Seriously? Here?

As we traveled from Odessa, TX, to Carlsbad, NM, we stopped and had a wonderfully gas-producing lunch at a little Mexican restaurant in Pecos, TX. Namesake of “Pecos Bill,” that legendary character who shot out stars, occasionally rode mountain lions, and truly loved "Slue-Foot Sue," we found Pecos-the-town to be somewhat less…legendary. It squats, flat as a pancake, in the midst of a desert that could easily be the set for one of those movies where you see some sweaty fool trapped under a relentless sun staggering around whispering “water…water” through his cracked lips until he falls face-down in the dust. ("Cue the buzzards.") Heading north out of town on an endlessly straight, two-lane highway, I found myself glancing up on occasion looking to see if buzzards were circling our own mini-caravan, then back down at the temperature display on the dash…Whew—still 61 degrees. Gotta love towing a trailer through the desert in February!

As we drove on for miles and miles, with sand and cacti galore for scenery, I couldn’t help but envision a family (like ours, in my head) a few hundred years ago who’d risked it all to come to the new world, purchased a wagon to carry their meager possessions, and headed west to settle on their own land. I can imagine the wife (whose voice sounds, not surprisingly, a lot like Nan’s) saying with building intensity as the horses slowed to a stop, “Seriously? Here? We did all this, we came all this way to stop Here? HERE?!!!!”

As I mentioned back in maybe my second blog entry, everywhere we’ll go on our trip, someone calls it home. Including Pecos, TX. And the few people we saw in Pecos seemed right at home. We received lots of pleasant smiles and hellos from people in the Mexican restaurant, suggesting the people there were happy and glad to see us tourists. But still… Why would someone have stopped there, in the era of no air conditioning and no bad TV westerns to romanticize it, and made it home? The heat, the tumbleweeds, the lack of water, the absence of arable land, even the occasional poisonous snake… (“Here?! We’re going to live HERE?!!”)

I’m sure that with thousands of people reading my blog entries, word will get out about these comments and I'll wind up getting some nasty emails from the Pecos Chamber of Commerce and possibly the mayor---assuming the Pony Express can carry emails (rim-shot). But before the Pecosians try and blow sand up my shorts, I have to admit that I’ve asked these same kinds of questions often about my own home of origin--Minnesota. After freezing off various parts of their respective anatomies during that first long winter, why didn’t Laura Ingalls Wilder and family load up the wagon at the earliest sign of spring and head south, thanking God that they survived the cold and were blessed with sense enough to look for a more temperate climate? Whatever the reasons, they stayed put. And so did the citizens of Pecos. They stayed in the desert and to them it became home. So if the chamber of commerce and the mayor want to send me nast-e-grams, I’ll deserve them, because home is wherever you’re from—hot or cold, north or south, sane or not. God bless the people for whom Pecos, Texas, and the desert highway between there and New Mexico, are home.

(Still—Nan’s voice rings in my ears. “Seriously? HERE?” I can imagine myself climbing down from the wagon to survey our new land and Nan quickly grabbing up the reins. “Yah—giddyup” she’d yell, and off she and the kids would go at a gallop, looking for someplace reasonable in which to plant roots. And there I am, running behind yelling “Wait! Wait for me!! AT LEAST DROP A CANTEEN!”)

Mixing Up Our Days

There really are a lot of interesting places in this great country of ours. Places that make you laugh, wonder, cry, be inspired, look away… We’re just wrapping up our Texas Tour, leaving the Dallas/Ft. Worth area tomorrow morning. We’ll do a driving day, going as long as we feel like toward Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, then stopping at a motel for the night. Then it’s two nights around the caverns, followed by three nights by White Sands, and it’ll be time for the run to the Grand Canyon.

As usual, a few sentences like that convey our trip logistics but they aren’t the experience. In a quick look back at my blog entries, I can see myself trying to slice off pieces of our trip and convey them via words and pictures, but I can tell I’m not succeeding. Not really. I just plain don’t think it’s possible to describe days and weeks like these. Take the past three days, where we’ve mixed everything from a spiritual event to bull riding to junk shopping to great moments in American history…

What we’ve found is that our kind of traveling is creating days that are strangely mixed. We read, do school work, then walk through Grand Prairie’s “Trader’s Village” (which is also our campground, if you can believe it), easily among the world’s largest yard/junk-sales, walking for blocks and blocks until we’re lost, buying things like a $2 wallet, an ear-brassiere (or at least that’s what we called them when I was a kid), roasted corn, and the purchase of purchases: A Magic Chef that Nan just used to make coleslaw and salsa to go with our burgers for dinner. Then we find ourselves finishing up a history lesson on the pilgrims on our way to downtown Dallas, where we tour the Sixth Floor Museum, a truly touching presentation of the story of President Kennedy’s life and death. Or we meet up with a Richmond alum who has, since her college graduation, gone on to complete seminary and is now serving as one of the pastors for the First Presbyterian Church in Arlington. She’s gracious enough to spend the day with us, taking us down to the historic Ft. Worth Stockyards where we see cowboys herd cattle down the street, Kerby rides a mechanical bull, Joelle sits atop a saddled steer, and we all taste our first ever fried pickles. (By the way, I’m proud to have several former students who are now in ministry positions, and we’re looking forward to seeing another when we get to Los Angeles.)

Now as the day ends and tomorrow we head toward yet another of the United States, the wind is blowing like gangbusters outside, at times shaking the camper hard from side to side and frequently blowing out the pilot light for the water heater. In the calm pauses between gusts I can catch an occasional whiff of marijuana coming from the huge camper parked next to us. (They’re a rough-looking group of five or six guys from Arkansas, all dressed in camouflage clothes when they arrived—we could hardly see them [rim-shot]. Fortunately, they’ve been quiet and polite, as has everyone here…. Not sure what this group is hunting for in February around Dallas, but I didn’t want to seem like a smart-arse by asking.) I’m still feeling full from the giant piece of fish I was served for lunch at The Press Box in downtown Dallas and from the hamburger I had for dinner, and I’m certain I need to eat better over the next few weeks or there’ll be a lot more of me coming home at the end of our trip than there was when we left. And I’m looking forward to ending this burst of blog-writing energy and getting back to reading a book I’m not yet sure I like.

Maybe other people would craft a trip like this with more structure, more organization, less of a hodge-podge of daily experiences. Not us. We’re loving just going with the flow and seeing the strange way days and weeks come together. We asked the kids tonight if they were enjoying the trip—if they liked the balance of going and staying, being busy and just hanging out—and they said they were having a great time. They really are a game couple of boogers. And Nan said she’s liking it, too, and not yet looking forward to all the hustle and bustle of being at home. And I’m with her. We know we’ll be home soon enough, back in our familiar house with our pets back and friends and family (at least some of it) around, but for now we’ll keep mixing up our days and wondering what we’ll see next.

Addendum: It took me two days for us to get internet through which to post this. In the meantime, we’ve again demonstrated our winter-weather making skills. In addition to bringing record lows to normally warm places, last night we brought 6 inches of snow to Odessa, Texas, and on into southeastern New Mexico. It’s snowing until noon, so in the interest of keeping our show on the road and out of the ditch, we’re motel-ing it for another night. It’s supposed to be warm sunny tomorrow, so we should be back on the road to somewhere bright and early.

(The Sixth Floor Museum on JFK in Dallas)


(Kerby's Ready to Ride...)


(Joelle on "Pecos Bill")


(Nan and Reverend Marian Trying Fried Pickles)

Keepin' it Weird for Ya

The great state of Texas… We’ve been here about a week, and we’ve been having such a grand time that neither Nan or I have done a blog entry. Truth is, I was working on an entry about our camper biffy (for all the non-camper-owners out there) but it wasn’t coming out very well so I’ll keep working on it, and Nan’s written an entry or two but the campground’s internet connection is slow and she’s having trouble getting pictures to upload. She says she’s going to get one done today, so I'll do the same. Here are a couple of observations as an update...

Yesterday, as we walked up Congress Street in downtown Austin, there was a woman dressed in an outfit appropriate for any beer-filled Octoberfest celebration. She was clapping her hands to the beat of a song she was loudly singing, giving her solo musical performance some real heart and volume. As we approached, she smiled and yelled “Just Keepin’ Austin Weird For Ya!”, then on she sang. We later found out “Keeping Austin Weird” is a campaign the locals have embraced. My own life experience suggests there’s plenty of weird around pretty much everywhere without the need to intentionally create more, but if they think they’re becoming too normal who am I to argue? We loved that lady’s enthusiasm, and we repeated her line often during the day that followed. For instance, while shopping in the Whole Foods flagship store (the thing’s huge), I turned around thinking Nan was behind me and, doing my best Tom Hanks/Polar Express impression, said directly into the face of a long-haired man, “Well? Ya Comin’?” The guy just looked at me for a moment, I mumbled “Just keepin’ Austin Weird For Ya…” and quickly went on my way. Like I said—plenty of weird in this world without intentionally creating more.

We had a great time on our visit to San Antonio. Oddly enough, we found that seeing the Alamo is more educational after you watch a little 15-minute presentation at “The History Shop” across the street. Phil Collins (weirdness returns) narrates the presentation of a scale model of the Alamo, describing the battle and its participants. Later we visited the Hall of Horns at the Buckhorn which features things like 15 foot tall Irish deer (more weird), had people throw beads to us from party-boats on the mobbed Riverwalk in a pre-Mardi-Gras celebration (a little weird), and ate wonderful Mexican food (nothing weird there).

(The most familiar view of the Alamo)


(Kerby meets Jim Bowie)


In Austin, in addition to seeing the lady who was keeping Austin weird we had a nice walk along Town Lake on a path filled with joggers and dog-walkers and cyclists, all there in the middle of a workday. (Who are all these people—academics on sabbatical? Don’t they have jobs? Weird). We rode the Zilker Zephyr, a kiddie-train at Zilker park that we honestly enjoyed (weird family). We explored the Splash! exhibit that explains where the water comes from that feeds Barton Springs, in which swam lots of shivering souls who don’t mind the 68 degree water (cold and courageously weird). And we toured the Texas State Capitol and learned, among many other tidbits, that Texas has been in some fashion part of 6 countries—Spain, France, Mexico, The Republic of Texas, the US, and the Confederate States. It’s the only state to have been its own country (possibly weird…certainly unusual…and it explains at least in part the great state-loyalty among Texans and why students from Texas always have the Texas flag up in their dorm rooms while students from other states often have trouble picking their states’ flags out of a line up). Finally, we did a driving tour of the University of Texas at Austin (plenty of weird there) and ate at Stubbs’ BBQ (not weird, as it’s rated by several publications as the best BBQ in Austin). We also had the chance to spend some added time with Meagan (a not-weird Richmond alum), her husband Richard, and their very cute new baby, Gideon, and we found ourselves as we left feeling a bit like baby Gideon seemed to be feeling—stuffed, happy, and ready for bed.

(Who IS this lady?)


(In the Texas State Capitol...)


We’ve been staying in San Marcos, TX, (halfway between San Antonio and Austin) at one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve found so far. Our campsite overlooks the San Marcos River, and all the amenities here are clean and in great repair. There’s a heated pool we’ve been swimming in, lots of dry kindling around for fires, a great laundry room (in which I’m writing this while our laundry spins), individual bathrooms with continuously hot showers…all of which is unusual in combination. Pecan Park is quite the place! Courtesy of some wonderful friends, we had an amazing tour of the brand new headquarters of McCoy’s Building Supply Company (based here in San Marcos and source of my hat collection), and we took a tour of one of their stores as well, giving me lots of time to grunt like Tim the Tool-Man Taylor (yes, I’m weird) and cook up excuses for buying more tools. We had dinner with the McCoy family and continue to believe they’re the nicest people on earth.

(Campfire Night)


(Honking the Horn on a Forklift at McCoy's HQ)


We could definitely spend more time around here, but all the eating out has been killing our budget (not to mention ballooning our waistlines) and there’s still lots of month left. Today we’re going to work a bit, pack up a bit (the longer we spend somewhere the more our stuff tends to expand), and tour San Marcos a bit more. The weather has been beautiful (60s and sunny), and that’s supposed to continue for the rest of the week. Dallas is next, then we head toward Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands in New Mexico.

So that’s the weirdness update. We've found weird here, but honestly, no more than anywhere else despite at least one woman's efforts to raise the level. Mostly we've found interesting sights, good food, and fun people. And we feel like we could move here...though I suspect in the July heat we'd wonder what we were thinking. Anyway, if I can get the entry on the biffy flushed out, I’m just weird enough to post it.

Keep it weird!

60 Seconds on the Perfect Evening

It’s cool out, probably around 50, and very still. We’ve got a campfire going, lighting up our part of the dark, and we’ve roasted our hotdogs and made our s’mores. A raccoon keeps coming up and mooching food off the soft touches in the family, while grumpy ol’ dad keeps saying “It’s a wild animal—stop feeding it!” as though it’s not standing on its hind legs doing everything short of playing the banjo and singing show-tunes to earn its handout. The crickets and frogs are chirping away in the bayou swamp that’s just a few feet from our campfire, and Nan and the kids are laughing about some story Kerby and Joelle are both trying to tell at the same time.

We’ve seen so many wonderful sights and still have many more to see, but it’s moments like these that we’d most like to bottle and bring home. And since I was just bringing some food in off the picnic table (so Rocky doesn’t make off with it when we aren’t looking), I thought I’d try and send a bottle out to you via the blog. Hope you get it.

Well, there’s a fire burning away out there without me...


(Here’s Rocky the Mooching Raccoon along with a picture of our campsite here at Sam Houston Jones State Park in Lake Charles, LA. First, water and electric are usually behind your camper in campgrounds, but not here for some odd reason, hence the hose going across—and second, yes, we really are that close to the swamp.)

Someplace you really ought to visit and some thoughts on the weather

Someplace you ought to visit

On our last full day in Alabama we visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and we were sincerely wowed. This place does a remarkable job of capturing the pains and the struggles and the achievements of heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks, and the countless others who were hosed or beaten or bombed or jailed or even killed in the civil rights movement. It’s a place filled with exhibits and videos and speeches and news reports. And memories and questions and sorrows and joys. It captures well the countless individual and collective acts of courage through which our country was changed and our own little Johnson family was, decades later, made possible. Yes, there’s still much more rights and respect work to be done today, but the progress made from the mid 1950’s to the late 1960’s was tremendous due to the sacrifices of so many.
Honestly, this really is a place you ought to visit....

(They don’t allow photography inside, so the only pictures I have are from the park across the street. The BCRI is the brick building in the rear of the shot with Kerby and Joelle in the window near the children being sprayed by a fire-hose. The sculptures and artwork inside and out are wonderful, as the statue with the dog, cop, and protestor shows…)





The Weather

Not surprisingly, we’ve gotten a lot of comments and questions about how we’re coping with the bizarre weather. (Typically, the questions go something like "So--have you frozen your arses off yet or what?") By all reports, Richmond is facing yet another ice/snow storm this weekend, and it’s still not really the “usual” Richmond snow season. Clearly, this is an odd weather year. Fortunately, we haven’t been facing snow or ice here in the deeper south. If we do face such a thing, we’ll undoubtedly head for a motel or other warmer venue to wait it out. Just the same, we continue to inspire bouts of cold weather and major rainfall everywhere we travel. During our nights in southern Alabama it got below 30 for the low temp for two nights, and one night it rained like a herd of cattle, dumping well over an inch on our little home on the gravel. But the worst part was the wind. There were moments that night when I wondered if we might actually tip over. We spread our weight around the camper as best we could and kept ourselves calm by continuing our nightly Harry Potter reading—-though I wound up hoarse after a while from having to shout over the roar of the wind and the relentless rain drumming on the roof and canvas.

Really, wind is the hardest thing. If it’s windy, we’re much more likely to need to fire up the “big heater”--the propane heater built into the camper. Mostly we just run our little electric heater and it keeps us comfortable. Runner up to the wind for potential misery-production is the all-day rain. Tonight we’re in New Orleans, and it’s been raining continuously since early last night. All night. All day. And all evening… Non-stop soaking rain. There are puddles everywhere outside, and we’ve talked off and on about how likely the camper would be to float… I think it’d float pretty well, though probably not for long. The others thing it’d leak like a sieve and just fill with water. God willing, we’ll never have to find out. I will say that I’ve been impressed with how well our camper does in the wind and rain. It’s been literally POURING out there for nearly 30 hours, and we’re dry as a bone from stem to stern. Gotta hope that continues. Anyway, for the day we’ve just holed up in here nice and dry, venturing out only to the bathhouse for a shower, and truth is we’ve had a nice time of it. Lots of quality family time. The good news is that tomorrow it’s supposed to clear up, so it’ll be back to the French Quarter for some more sightseeing. I’ll blog about that and add some pictures soon…

So to answer the questions about our frozen arses and how we’ve been dealing with the cold, wet weather--during the day, we wear layers, keep our jackets handy, and try to keep active. At night, we bundle up and snuggle in, with our heaters doing what they can to keep us comfortable. The kids are in fleece snug-sacks Nan made, with another fleece blanket under them and two more on top. Both wear hats and tend to cover their heads while they sleep. On really cold nights (below 30) we all wear long-johns under our jammies, hats on our heads (I've got this great ninja-looking ski-mask that never fails to elicit laughs from Nan...but it's nice and warm so I can live with the ridicule), socks on our feet, and slippers, too. And the truth is, we tend to sleep like logs. With just the electric heater on through a 35-degree night, it’ll probably stay right around 60 in here (though colder at floor level). Not exactly warm, but tolerable. Just the same, the nightmare is waking up in the middle of the night and needing to “make dew.” The dew-room seat feels mighty cold at night, so it’s decision time: Do I have to go that bad? How long is it until morning? If it’s something like 1:30am, you get up and go; 6:00am, you hold it; somewhere in between and you need to make a decision. Is it worth getting up or can this be ignored while I get back to sleep? We all seem to make that decision in our own way and for our own reasons… I’ll leave it to you to decide what you’d do. On nights colder than around 30-35 degrees we add the propane heater, with the thermostat set low, to the electric heater's usual good work. The electric heater helps keep the temp more steady, and it keeps the propane heater from running as often. When the propane heater kicks on it really warms the place up fast, but working alone on a cold night it can drain a whole lot out of a 20- pound tank of propane. It also turns off completely when the thermostat trips, so it’s warm-up fast, cool-down fast, repeat. The electric heater evens off the ups and downs some.

The only real warm days we had were in Florida, and we all wound up with a pile of bug bites. Honestly, I’m not minding it being cool, but it’d be nice if we could see the sun more often. Tomorrow through Sunday are supposed to be partly cloudy to sunny, and we’re all looking forward to that. Beyond Sunday, who knows what the weather will bring.

So there’s our life with the weather. Not what we expected when we planned the trip, but we’re resilient and it’s been manageable. Here’s hoping we soon stop inspiring places to set record lows and avoid major ice/snow storms for the duration…

Here's the view out the side window of the puddles forming from the rain rain rain