Trip Photos--In Stages

I know you were waiting for these.* Rather than dump every photo I took on our trip (and please, take a moment to read the difference between a trip and a vacation here) all at once, I'm going to split them into some loose categories.

First up: The journey east.

The kids entertained themselves pretty well in the car, actually. I never did have to use the Game Boy. Charlie was able to read--alleluia--because the roads were significantly smoother and straighter than those around our home. So he and Cubby read almost all the time. Jack pretended to read, did some drawing, and looked at the activity books with stickers.

Poppy also enjoyed the activity books.

Mostly she enjoyed decorating herself and her seat with the stickers so that whenever we got out of the van I would find a horned toad or a salamander stuck to her rear end.

The first night, we camped at Osage Hills State Park outside of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. If that town sounds familiar to you, you will enjoy this story.

So we're driving along through a pretty empty part of Oklahoma, and I see one of those big ranch signs over a dirt drive that reads "Drummond." And we were about to come to Pawhuska.

Click.

That was the Pioneer Woman's family ranch, and in Pawhuska is the Mercantile.

I don't read the Pioneer Woman's blog anymore, nor do I know much about the business she opened up in the town near her ranch, but I knew her last name and I knew where that business was. When I announced this to A., he was confused. "Okay, so a blogger lives here?" was the unimpressed reaction.

Whereupon I had to explain that Ree Drummond is more like a blogger who became a brand. Like Martha Stewart, not like me. I don't think he believed me until we drove past the Mercantile and he saw all the people going in and out. And when we saw some Pioneer Woman-branded barbecue sauce in a Meijer's grocery store in Ohio.

Anyway.

We didn't stop at the Mercantile. We had a campsite to get to. 

The state park was very nice. There were quite a few people in the RV portion, but in the tent sites up the hill, we were the only ones.

Girls' and boys' tents. And the trusty van, ready for the moment I make an Instagram page dedicated to its travels.

This park is one of many with infrastructure courtesy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, including a lookout tower constructed of stone that was right next to our campsite. I took the above photo on top of that, and the children LOVED playing on it.

I was slightly less enamored of their continual climbing/jumping/running up and down all that stone, envisioning a cracked head miles from an E.R., but it sure did keep them entertained.

This was definitely the nicest campsite we stayed at. There was a bathroom with showers and toilets, and no bugs. Perfect.

Onward and eastward to Mansfield, Missouri, home of Laura Ingalls Wilder in the last (many) years of her life.

You may recall that on our trip west last summer, we stopped at an LIW site in Kansas. (You probably don't, really, but we did.) Cubby is still re-reading those books over and over, so he asked if we could stop there again. I told him we could stop at a different LIW location, because our route was taking us just about thirty miles from Mansfield, which is where she lived for the last several years of her life, and where she actually wrote the books.

It was chokingly hot and humid that day, but we got our first entire family photo taken by a nice older couple.

Everyone's looking at the camera, at least, though with some of those faces, maybe it would be better if they weren't.

The site itself was just okay. It lacked the interest of the other LIW sites I've been to--which is now five--because this was not the setting of one of the books, just a place she lived after all the pioneering of her childhood was done.

Still, it was interesting and a good break from the van. A. and I were disappointed we couldn't see the other big attraction in Mansfield: Baker's Creek Seeds. But we had already stopped too long and the eastward march must go on, so we continued. (Never fear. You'll hear about Baker's Creek again.)

That night we camped in Missouri in the Mark Twain National Forest. I can't remember where we were, exactly, but our campsite was right near a small lake.

And there's Adventure Van peeking into the photo.

This campsite had fewer amenities: No running water, and plenty more bugs. There were lots of fireflies as night fell, which the children enjoyed chasing and catching. Unfortunately, there were also plenty of biting bugs at night. All of us got really itchy bug bites under our clothes, except for Poppy. She slept in her zippered footie pajamas.

Just try to find a way into these, bugs.

Despite the lack of luxuries, this campsite was more comfortable because of the carpet of pine needles that provided a soft surface for the tents. Poppy sure slept well, as you can see in the above photo.

The next day we just drove until we hit Cincinnati and a figurative wall, at which point we stayed at an unremarkable Red Roof Inn. I don't remember doing anything interesting this day. We were very focused on just getting to Blackrock at this point.

Which we did, the next day. And that is where we will leave this episode of trip photos.

To be continued . . . sometime.

* Actually, I know you weren't, but since this is basically my personal online journal and photo album, I'm gonna post 'em anyway.