Driving Photos

By holding the camera facing backwards and aiming ‘blind’, I was able to capture some photos in the car during our trip last week. I think they tell a great story of our adventure.

Sometimes Catherine was awake:

Sometimes she was asleep:

Sometimes Momma drove the car:

And sometimes Baby drove

Heading Home

Friday morning saw Catherine and I packing up, eating breakfast and saying our goodbyes to Kirsten and Mark. We hopped in the car and proceeded to shuffle off to Buffalo. The rain stayed with us the whole trip, but we enjoyed the tap, tap, tap that it played on the roof.

Catherine especially liked playing with the Lyttles, our hosts for the night:

Party!

We were happy to get to celebrate Kirsten’s birthday with her.

Corn Field

I had the opportunity to visit my lovely friend Heather today while Catherine had some quality time with Grandma.

Heather and I had a little knitting lesson, became engrossed in some philosophical discussions about life, drank some tea, ate lunch at Biddie’s and visited some giant ears of corn. Not necessarily in that order.

WoodBlogging-On Location:Ohio

Catherine and I have logged quite a few hours on the road over the past two days. Including pit stops and lunch dates and such it comes out to around 18 hours total. The trip was not as challenging or long and I had expected it to be.

Catherine makes for a pleasant driving companion. She enjoyed watching the trucks pass by, digging through her bag of toys and books, listening to an ever changing selection of music and occasionally taking a little nap.

We are settling in nicely here in Ohio and are looking forward to spending lots of time with Grandma, Grandpa, Kirsten and Mark.

Here are a few pics from the trip so far:

Travel Journal

For our first anniversary, October 26, 2003, Jennifer gifted us with the traditional first anniversary gift; paper. It came in the form of a spiral bound travel journal. We got off to a slow start with only a couple of entries until the spring of 2005 when the posting took off with our trip to Russia. Since then we’ve faithfully recorded our travels, large and small. Our most recent trip to Ohio gave us enough material to fill the last remaining pages.

The book is a hybrid journal and scrapbook of sorts. It includes narratives of our journeys (often with mileage notes and time markers) as well as having brochures, napkins, photos and ticket stubs pasted in. While I am the primary note taker, Peter has chimed in with his perspective from time to time. Even Catherine has made her mark in the book. Our entries are full of misspellings and grammatical mistakes (due to hastiness while trying to record everything) and poor penmanship (due to writing in moving vehicles).

I love looking back through the pages and reliving the memories that we’ve made over the past four years. We’ve been to Ohio, Russia, Canada, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, and a ton of places in between. We’re looking forward to finding a new journal and filling it with even more memories in the coming years. I wonder if my grand children and great grandchildren will have as much fun reading about our adventures as we have had living them.

More pictures are here: Travel Journal Album

Mount Olga or “why I love hiking”

At the Molly Stark State Park you can find very clean bathroom facilities and a trail to the top of Mount Olga. As we hit the trail Peter turned to me and asked, “why do you love hiking so much?”

When I started to answer I came up with one or two reasons, but as I kept thinking I came up with many more. So, why to I love hiking?

• It’s outdoors. I love the fresh air and sun shining through the trees. I love the smell of fallen leaves.
• There’s often a great view as a reward for all your work fighting gravity.
• It is free- for the most part. Usually if there’s a park fee it goes back into maintaining the trails and facilities, so it is totally worth paying.
• It is great exercise.
• It is quiet.
• There is very little commercialization surrounding it (minus EMS and REI and LLBean- but you can hike without spending one penny at any of those)
• It is family friendly. And I have great memories of hiking with my family when I was a kid.

Well, the list could go on and on. Hiking just makes me happy.

And I was happy last Sunday when we stopped into the Molly Stark campground and hiked to the top of Mount Olga.