Meander with Me on the Road to Miscellanea

For those of you who are remembering that I promised to share with you my most favorite road sign EVER in an upcoming post, please be assured that I have not forgotten my promise.  That road sign will appear in the near future along with the next installment of our National Parks Trip #2 story.  Before I get to that, I wanted to share with you some random reflections about a few different topics or happenings that have been on my mind this week.  I don’t know about you but, if I don’t write it down immediately, it will be gone forever!  

"Miscellanea."  What a delightful word!  It sounds to me like it should be the magical town where all singular socks end up, all lost reading glasses convene and all the little screws from the whatchamacallit that Alan said not to lose can be found.  In my mind, the little town of Miscellanea might be found in the middle of the wheat fields of the Midwest or on a remote mountain plateau in the Rockies or even in the Alaskan outback, reachable only by float plane and dog sled.  But, alas, that’s not what Merriam-Webster says.  Merriam-Webster defines “miscellanea” as “a collection of miscellaneous objects or writings.”  And that’s exactly what we have here today.

Guess How Much I Weigh!

Okay, I have a confession to make.  I'm using the old “bait and switch” tactic.  Completely illegal and extremely annoying, I know.  Why did I pull a fast one?  Because I don’t really want to talk about my weight; I want to talk about how much my travel trailer weighs.  But, for those of you who are only interested (for whatever reason) in what I weigh, it’s 115 lbs.  That’s on a 5’ 1’ frame and it’s all muscle.  (Wink, wink.)  If that’s all you really wanted to know, you can safely stop reading.  I promise there will be no further divulgence of personal information today.  Unless you count a list of items we pack in our travel trailer as personal information and you have a burning desire to know what’s on the list.  What’s even more interesting than what's on the list, though, is how much the items weigh.  You will be amazed!

Social Hermit: A Personal Definition

The photos accompanying this post are of places and campsites that held particular appeal due to their solitude or the feeling of quiet contentment they evoked.  Enjoy!

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned the fact that I consider myself a “social hermit.”  While I won’t necessarily claim credit for coining the term, I have to admit that it’s not a phrase I’ve heard uttered by anyone other than myself or my husband, Alan.  (I’m pretty sure he’d be classified as a social hermit, too, but I’ll leave it to him to conduct his own psychological evaluation.)  Since I’m aware that those two words – social hermit – can conjure up an image in people’s minds of a guy of indeterminate age with a long, shaggy beard who lives by himself in a shack in the woods, bathes in a creek and has no contact with the outside world, I thought it might be a good idea to share with you my personal definition of social hermit in order to dispel that myth.  Because, really, I don’t look or live anything like that.  And, although we may not be consciously aware of it, an individual’s personality can have a major impact on his or her travel style, as well as the activities he or she enjoys. 

Three Cheers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers! (National Parks Trip #2)

This post represents another installment in the series detailing the second of our three cross country National Parks camping trips with kids and travel trailer in tow.

Prior to our first National Parks trip with the kids back in 2007, we hadn’t yet experienced the delight of camping directly in State or National Park campgrounds.  We had only had our first travel trailer for a year, and most of our early camping trips involved private RV parks with activities for children.  It was during that 2007 journey that we ventured into the Madison Campground in Yellowstone National Park.  That two night stay would forever change our camping lives and I devoted a blog post to that event some time ago (A Camping Epiphany - link HERE).  So, when planning the second of our National Parks trips in 2010, I was focusing on state and federally operated campgrounds in the locations we would be visiting.

The first night of the trip, we stayed in the RV section of one of the travel plazas on the Ohio Turnpike.  The second night would bring us to our first actual campground, and a love affair was born that very night.