo, too. The first parking meter ever was installed in Oklahoma City in 1935. It was called the Park-O-Meter No. 1 and was installed, appropriately, on First Street🚌

Good night from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where our day beg

Good night from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where our day began by sitting on our friend Cathy’s couch as Augie delivered a thrilling and persuasive power point in which he argued the merits of allowing him to have a YouTube channel on which to feature his gaming exploits. Perhaps the most compelling slide featured an chameleon. Not because chameleons were germane to his argument but because “they are awesome.”

Later in the morning, we drove down to The Gathering Place, a 70-acre riverfront park that features trails, gardens, eateries, a water park, and a series of incredible playgrounds. Beautiful and imaginative, the play structures take the shapes of animals, castles, and boats. There are cranes, an elephant, a bear, and a banana. There’s a section of outdoor instruments and a maze of mirrors. The eventual plan is to expand it to 100 acres.

This evening, we went over to visit Cathy’s dad Bill, who also lives in Tulsa. He’s retired now but once owned a charter bus company. Over the course of his career, he owned 120 busses, but now his fleet is down to one, a 1981 bus that has since been converted into a mobile home. Bill gave us a tour of his rig and then took a peek at ours. He asked various questions about our engine that I did not know how to answer. I may drive a bus, but I’m not a bus guy. Bill is the real deal. It was an honor to meet him.

Tomorrow we’ll get up early and drive an hour west to Drumwright, where we’ll visit Olive Elementary School. It was so nice to spend a few days here with Cathy and her husband Neil.

I don’t see Neil often, but I love him very much. In part because he’s British and always introduces me to fantastic new food things, such as Branston Pickle, which is to be enjoyed with cheddar cheese. He is also funny and smart and wry and kind. Neil is a chemistry and technology teacher, an app developer, and a professional online rowing coach. If you’ve always wanted to give rowing a try but don’t know where to start, check out his site or his YouTube channel. I can’t think of a person I’d rather learn from.

https://www.coachbergenroth.com
https://youtube.com/@Neil_Bergenroth_Rowing_Coach

#busloadofbooks

The Daily Minute: 3.17.23 In which we share the pl

The Daily Minute: 3.17.23
In which we share the playful wonder of Tulsa’s Gathering Place.

#busloadofbooks

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Here’s a photo I should have posted a month ago,

Here’s a photo I should have posted a month ago, the mural as it stood on March 1.

I’ve been dragging my feet for a number of reasons. Long and tiring days. The (self-imposed) pressure to say something meaningful and conclusive). The math involved to see how many miles we’d travled in February.

But mostly because March 1 marked six months since we left home. Which meant our adventure was more than halfway done. Which was not something I wanted to admit.

This trip has been the greatest six months of my life, and it’s hard to imagine anything that happens hereafter measuring up.

I’m already nostalgic for September when we were just getting started. I’m already nostalgic for yesterday.

This photo is badly outdated, but I’m putting it here for the sake of posterity. I don’t have the energy to process our travels on a day-by-day basis, so these posts will be the record I’ll return to as I try to make sense of all this once we’re sitting still again.

Breadcrumbs in the woods, leading me backward to the place and the moment we started.

#busloadofbooks

Good night from Milford State Park in Milford, Kan

Good night from Milford State Park in Milford, Kansas, where we were not planning to sleep tonight.

We started the day in Oklahoma and loafed a while before driving north to Tanganyika, an interactive wildlife park in Goddard, Kansas. We fed romaine to giraffes, tortoises, and guinea pigs, little tubs of milky fluid to lorikeets, and craisins to lemurs. We pet kangaroos (who were surprisingly chill). Kato fell in love with the lorikeets and Augie with the guinea pigs. I’m guessing there will be another power point presentation in my future.

Afterward, we drove to Wichita and found a grocery store. The kids stayed in the bus to do their homework, and Robbi and I spent a few minutes strolling the aisles, totally alone except for the other hundred or so people in the store. It was the closest thing we’ve had to a date in a while. We were hungry and probably bought more food than we needed, including an inadvisable box of Peeps-flavored cereal.

Then we drove two hours to our next campsite, a lovely spot on the banks of a lake, where we parked and set up camp only to discover the bathrooms were locked for the “off season.” The “off season” ends in two days, but Robbi couldn’t wait that long. She scowled profoundly by the lakeside as I packed up the bus for departure. She consulted the Google and found a new park an hour down the road.

On this drive, I made a terrible error, opening my driver window at the wrong moment and creating a draft that blew my favorite lei from Hawaii out the window. I despaired, but Robbi did not. We turned around, found my lei, and rejoiced as the sun set.

Then we drove another hour to a new park where we poked around in the dark for a bathroom that worked. The first set of bathrooms we found was also locked, but we persisted and finally found a set with doors that actually opened. More rejoicing transpired.

Now we are parked and Dumbles is getting his frisk on. Robbi is making a salad, and soon we will all pile onto the mattress on the back and watch TV.

It’s good to be back in Kansas, where I lived from sixth grade through the end of high school. Stay tuned for blasts from my past.

#busloadofbooks

The Daily Minute: 3.29.23 In which we get up close

The Daily Minute: 3.29.23
In which we get up close and personal with a pack of peckish lorikeets.

#busloadofbooks

Good night from Coon Creek Cove in Newkirk, Oklaho

Good night from Coon Creek Cove in Newkirk, Oklahoma. Some days we wake up with a clear sense of what’s going to happen and other days we’re utterly surprised as weather shifts or opportunities present themselves.

Today was some of both. We spent much of the day at Olive Elementary, hosted by librarian Barbara Smythe. It’s a day we’ve been anticipating for 18 months, and it was just as fun as we’d hoped. We’ll tell you all about it soon.

What surprised us was what Barbara said as we were leaving. In addition to being a librarian, STEM teacher, and mother of four, she’s a volunteer firefighter and wondered if we might want to tour the fire station on our way out of town.

We nodded enthusiastically and Barbara called the chief to set up a tour. As it turns out, the chief was her husband Tim, who has recently taken over for his dad who had been chief for forty years prior.

Tim couldn’t have been more gracious or warm. He spent almost two hours showing us the various trucks, opening every compartment, demonstrating where the various hoses, ladders, tanks, and tools are stored and how they’re used. He let us sit in the cab, turned on the sirens, and gave us a demo of the heat sensors the firefighters use to find people or animals during a search and rescue.

All of the vehicles are customized to the specific needs of Tim’s community. In addition to two decommissioned military trucks Tim has converted into 2,500-gallon tankers, there’s a fleet of pickups set up to combat brush fires, which are the most common call for the Freedom Hill Station.

Tim showed us the office, the classroom where he runs trainings for firefighters from other towns, and the bank of lockers where the firefighters have their coats, pants, and boots carefully hung and folded for easy access at a moment’s notice.

I’d never known how much goes into setting up and running a fire station. It was incredible to hear someone so knowledgeable walk us through how everything works. Thank goodness there are people like Tim and Barbara willing to devote so much time and energy for the good of their communities. It was an honor to meet them both today.

#busloadofbooks