HOME

 We are officially home.  Pat is writing the last blogg sometime this week.  It is a little strange living on one floor to be able to reach for everything and now having to walk up flights of stairs when you forget your glasses.  I am planning the "All In Garden" for the spring where for the last two months my garden was one pot of flowers, collection of feathers, rocks and shells. We really did miss vegetables fresh from the Long Island Farm stands.  We are lucky here having so much beauty and the change of seasons.  In 10 weeks we will be off again to the Keys for the winter, but don't worry we will never be away four months again.  This wayfarin was necessary for me especially because I knew I would miss teaching and needed the time to get ready for the next phase, but also we needed to see those just awe inspiring places of nature, to walk up mountains and rocky beaches.  The last few years the hands and knees have been troubling for me so who knows how much longer I will be riding bikes and gardening.  I hope at least another 10 years.

But there is no place like home and sometimes you just need to be away to find that truth and meaning.  Love Stefani

We

here is another hint

That is the Proud Mary's front end. Deer and fox abound. Yes, it is a beach campground and right now overcast and it is  definitely going to rain tonight and tomorrow! We walked the dunes earlier. And will walk a memorial tomorrow.

Can you guess where we are? Almost home. Some funny memories and advise coming.

Pat and I will sit down soon and write our final Wayfarin blogg soon, but hope those of you that have been following us will come to the service on Nov. 30th. We are going to talk about how wayfarin helps you know the blessings of home.  Pat has some beautiful music ideas. We have 3 responsive readings.
We are literally only an hour from home and should be there by Friday early afternoon.  It has been raining, raining and raining and so because of weather and missing home more than we would have believed have decided to end the trip a week early.
A couple of funny things, while at Theodore Roosevelt at the first part of the trip we walked for hours to find a prairie dog village, got chased by buffalo while riding our tandem. That was the highlight of our trip as far as creature encounters except when we got to Colorado.  The funny thing is prairie dogs make their homes in all kinds of weird places in Colorado but they especially like the parking lots of big conglomerates like Wall Mart so it was funny to see them eating clover and grass and guarding their villages among the shoppers (and yes, we did stop a couple of times because Wall Mart is every where and while we often couldn't find a grocery there was always a Wall Mart down the road.) We saw ravens in every state and we called to them as our brothers and sisters, thinking they might be following us from one state to the next.  But seeing them sit with buzzards on the same fence was something else. Pat learned at Arches that they are so smart they know the routine of the garbage trucks and will wait and follow them. They talk you know.
 The tandem was the best fun and so the campgrounds we liked best had bike trails as well as hiking trails. 
Thanks to all who gave us books to read. Advise play like your children would, fly kites, collect rocks and shells, build your own hoodoos.  And if you are going to succumb to fast food, Popeyes has the best spicy fried chicken. Tim's Restaurant at Lake Anna, Virginia has even better catfish and hushpuppies than anyplace we ate and National Forests and Army Corps of Engineers the best, cheapest campgrounds except the free small lake campgrounds we stayed at in Kansas. Forget avoiding tornadoes you can't no matter how well you try to plan your trip.  Autumns are going to be warmer with climate change so we are gong to get bad weather, can't be helped so plan to be hot and wet.
We decided 2-3months will be as long as we are gone ever again.  We miss the colors of home and even though we didn't fight, it will be nice to have another bedroom to go to when Pat is snoring away and I think Eliza, the cat will be the most happiest to be home, where she can roam the house and her backyard.  We missed our friends at the Fellowship and Hobbs Farm especially summer's bounty of fresh LI vegetables. We didn't see as many farm markets and farmstands as we had hoped. 
Pat drove 9600 miles and I drove 100 miles. We have been through 25 states and stayed in 22 for at least 1 day. You can bet he is TIRED.  Any time the road was wide enough for me to drive, it was also so windy my hands were not strong enough to hold this dinosaur on the road.  I hope to drive some on the Southern/Florida trip this winter. 

Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia Original Sins and Autumn

 Autumn at New River Gorge National River, West Virginia (above and below) Twin Knobs Kentucky and Indian- Celina Lakes Indiana

New River Gorge, West Virginia

About Original Sins, Tornadoes in Beautiful Bluegrass Kentucky and South West Virginia:

Ok Original Sin usually refers to Adam and Eve and the Bible, but in this case I am writing about our Nation’s Original Sins (and why we must try to be a Nation of Welcoming to those oppressed and homeless from other countries in the 21^st Century.)  The Original Sins: Slavery and the Genocide of Africans and Native Americans. We did not encounter much about slavery on this trip until Kentucky and touched on the number of Civil War Battles fought in Kentucky, more battles than most other “southern states”. In the both wars Kentucky was considered essential to win for its strategic place.  In the Revolutionary War the Siege of Fort Boonesborough (named after its famous inhabitant Daniel Boone who also fought at the siege) was pivotal with the British taking the Shawnee as their allies, but failing to take over the fort and so loosing Kentucky which was then part of Va.  I wondered what the British promised if they should win. I know the new USA did not keep any of their promises to the Indians who fought on their side. Pat and I read much in the replica fort about how Native Americans were treated by different nations who explored and took over parts of America. There were actual laws about it from each nation. By the time of the Civil War there was no more Fort Boonesborough, Kentucky was a slave holding state but had strong abolitionists so brother fought against brother and because it was again strategic many battles were fought there.  A plaque set up by the Daughters of Kentucky on the original site of the fort in 1950s was to me very embarrassing because I was born in 1952 and it was telling of the times it listed the brave men who made the settlement of Kentucky for the “white” people possible.    

The replica fort has artisans working as in the times of Daniel Boone, weavers, black smiths, soap and candle makers. We meet one man (at least 75 years old) who recreated muskets in the fort just as they made them back in 1700s and did scrimshaw type art on bones and antlers.  He was very interesting because he said he actually lived in a 3 room cabin with no tv or computers built like the cabins at the fort, heated by wood in a fireplace. 

Kentucky was good and not so for us because we broke down and it cost us big bucks to replace a throttle board in Lexington, number one horse capitol of the US, we felt lucky because we didn’t have an accident, but then at the Twin Knobs in the National Forest that night we spent a lot of time in the bathroom due to severe tornadoes in the area. We were lucky again because the tornadoes hit down the road missed us and didn’t kill anyone.  The rangers said it was rare to have tornadoes this time of the year.  Eliza, the cat, did not like being carried out of the RV in the rain and wind.  When we got to New River Gorge National River Park in West Virginia, they told similar stories at Little Beaver State Park.  It has been raining for a week now so we are a little crazy not being able to get outside as much, but the change in leaves makes us miss home so.  I wish California could have some of this rain.  West Virginia was formed as a state by seceding from Virginia during the Civil War being strongly populated by abolitionists and is now trying to come back from its King Coal past as a tourist outside adventure state.  The part we were in is just beautiful, but no river rafting due to the rain! We walked through a rhododendron forest that reminded us of Avalon at home.  The next two bloggs will be a surprise to everyone.  We are visiting my Uncle Bobby and Cousins in Virginia and expect to be home soon.

Indian-Celina Lake National Forest, Indiana

Extra Extra Read All About It or What Are the Chances???

He has to be in one of these two cars with 12 police cars ahead and behind.

So we are making time today on I-64 and Pat decides to pull off and get gas before getting into Indian-Celina Lake at Hooiser National Forest here in Indiana.  We see an exit that has several truck gas stations which means lots of competition, low prices, right.  As we get off there are all kinds of sheriff cars and state police blocking the roads.  Pat pulls into the station and fills up.  There are all these truckers standing around talking and line after line of trucks and cars waiting to get back on the highway so we are thinking let’s go back one exit along this little side road and get on because of the “construction” cones, etc… We navigate through corn fields and end up on a narrow road actually to the south of the exit we got off on(25 A/B Route 41 between two little towns of Stacer and Warrenton(?).  This road is blocked as well to 41.  Pat says to me what is going on is Obama visiting Indiana today?  I am laughing at him.  We park behind 3 other cars and get out to talk to the sheriff deputy and sure enough Obama is coming out of Evansville to visit some little company called Millennium Steel Service (54 employees) and they have blocked off all roads into and out of the area including I-64.  We end up waiting about 20 minutes watch the helicopter go over the road to check out everything and then Pat and I are waving and I take the photo.  The deputy says he sure hopes Obama doesn’t get shot because then Nancy Pelosi will become President.  Don’t know if it was a joke or not.  One nice couple with us missed their dentist’s appointments in the next big town, but in the meantime the wife saved a little kitten from the soy bean field(?) And the bad weather from the night before moved ahead of us.   

We like camping in National Forests and with the Army Corp of Engineers (as long as we are above the dams in storms).  Most campgrounds are closing down now and the window is only a few more weeks. Most of these campgrounds are run by volunteers that get free campsite space for the season in exchange for taking our $13-20 a night for the running of these camps. I will try to take a photo of this beautiful place tomorrow am before we head to Ft. Boonesborough in Kentucky. We are trying to stop at every state once.  Can't wait to get the state map to put on the RV...Getting giddy here, it is more like back east and cool at last. 

Walking in America's Henge

Carlyle Dam West Campsite

Pat at first level of the Monk's Mound at Cahokia

Pat at the TOP of the Mound

Stefani behind her are the stockades that the Cahokia ancients built to protect some of the City of the Sun

Pat within the circle.

Before our walk within the Henge

Walking in America’s Henge~  Cahokia Mounds (UNESCO World Heritage Site)

Just about the time Mesa Verde was inhabited by the Ancestral Pueblo Peoples and Europe was in its Medieval Period, City of the Sun with some 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants was thriving just east of today’s St. Louis in Illinois, near where the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers meet.  The place is called Cahokia Mounds after a tribe of Illiniwek Indigenous Peoples who lived there in the 1600s when a group of French Trappist Monks came. The society it is amazing and as sophisticated as the Mayan and Aztec Civilizations.   The Interpretative Center is GREAT explaining not only what archeologist found and understand about the society and civilization but exactly how they determined what they know! Just expertly demonstrated through life size dioramas and exhibits.  Check out http://www.cahokiamounds.org/

70 of the once 120 earth mounds built by digging dirt from “borrow pits” with stone and wood tools and transported in baskets woven from cattails and shredded red cedar carried most likely by slave labor rise above the flat land  to astonishing  heights and are protected within the World Heritage Site by the State of Illinois.  As much as 100 feet, the highest Monks Mound, a flattop mound for the principal leader to live on and rule all he could see, contains an estimated 22 million cubic feet of earth, an incredible science and engineering feat.  It overlooks what use to be Cahokian agricultural fields and villages. The other mounds are conical and pyramid like and mark the burial of the “elite” ones and mark also important boundaries and locations.  Excavations of Mound 72, a ridgetop or pyramid shape mound revealed 300 ceremonial burials, at least one important male 45 years old at death and a few others, but mostly young women remains with many grave offerings.

But what captured my imagination was “Woodhenge” because science and math and the spiritual combine at the place where five circular sun calendars were constructed over and over from 1100-1200 AD. Certain of the wooden posts parts found one year because of intense archeology trying to save the area from the modern day construction of a new Interstate align with Spring and Fall equinoxes and Winter and Summer solstices. Pat and I both walked the circle in reverence for all life and connections. They were scientists those long ago ancients.

We are resting today at probably one of the best campgrounds this wayfarin journey, an Army Corps of Engineer campground 50 miles east of Cahokia Mounds at Carlyle Lak It has over 20 miles of bike trails, a beautiful marina full of sailboats and WIFI. We haven’t watched TV all summer, but rain storms kept us inside and Pat found Downton Abbey, a Masterpiece PBS series which we can watch by “streaming”.  He found it because of reference to the sinking of the Titanic.  I am afraid we are addicted (he says he isn’t but you know men they can’t admit to things so frivolous.)  We watched all season 1 and now are into season 2.

The rainstorms out here are scary, got to go.  Love to all, see you soon.