Halloween
Athens, Georgia, U.S. – Civilization is overrated, but it does have candy. And we sure do like waterproof clothes that allow us to play outside in the rain.
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Friends of a Long Year is a weekly, private mailing list bringing stories to your inbox like the olden days. It's written in the spirit of Mary Austin. It was once called Place Without a Postcard, which neatly summarizes what I like to write about.
Archive
County Fair
Richard B Russell State Park, Georgia, U.S. – Stumbling onto the Elberton 12-county fair with its rides, snow cones, horses, and the banana derby.
Back to Raysville
Raysville, Georgia, U.S. – Heading back to Raysville, our first stop after leaving Athens nearly three years ago
Bird Watching
Fort Yargo State Park, Georgia, U.S. – Most mornings I am up early to hear the signature sound of whippoorwills and the occasional owl. By the time I'm having coffee the forest has shift to morning sounds: the song birds warbling, red-bellied woodpeckers drumming, the shrieks of a red-tailed hawk.
Old Growth
Watson Mill State Park, Georgia, U.S. – Reconnecting the dots under the forest canopy. We talk about the world as if it were some separate thing. We say "ecosystem" as if this were something other than the world we live in.
Hanging Around Town
Athens, Georgia, U.S. – An opportunity came up to hang around Athens GA for a while and we thought, why not? But Athens has changed a lot in three years. Things are always changing, but this time things changed more than usual. The California disease came to Athens.
Road Trip
Athens, Georgia, U.S. – The America family road trip is a pretty miserable experience in my view. Pack the kids in the car to drive all day and half the night to Disney World? No thanks. Still, it was time to get out of Texas, a road trip to Athens, GA fit the bill.
Summertime Rolls
Tool, Texas, U.S. – Summer in Texas, what could go wrong? Thanks to friends and family, we had plenty of fun and beat the heat by staying in the water most of the summer.
Seven
Tool, Texas, U.S. – Birthday! We were stuck in Texas this year, but we managed to get a piñata. We found some papel picado at the bottom of a bag. We bought way too many balloons. As you do. We made do with what we had, where we were.
Hasta Luego
Plano, Texas, U.S. – We came to Mexico planning hang out, visit family, live cheap, save money, get some projects done. But sawdust in a hurricane has more permanence than our plans, so none of that actually happened.
Visa Run
Plano, Texas, U.S. – It was time to renew our Mexican visas and move the bus to a new (temporary) home.
Southbound
Plano, Texas, U.S. – After 19 months in the bus we're changing things up a little. The bus is in storage, not forever, just for now.
Grassland
Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, U.S. – The vastness of the prairie sky is addictive. Once you've spent a while surrounded by nothing but grass and sky you start to feel closed in whenever there is something else near you. We tried to go back to regular campgrounds, but you find yourself wanting more space, asking why are these things blocking my sky?
Range Life
Buffalo Gap National Grassland, South Dakota, U.S. – Two weeks on a grassy expanse of earth at the edge of the badlands. It doesn't sound like much, but there's something about wide open spaces that makes time slow down. We swam, hiked, made new friends and briefly got the bus stuck in the mud.
West to Wall Drug
Buffalo Gap National Grassland, South Dakota, U.S. – Wall Drug is a full city block of tourist junk and food. There's still free ice water, and the coffee is still 5 cents. The donuts are pretty good too. Bill Bryson sums up Wall Drug perfectly in The Lost Continent: "It's an awful place, one of the world's worst tourist traps, but I loved it and I won't have a word said against it."
Superior
Moningwanekaaning, Wisconsin, U.S. – Reflections on the greatest of the Great Lakes.
Northern Sky
Nine Mile Lake Campground, Minnesota, U.S. – Unable to leave Lake Superior behind, we decided to head west and north, out of Wisconsin, into Minnesota, through Duluth and up to the north shore of Lake Superior.
Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker
Moningwanekaaning, Wisconsin, U.S. – The Ojibwe, who were here when the first Europeans paddled through, call Madeline Island Moningwanekaaning, which translates to Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker. This is where the bulk of the action takes place in the first three novels of Louise Erdrich's Birchbark Series, which, as I've mentioned before, our kids are obsessed with. It's one of the reasons that we came up here, to see where the characters of those books walked and ate and slept and swam.
The Crystal Lake
Washburn, Wisconsin, U.S. – Back across the Upper Peninsula, out of Michigan, back to Wisconsin and more time at Lake Superior, where things were, as they often are up here, decidedly old school and awesome.
House by the Lake
Carp River Campground, Michigan, U.S. – On our way southeast to Lake Huron, where we were meeting up with family, we first went northwest. Because that’s how we roll. We wanted to see Whitefish point, which had a lighthouse and shipwreck museum, though in the end we opted for the beach instead.
Lakeside Park
Andrus Lake, Michigan, U.S. – Enjoying the warm and ever-changing waters of Andrus Lake, and attending an Ojibwa powwow in St. Ignace.
Six
Andrus Lake, Michigan, U.S. – We gambled a bit for the girls' birthday this year. We couldn't stay in Pictured Rocks anymore, we'd hit our two week limit the day before their birthday. We considered trying to stay anyway, bribe the camp hosts or something. In the end we rolled the dice and everything worked out.
Shipwrecks
Picture Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan, U.S. – We were looking for something cool to do for the girls' birthday, something along the lines of last year's train ride, when we stumbled across a billboard for a glass bottom boat shipwreck tour. Perfect. We checked the weather and made reservations for the next warm sunny day.
The Trees
Picture Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan, U.S. – Trees, hammocks, Lakes Superior's crazy weather. Lately we've had plenty of time to sit around the north woods, watching the wind play in the leaves, the birds sharing food and building nests, the kids digging up earthworms for pets.