Past the halfway point...

...just barely.

We are in Lynchburg, VA, tonight, taking a slow pace up from eastern Tennessee to Gettysburg and then across just under the Great Lakes until we pass them and eventually arrive home.

Things to note:

• My niece, Elizabeth, is awesomely organized! And now also married, to a wonderfully calm, appreciative, happy, sensible, and sensitive man. My female relatives--with one notable exception--do pick TERRIFIC men to marry.
• The Great Smoky Mountains are beautiful. So are the Appalachians. Why am I so freakin' surprised at this??
• My niece, Katherine, is annoying as hell. Several people wanted to smack her upside the face on Friday and/or Saturday.
• On the other hand, my nephew, James, is a very charming man. Like the Smokies, why am I so freakin' surprised?
• We love our Garmin.
• Gatlinburg, TN, is hell on earth. Do whatever you can do to avoid it, unless you like PlasticLand. Sorry, people of Gatlinburg. Just....really. Gag.
• Bristol Motor Speedway is rather amazing in a completely indescribable way.
• Appomattox Court House requires more than half an hour to appreciate, but when you arrived at 4:30 that's all you get. And when it's 98 degrees in the full sun, that's probably about all you want anyway.
• Cracker Barrel--ugh. Never. Again. Don't let me forget!!
• Abingdon, VA, has issues. Not sure exactly what they are, or why, but the whole town seems completely out of sorts for some reason. Not bad, mean, unkind, intentionally "slow" or whatever, just...issues. At least, this week.
• Where are all the black people in the South?? Seriously.
• Lynchburg, VA, also has issues. One is dead (Jerry Falwell), the other is his scourge on the city for the forseeable future (Liberty University).
• This is important: EVERYONE SHOULD GO TO THE BOOKER T. WASHINGTON NATIONAL MONUMENT. Awesome, even in 95 degree heat and in spite of having no real services available. Northerners--like us--especially should visit. Wake up: pre-war South was not all about Scarlett O'Hara. (duh)
• Western Virginia is gorgeous. Lousy drivers, great scenery. It's a decent trade-off.
• There are a LOT of churches in this part of the country. A LOT.
• I can't understand English in eastern Tennessee. Oy. I need a universal translator.
• I haven't read a book all week. I haven't read anything except travel information since...uh...Thursday? This is a surprise.
• Sparky has weird feet.
• Courtyards (by Marriott) have pretty awesome lobbies. Holiday Inns have pretty nice bedding. Jameson Inns have pretty fabulous staff (what few there may be).
• We are still trying to figure out how someone tipped their sedan over on its side while driving up a paved, two-lane road in Great Smokies National Park. Really. It looked like perhaps they went over the verge (on the inside of a curve) and it just...tipped over. Is this a new way to entertain visitors? It wasn't that steep of a verge. Weird, and ... no, just weird.
• Never, ever, wear new shoes at a wedding, especially if standing for the whole ceremony, and even more important to remember if standing on a slate floor.
• We've only had two or three 'Deliverance' moments.
• Blueberry/raspberry/chocolate cookies are amazingly GOOD.
• Any ideas for what I can do with a used, slighly stained bridesmaid lilac-colored bridesmaid dress?
• We never did see any fireworks on the holiday. Oh, well.
• Some of the backroads today caused Sparky to say, "Can we go back to that hill again? I think I left my intestines there."
• After twenty years of off-and-on searching, I've finally found out the secret to those "wedding mints" I love so much: cream cheese and lots and lots of sugar (and food coloring and a pretty mold). Yay.
• The southeastern part of the country is lovely, but I don't think I could live here year-round.
• We've 'only' taken 200 photos so far. :-)

And to sum up: Spidey-Pig, Spidey-Pig, does whatever a Spidey-Pig can....

Earthquake

I'm watching something about the New Madrid fault...too lazy to turn off the TV or even look for something else to watch. New Madrid is just close enough to where I live to be mildly important to me. If it should 'blow', we will probably feel it a bit here. Shockwaves will be felt for about 350 miles from the center site (which is around the corners of Missouri / Tennessee / Kentucky / Illinois / Arkansas. If ... rather WHEN ... it goes, it'll be big. And ugly. Much bigger and uglier than the effects of Katrina on the Gulf Coast. So I'm watching, but only desultorily because {shrug} really, what can I possibly do about it? If it happens, it does; if not, ok very good.

Today was a good day. Absolutely gorgeous weather (except for a brief shower mid-afternoon) and a fun youth meeting. I'm finally excited about the trip next week. It will be fun. I will need several shots of Something Alcoholic when we return, but the hardest part of all may be explaining to teenage girls why dressing with their bra straps showing in tight-fitting tank tops is considered inappropriate at a church-related thing...and/or on a construction site, where they could be working.

Best question: "So, the other groups that are there with us....? Like, are they going to be mostly girls, like ours? Or, like, will there will be some guys...?" I love these girls. Goofs.

On that thought--wasn't it easy being a kid, really, when the worries you have all revolve around whether there will be good human scenery around, and the possibilities were endless?--I'm going to bed. To sleep. I'm beat. Tomorrow I have to coordinate Sparky's DC trip, and buy his commencement gift(s).

So, here are some flowers from our front yard to let you know that we do actually have a functional camera now:

Vacay photos....

What I did on my spring vacation:

In spite of having visited my sister multiple times in the ten years she has lived in the area, and in spite of growing up in Colorado, this is the first time I've ever been to Colorado National Monument. I'm a moron. Look at this scenery!! There are pullouts all along the road where you are allowed to park and walk to the EDGE of the cliff for any purpose: photos, hiking, sheer (huh) stupidity, inspiration....

I love Colorado. Edges rock! Unfortunately, I'm totally out of shape, and unused to the altitude, so every walk down to take a photo required at least five minutes of huffing and puffing to recover my equilibrium and breath.


We were stopped while the road was being repaired. This was the view. Somehow, we didn't really mind being stopped as much as we probably would have in most other circumstances.

Some twerpy kid is providing a cover for me to take a picture of the man in the background who was quietly playing an instrument made of string and a curved stick which he was plucking and strumming using his hands and mouth. Fascinating. He barely recognized that we were there, and we in turn kept our voices respectful of his personal interaction with nature. African music is hardly what you'd expect to hear here, but somehow it fit perfectly into the open sky and deep canyons.

I have discovered a new appreciation for my father's penchant for taking photos of trees. The trees of Colorado--we could do a whole coffee-table book on them just of my dad's photos over the years. Now I've started to add to the collection. But they are fascinating to look at. Each of them is different, not just because of species, but because of what the wind and water have done to them, how they've found a way to survive on dust and dry air. Each one is alone, there are no cozy little sprouts of family-member trees crowding around the base. It's survive or leave in this climate.

How dry is it here? This is my sister's front garden. Cactus. Lichen. Big honkin' rocks. Little itty bitty decorative rocks. On the other hand, it does snow here....(This was taken the morning we left my sister's house.)

We also visited Red Rocks Amphitheater while we were in Denver; this is a required stop whenever we have time in Denver. [If it looks vaguely familiar in the link, you have probably seen the U2 "Sunday Bloody Sunday" video.] I love this place more than I can understand. There have been some improvements since I was there last, including a gift shop and restaurant at the top of the shell, in a building that has been there always, but used to be used for...uh...something unknown and secret I guess. Anyway, here's that strange kid again:
The boy does like to scowl (ok, and he's looking directly into the sun, too). How you can scowl when this is the view in front of you is beyond me, but....

When I was a kid, you could actually SEE the city of Denver spread out in front of you. It was just haze and smog. The people in down several rows in front of us had been having a picnic with the little kids. What a great way to spend a morning!

Actually, what a great way to spend a vacation.