It’s National Spelling Bee week, which has me strolling back down memory lane to the five years that Griffin spent demonstrating his orthographic excellence. The Spelling Bee was a big deal in our house during Griffin’s fourth through eighth grade years. He had proven himself to be an excellent speller in third grade, with his teacher providing him with special weekly spelling lists of words taken from the Bee itself. It was rare for him to miss any of these words on his spelling test; we suspected that he had something akin to an eidetic memory at that point. After proving his spelling prowess in third grade, it was time…
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If you’re a subscriber to this blog, I would like to apologize to you for the insane amount of email notifications you received today. I was reactivating a bunch of old posts that I had archived, and I had no idea that WordPress would treat them like new posts and send you notifications for each and every one. Also, I kinda forget that I actually have a small handful of subscribers here? I usually just feel like I’m shouting into the void with this thing. But anyway, I’m back! This blog started as a book blog, then became a general blog, then moved to a travel blog, and now it’s…
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After a little time back at our hotel to recover from our Appalachian Trail adventures, we took a short drive to the Monocacy National Battlefield. When we had first been creating our itinerary for this trip and I mentioned this battlefield to my history nerd husband, he was perplexed. He had never heard of this battle, and was surprised that there was one this far north so late in the Civil War. While this battle may not get the fame and attention of others such as Gettysburg and Antietam, it is actually known as “The Battle that Saved Washington, DC.” From the NPS website: In the summer of 1864, the American…
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On Monday we got up and on the road early, because we needed to complete a particular mission before the heat of the day descended upon us. That mission: to cross off the longest-standing item on my personal bucket list – hike the Appalachian Trail. Now let’s not get too excited yet. The hike was a modest one at best. A total of two miles, half of it on the A.T., and the other along the Shenandoah River. But if you know me, then you know. You know I’m old and fat and out of shape. You know that I have bad knees. You know that I have been battling…
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After leaving Antietam we went back to our hotel to recover from the heat for a little bit, and then decided to head back out and do some exploring around the area that didn’t involve National Park sites. I had been wandering around Google for things to do in the Frederick, MD area and discovered there was a little covered bridges driving tour. I love a covered bridge, so we plugged the first one into Maps and were off. First up on the tour was the Utica Mills Covered Bridge. It was originally constructed in 1843, but was reconstructed and relocated after the Johnstown Flood washed it away in 1889.…
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After leaving Gettysburg, we hopped over to Antietam National Battlefield. It was our first time visiting, and we found it to be much more our speed; smaller, quieter, less people-y. We started at the newly-renovated Visitor Center. It’s small but has a nice little store and the usual friendly staff. We got there in time to be a part of an interesting talk with Ranger Olivia not about the battle itself, but about perceptions and interpretations of this bloodiest day. We learned that the six upside-down cannons around the battlefield indicate where a general was killed or mortally wounded, and that there is still some debate over the location of…
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It was another beautiful yet brutally hot day for the second day of our trip. We got up bright and early and made our way to Gettysburg National Military Park. Now I’m going to be honest, we didn’t spend a lot of time here because we’ve been here a couple of times before and didn’t feel the need to explore the exhibits again. It was a quick pop into the park store for souvenirs, some stamps in our passport, and then part of the driving tour. So this post will mostly just be a photo dump. Of course we had to hang out with Abe before we started our tour……
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Today was the first day of our NY-PA-MD-WV whirlwind tour of ten-ish National Parks units. We left home and hit the road first thing this morning, and we made sure Buddy the Bison was actually in the car this time (we forgot him on our trip to Seneca Falls a couple of weeks ago). Yes, you can expect a pre-trip selfie of us on all of our trips. It’s just something we’ve always done. I guess Buddy gets to join the selfies from now on. We made it to Steamtown National Historic Site in pretty good time. It was a gorgeous day for travel, with beautiful blue skies and fluffy,…
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I’m such a bad blogger. Here we are, almost two weeks later, and I’m finally getting around to posting about the second half of our Day of Badass Women.🤦♀️ After leaving the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, we had a quick picnic lunch on the shores of Cayuga Lake, watched people fishing, and saw some cute dogs. And then we were off to Auburn, NY to check out the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park. This site encompasses two buildings situated next to each other. The Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church and its parsonage underwent recent renovations, and had actually had their grand reopening the morning of the day that we…
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Saturday’s adventures were all about incredible women. We started our day with a short drive to Seneca Falls, and visited the Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Seneca Falls is one of those places that I’ve always thought about checking out, because it also has the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum, and of course the George Bailey bridge… (Spoiler alert: George Bailey totally could have survived a jump from this bridge. Sorry, Clarence.) And I’m kicking myself a bit for not visiting sooner, because Seneca Falls is an adorable little town, and it’s only a little over an hour away from home. But we only…
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Sunday was another beautiful day here in Central New York. Again it was bright and sunny, but not overly hot or humid. As it was Father’s Day, we let Vance decide what the day’s adventure would be. He chose a hike at Chimney Bluffs State Park in Wolcott, NY. Boy #2 had the day off from work, so the three of us hit the road and headed west down Rt 104. We started with the Bluff Trail, and it had changed a lot since the last time we were there, back when the boys were small. Record high water levels in Lake Ontario in recent years have caused major erosion…
