Happy Mother's Day

Mary had a little Lamb, two dogs, three turkeys, six cats, 12 chickens, 20 goats, one Huber, three kids and 5 grandchildren that love her very much.

You are our...

encyclopedia, Medical Reference, Psychologist, Best Friend, Financial Expert, College Admissions Expert, Hospital Admissions Expert, Language Expert, and MVGM or Most Valuable Grand Mother to name a few.

I probably wouldn't be on this year long journey if you hadn't instilled the wander lust bug in me by hauling us all over the country when we were kids. I can see that you are doing that with your grandchildren now. You made a lot of sacrifices so that we could have adventures. You still sacrifice so that everyone is happy. We all have learned to be more inquisitive and to be kind to all of earth's creatures including the human ones because of your example. Many a stray critter has benefited from your kindness, including the human ones.

I sure hope you realize how much you are needed and loved by all that have crossed your path.

You are truly one of the most special people that have been placed on this planet and only a handful are lucky enough to know that.

To all the great adventures we have had and all that are yet to come thanks to the most wonderful mother Mary a.k.a. Moomy. I will be sure to have a Meyers and Coke in your honor at 5:00 p.m. your time when I get off the river.

Love, Your biggest critter James

Amish Country

Either Kim's estrogen is infusing my body from spending every minute of every day with her or I really need to get back to some good ol' macho blue collar work. I am sitting here bawling at the Regis and Kathy Lee show after a good dose of crying to the Good Morning America show. It's the Mother's Day specials you see, a bunch of teary-eyed women including my own have got to me and I'm a little verklempt over here.
We spent the day yesterday doing too much...oh here I go again...Collin Raye is singing to a mother that lost her son and chose to donate his organs..I'm verklempt..here's the topic, the New Deal it was neither new nor a deal, discuss. My tear ducts are dry over here.
Anyhoo, we spent the day yesterday in Amish Country and it didn't disappoint. There were many buggies with big orange caution reflectors on the back. Kim decided to forgo breakfast in the R.V. for the hopes of coming across an Amish bakery by a reasonable hour. This didn't happen and let me tell you Miss Chipper got a little peeved. I had a full belly and I couldn't help but chuckle as we passed by small town after small town without Amish. Kim got pretty pissed at me and I could see that priority one was to feed the girl or the Amish were going to see something they aren't used to. We finally found a nice Deli and Bakery type place in Intercourse, PA. We failed to get a t-shirt or a picture by the city sign in Intercourse and I regret that. The pretzel factory there had a hat that asked the question "hard or soft?" Intercourse, PA, but it was too rednecky of a style of hat. We passed many tidy farms with Amish men guiding horse drawn implements. There were at least three incidents of Amish families playing baseball in the front yard. We stopped at an Amish bicycle store and sure enough they had the parts I needed for my bike, something that six other bike stores couldn't provide. I said "Wow! That's awesome! I have been to six other stores and you guys are the first! Thanks man!" The response, a very unhumored "We keep a lot of old parts around. Anything else?" The Amish are all about work and gettin' 'er done, but not necessarily about humour I guess.
Upon Bill's recommendation we stopped at Cornwall, a small township started in the mid 1700's by a man named Grubb for the purpose of running an iron furnace to make cast iron from iron ore. I learned that a collier is someone that makes charcoal from trees for use in the blast furnace. I did not know what a collier was. There again, I don't read enough. While watching the edumacational film there was an Amish family seated in front of us with about six children. Not a peep! Not a look away from the screen! The older kids kept the younger kids in line and mom kept the baby quiet with silent techniques and dad watched the film intently as if to memorize questions to ask the children later. Wow! It was awesome! After tourist attraction upon tourist attraction with nothing but brats running around us for the last year I have to celebrate the Amish. Hey, I don't care what goes on inside their four walls that makes these kids so obedient, all I know is I don't have to suffer the consequences of what doesn't go on inside their four walls. Very cool buildings and amazing amount of work and forsight that goes into someone saying "Hey, this place looks like it has a lot of iron in the soil. I think I will build a furnace and turn an acre a day of trees into charcoal to melt some metal out of tons of dirt." They got iron out of that streak of dirt until the mid 1970's.
We ended the day in Hershey. That's right, Hershey, PA where all the chocolate is made. We did the free stuff. We did get some souvenirs or as I call it "paying for the privilege to advertise for a large corporation." Donna, I hope that the little M.E. is a youth medium or I am going to cry into this high dollar t-shirt. We ended the day at a restaurant that kinda fooled us. It looked like a Denny's type place attached to a motel and I said "Let's stop there, I just want a salad." We walked in and there was a very dapper black man in a dark suit standing behind a mahogany reception podium. "Good evening sir and madam." I was looking for the green apron clad white trash girl saying "Howdy folks, smokin' or non." I felt a little under dressed in my shorts and "Life's Good" t-shirt. "Err.. uh.. yeah. Table for two please." We had an excellent meal and probably the best staff of the whole year, even if I did stand out against the mahogany, crystal, semi-circle high backed booth and jazz music atmosphere.
Off to Ohiopyle to soak in the Youghigeny River.

photos 1. Amish plumber hauling a shower stall 2. interesting lost and found of the old days-i don't condone slavery, but I thought some of the language was humorous. Let the old dude go, he has had a rough life. 3. old farm house 4.Cornwall furnace 5. Kim entering the chocolate world

Abe Lincoln is my new hero. He actually always has been my favorite president 'cause he was the Great Emancipator, but I really have rekindled my love for him by visiting Gettysburg. It amazes me that anyone could have thought the Gettysburg Address a bad speech, but there were many critics in the day. My history teacher at the UofA always used to say "the more things change the more they stay the same." That used to bother me as much as "you can't have your cake and eat it too", but now I know exactly what he is saying. Our government and politics haven't changed a bit. Different names, different issues, but the same 'ol crap. One thing I have noticed while in history school over here in the East is that the speeches of the 17th through the middle of the 20th centuries were so much more eloquent. Can you imagine the Gettysburg address by ol' George W.? "Well heck, about 87 years ago the fella's that sat down and started this country here on North 'merica thought that everybody ought to be free and the same. We are now in the midst of a huge war 'mongst ourselves which is testin' whether or not this thing is goin' to work..." watch C-Span if you need more. I can't believe it. What happened to us as a country that we would elect an illiterate. It is hard to find someone who will own up to electing him the second time isn't it? This isn't a political blog, so I won't take a chance on offending.

It is sobering to walk around the battlefield at Gettysburg and think of all of the lives that were sacrificed to prove to us as a nation that we can't let any issue divide us in order to prosper and remain strong. It seems like a huge unnecessary sacrifice of youth, but what war doesn't? Now look at Iraq. "The more things change the more they stay the same." I forgot, I'm not allowed to get philosophical. My apologies to Tuna and Jeff.

R.V. life is sitting in the dining room typing on the computer, getting a beer from the fridge and opening it with a bottle opener from the kitchen drawer, turning on the stereo in the front and not even leaving my seat at the dinette. Tight confines has it's benefits.

Kim is back in the master bedroom vocalizing the answers to Jeopardy. She is accurately adding the "What is.." and the "Who is.." with her responses. She is either trying to stay sharp for her Jeopardy try-out or she is trying to impress her husband. I guess we are all guilty. I feel like such an idiot through 90 percent of the questions, the ones I can't answer, that I have to shout out the ones I know just to convince myself or anyone listening that not all the file drawers are empty. Kim has bad allergies right now so i am hearing siffle.."what is leopard"..sniffle "what are ants"..sniffle, "who is Bill Cosby".

We will be fortunate enough to watch American Idol tonight. I hope the little shifty-eyed, lip-licking, child molesting Catholic priest-to -be, David Archuleta gets the boot. See what a year off will do for you, you will actually care about American Idol. I also can't stand the dread-lock, brain dead, in a constant smoked-a-good-bud stupor Jason Castro, so I hope he goes too. David Cook for Idol or I am never watching another one. Hee, hee I can't wait to text tonight. Just kidding! I haven't stooped that low.

That's my blog of low pertinence. We are headed to Amish country near Lancaster, PA and Hershey to eat chocolate tomorrow, so I am sure Kim will give you a hopped up on chocolate review.

Photos: 1. Fields near Gettysburg 2. North Carolina Soldiers Monument 3. Cemetery with unknown soldier's graves 4.Eternal Light monument dedicated by FDR in 1938 saw around 1800 Civil War veterans attend at average age of 93 and a total of 250,000 attendees. 5.overlook from Little Round Top mountain, which was a decisive Union stronghold

Washington DC Blitz

Thank you Tracy & Donna for being faithful bloggers. I must admit we have as much, if not more fun logging on to see who has commented than we do writing the actual comments. Tracy, only a former vegetarian would come up with the word 'quinoa'. Donna you are right this will be something awesome to keep. Someone asked me if I was going to make a scrapbook and I said sure, I will print off the blog and stick it in a book. Sorry Meme.

As James said we are ending our time off in a flurry of activity. We may have pushed our agenda a bit too far when we decided to do DC in a day. Thanks to the advice of our friends Corey & Lisa (who live in Charlottesville, Va and I hadn't talked to in 10 years but decided to call up while we were visiting Monticello and ended up finagling an invitation to dinner and had a great visit not leaving until midnight) anyway, they suggested we go in on a Sunday to avoid some of the school groups. Excellent advice. Not only were the school groups lessened, remarkably there were still quite a few, but the Metro was cheaper and the traffic was minimal. We tackled two Smithsonian museums, Natural History and Air & Space. If you haven't been to Washington DC it may amaze you to know that all of the Smithsonian museums are free! Not only that but they were started with a grant from someone who had never even been to America but was obviously concerned about our lack of education. I can't imagine what Mr. Smithson would say if he could see us now.

After absorbing as much information about dinosaurs, rocks, black holes and the Wright brothers (just to name a few) as we could from the two museums we checked out the Capitol building and were amazed at the amount of non-English speakers we encountered. It seems as if there are more foreigners interested in our government than Americans. I guess that could explain a lot about our economy. From the Capitol it was a long walk down the mall to the White House and all of the monuments. We also got to see the helicopter dropping of the President from a weekend away at Chucky Cheese or wherever it is he goes when he takes a day off.

Washington is amazing no matter what you think of our government. It is inspiring to realize that it is a living, breathing institution and it makes you want to be a part of it in some way. You stand on the steps of the Lincoln memorial and can't help but feel if he is looking towards the Capitol building saying ' I'm watching you guys to see if you screw up what I fought so hard to protect'. You walk around the FDR or Jefferson memorial and read their quotes and wonder if we will ever have people who were as passionate about our country and people as they were. You walk through all the war memorials and are overwhelmed by the sacrifice that so many have made for our country. You feel moved and inspired and then an obnoxious teenager cuts in front of in line and the feeling passes. All you feel is disdain for the environment that has breed such spoiled entitlement. Uh oh, maybe I am going to have a harder time going back to work than I thought.

We had a great, if a bit tiring day in DC and followed it up with a busy day yesterday touring Harper's Ferry and going on a 25 mile bike ride, probably not the best thing to do for my allergies. It was a really neat bike path though which was made along an old canal route along the Potomac river. The disadvantage of being at a higher elevation was that it wasn't as pretty, the advantage was the plant sexual revolution hadn't started yet so I could breathe. I am going to quit before the medicine takes a greater stronghold and I start making even less sense.

Love, Kim

Dinos for Max and Zachary

Hello there Max and Zachary. Aunt Kim told me that you liked Dinosaurs, so I made you some pictures just of Dinosaur stuff from the Smithsonian. One of these isn't a Dinosaur actually, can you tell me which one isn't?

Love you both,

James and Kim

Are you getting tired of reading this boring blog? There seems to be more entertainment being had by comparing verification words than by my brilliant writing. It isn't easy having the discipline to sit down and update this thing after a long day of screwin' off. I only have about three and a half weeks left of this sojourn, so you will be spelled soon.

We are so overwhelmed with history right now that my brain is about to explode. I can't absorb or recall much anymore, so this is frustration. We are in a KOA right next to Harper's Ferry, WV. If you are like I was before this visit you know the name, but not the significance. It was and is a cute little town on the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah Rivers where rifles were made for the government pre-Civil War. John Brown got the idea that he could raid the town, steal the armaments and give them to the slaves with which to start a revolt. He had already purchased hundreds of pikes with Philanthropic monies from the North, but decided that rifles were needed as well. He invited the famous freed slave Frederick Douglass along for the fun, but Douglass said "No Thanks!" The attempt failed and John Brown was hanged in December of 1859, 18 months later the Civil War started. Most agree that this action by Brown was a catalyst. There is the history lesson about Harpers Ferry in a nut shell.

We had a "nice" time in the Shenandoah park. We have been to just about half of the National Parks in the U.S. now, so we are critics. Shenandoah is packed full of turnouts with nice views of the valleys which I am sure are breathtaking in the Fall. The hikes we went on had some relatively nice water features, but a lot of felled timber and clutter. Recent storms of ice and hurricane winds have tipped many trees and the summer green hadn't come in yet to disguise any of it. I can only imagine how busy this park is in the summers as this weekend saw 90% occupancy already. The main campground was big, clean, and well organized. We got the best spot in the whole place with a commanding view of the valley. I just wanted to say "commanding view", but the sight was really the best.

My little "Schmee" as I have been calling her is sick in the back of the R.V. right now. We had the most beautiful spring weather the last two days, but I am afraid that the pollen is flying and Kim has allergies bad, so she is feeling miserable while this weather is so nice. She is convinced that she is going to be all better by morning, but I'm afraid misses glass-is-half-full is going to be disappointed.

It feels like we are headed to the home station of Fayetteville at warp speed. We have got used to seeing so many things and doing it at our leisure, I could do it for another two years, but the funds have run out, so it's back to work. I will let the sniffly girl blog about D.C. I am getting a headache just thinking about the Smithsonian museums and all we packed in.

Hey, what do you know. My word verification is TAJNTGAL. Tagent gal or Tuna and Julie Need To Get A Life. Just kidding, I know at this point if it weren't for the ACRONYMS you probably wouldn't even log on to this boring @#$!.

Love you-ins all.

James

Jees, I had 8 misspelled words with spellcheck. It would be nice if this had grammar check to save me too.

1. Kim on Rose River log crossing 2. Dark Hollow Falls - Shenandoah 3. Lewis Falls - Shenandoah 4. In light of Kim's prior driving record I was eager to buy this shirt for her, but she said she wouldn't wear it, so I had her model it instead. 5. Catholic church on the hill in Harpers Ferry, WV

Jefferson and Monroe were Slackers

We spent the day yesterday touring Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's Home) and Ashlawn-Hyland (James Monroe's Home). I had to ask during each of the tours "how much of this stuff is actually Jefferson's stuff or Monroe's stuff?" "Most of it." was the reply. It was amazing that through all of these generations that their homes and their stuff has survived to be viewed by all of the modern generations. Unfortunately we have been mingling with all too much of the modern generation. The last few attractions we have been to seem to be popular destinations for school field trips and I haven't seen a future Thomas Jefferson in the lot. Absorbing all that Thomas Jefferson accomplished is a daunting task. Writing the Declaration of Independence, ambassador to France, President for two terms, Virginia Congressman, inheriting his father's plantation at age 21 and running it, keeping detailed journals of everything he did, political writings, writing upwards of 19,000 letters, he kept a 6,700 volume library, reading in seven languages, being an authority on gardening and crop rotation, art, science, mechanical engineering, law, architecture, building Monticello, starting the University of Virginia in his retirement and yet he still died way in debt, what a slacker. Jefferson said "I can't live without books." I am standing there reading that quote and thinking "I have survived quite well without books, Tom." The male ego in me makes me argue that I could be in the other guys shoes if I wanted, but I just don't want to cause I am happy being me. I can't even begin to set up an argument that I could be like Thomas Jefferson and that pisses me off and makes me feel worthless. Then we go to James Monroe's house. Virginia Congressman, U.S. Congressman, ambassador to France twice, Secretary of State and Secretary of War at the same time, U.S. President, and so on. O.K. there are two guys that I can never aspire to being like and they are practically neighbors. Did our young country afford these guys opportunities at greatness or were they just born into wealth and inherited the opportunities. Have we discovered so much that we no longer need the DaVincis, Einsteins, Gallileos, Jeffersons, Edisons, Franklins and so on or have we just dumbed down and become so comfortable that we don't provide fertile ground for these minds?


Traveling for the last year has made me realize that I am not bound for greatness or riches. I don't have the drive that it takes or the intellect. I get depressed about the condition of our country and then I review history in a place like Monticello and realize that our outlook has always been bleak. We have always been on the brink of ruin as a country, a race or a planet. I am damn lucky to be driving around in an R.V. looking at all of this amazing scenery and history. I have grown up in a time where disease wasn't always at our doorstep and wars weren't fought on our soil. I could be running from a t-rex or a sabre tooth tiger, taking a lead ball to the chest, laying on me death bed with the plague or salmonella due to lack of refrigeration. Hey wait a minute! That is my calling, I keep stuff refrigerated so people don't die! I am the world's salvation and I didn't even know it. I have decided that I am perfectly happy fixing machinery. I need that immediate satisfaction of knowing that I fixed it, it is working now, and the people are happy and they will pay me now! Machinery is either not working right or it is working right, the machines don't have personalities to tiptoe around and they don't lie. I like the problem solving and working outside, so I like my trade. I just hate PEOPLE! I really hate the little brats at these cool historic places. They run in to you, they yell, they don't pay attention to the really pertinent information. I realize that it is the parents and the teachers who allow this behaviour. That is where Kim comes in. It is her job to change the direction of as many of these little shits as she can, she is the teacher. When I look at machinery sitting alongside a building I get a little nostalgic. When a horde of little punks comes roaring down a stairwell towards us I see Kim convulse and little red bumps raise up on her skin. I will be fine, but I don't know about the longevity of my wife. I sure hope she can get back in the groove and help make a difference with our next working generation. Bottom line..."the old lady needs to make some money!" Speaking of the old lady I am going to get some super glue and glue the cell phone to her ear to free up her left hand so's she can do some more house cleaning 'round here. Her sisters tag team the cell phone, right now it's Janet's turn. Good god almighty! Gossip Central around here.


Virginia is beautiful, spring is in full glory here. A thick blanket of small, light green leaves on the trees, dogwoods and azaleas in bloom.
1. Scene of Virginia valley and hills from the Blue Ridge Parkway
2. Mabry's Mill - Blue Ridge
3. Jefferson's bedroom and study ( I wasn't supposed to take pictures)
4. Monroe's house
5. Monticello