African Safari

So I went to Africa for the weekend... um, I mean Sandusky, Ohio. It just seemed like Africa. Or at least a touristy facsimile of Africa.  The Teach Them Diligently conference was held at the Kalahari Resort, which has an African theme. It also features an indoor-outdoor water park. It is near Cedarpoint theme park, so I guess families in that part of the country go there on vacation.

The hotel and water park part of the resort were kinda cheesy, but the convention center itself was tastefully decorated with lots of African art and artifacts. It was interesting to just walk down the halls and see the various pieces.

 Sherry enjoys posing for silly pictures, so she took up with a couple of characters.

The conference went well. There were some slow times, but in general we were pretty steadily busy talking with homeschoolers.

Faux Africa aside, I was within 5 miles of Lake Erie and didn't even see it. We had planned to drive over to at least snap a few pictures on Saturday but it was pouring down rain, so we didn't. I changed planes in Nashville and Chicago and didn't see a bit of those cities, either. I guess you just have to find something interesting wherever you are, in case it doesn't work out to go out of your way for more sightseeing.

This concludes my ramblin' afield for May. I wonder what our next adventure will be?

Home Movie Stills

Among the "thou-shalt-not-touch" treasures tucked away in the secret storage places of my parents' bedroom was a movie camera. I don't remember where it came from. Perhaps my mother got it with S&H Green Stamps or something. What I do remember is that we had no projector for watching any home movies that had been filmed on it, so on the rare occasions we were able to borrow a projector, watching Our Movies was a Big Deal.

There was the reel of my parents' wedding (taken, I'm sure, on someone else's camera)... and the reel of me as a baby... and then a gap of about 5 years. The third reel starts when my youngest brother was a baby. Now that I think about it, that must have been about when we got our own movie camera, because there's a good bit of footage that year, relatively speaking.

I was five that year, and utterly convinced that if the movie camera was recording, I should probably perform. That is to say, show off. The footage of my newborn brother has me turning somersaults in the background.

The footage of the five of us children playing on our swing set has me running around like a maniac, "checking" on the baby, picking up the ball, prancing here and there. It's down-right embarrassing is what it is!

Fifteen or twenty years ago we had our old home movie reels transferred to VHS tape, and then later on to DVD. I was very surprised to discover that the full length production of the home movies from my childhood only amounted to about 20 minutes of footage total. That would be because, while we did have a camera, movie film was costly... and having the film developed was costlier still. Not only is the footage very brief, it is also very poor quality as a result of the film being left in the camera too long before developing.

(I know it makes me sound like an old woman to marvel at how far technology has come in my lifetime... but I can't help it. It's true.)

My parent's 50th anniversary is coming up in a few months, so I've been working on a PowerPoint presentation for the occasion. I was looking for some pictures of a particular period of time and couldn't find some that I thought we had. Then I remembered that it was actually footage on our old home movies. So I popped the DVD in the computer and attempted to capture some screen shots. That worked out okay except for the poor quality of the original, but there's not much I can do about that at this point.

The funny thing was, though, I found myself deleting the stills of me showing off. "Silly little girl!" I thought. "I'll teach her a lesson. If she's going to show off like that, she can't be in my PowerPoint!" And then I literally laughed out loud at myself. Not only was the "silly little girl" me... that was more than 40 years ago!

Yeah. Turns out I didn't grow up to be a movie star.

Trip Wrap-up

Miles traveled: 5,390
Average fuel mileage: 36.15
States driven through: 16
Spent the night in:

• car (2 nights)
• Montrose, Colorado
• Tucumcari, New Mexico
• my parents' house near Mulberry, Arkansas
• my mother-in-law's house in Rolla, Missouri
• Paducah, Kentucky
• Nashville, Tennessee (2 nights)
• Belle Fourche, South Dakota

Observations:

• I still love to travel with that man of mine. We'd stay on the road full-time if we could, I think.
• I'd really love to make a "Route 66" road trip some year, following the old highway as much as possible all the way from Chicago to California. Getting off the interstate was so interesting to me.
• Simple, elastic wrist bands designed to help with motion sickness actually seem to work. I've worn them several times now as we've driven over winding mountain roads and haven't experienced motion sickness while wearing them. (And I'm usually susceptible to it.)
• Smaller, cheaper hotels are often more comfortable and friendly than the bigger, expensive ones.
• I feel sorry for the people who are taken with the over-the-top, lavish decor of the "world class" hotel where the convention was held. The indoor, faux river and waterfalls, while impressive, don't begin to hold a candle to the beauty of the western wilderness.
• It seemed weird for southern accents to be the norm rather than the exception at the convention. I could hear mine getting more pronounced as the weekend wore on. 
• The air in the South is soft and heavy. In the Northwest it's light and crisp.
• It's nice to visit the South, but even nicer to live in the Northwest.

Travel Stats: Day 9

My fans (a.k.a. my kids and my mother) are complaining because I haven't been keeping up with my blog. I hate to disappoint anyone, so here is today's update.

Departed Nashville, Tennessee: 9:08 p.m. CDT.
Hours driven: 19.5
Hours slept: 4.5 (in the car just east of St. Louis)
Miles driven: 1,332
Average speed: 68.3 mph
Fuel mileage: 36.4 mpg
States: Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota
Other VM Jetta wagons spotted: 1 (It was black. At a gas station. I asked Lyle if he sang the Veggie Tales song, I Like Your Car, to the other guy. He said no, but they did exchange pleasantries. I think he should have sung, don't you?)
Weather: overcast with scattered showers throughout the day
Audio book: The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn
Lum and Abner MP3: 1 episode
Also listened to: highlights from Indy 500 qualifying, Laugh USA, and enLighten on Sirius radio
Arrived Belle Fourche, South Dakota: 7:57 p.m. MDT.
Monday's destination: Home again!

Hanging Out in Nashville...

...at the Teach Them Diligently conference.

Set-up today was not without its challenges but we did manage to finish getting the booth put together before the vendor hall opened at 6:00 p.m. We had a busy evening visiting with homeschoolers. I'll be working long hours the next two days, so I probably won't blog again until Sunday.

The leisurely part of our trip is over, and we'll be pushing to get home by Monday evening-- 36 hours of driving time in 2 days! But I'm sure we'll still manage to see interesting things along the way. Stay tuned. I've enjoyed having you travel along with us!