Faith, Folklore, and Friends

We have taken some odd things on trips.      Sometimes, we don't take enough; sometimes, we take way too much.   We have taken food and water, apparently thinking that wherever we were going didn't have such things.   We used to take a bag full of books; now we take a loaded Kindle and a bag of books in case we forget to charge the Kindle's battery.   Hub does most of the driving, so I usually take something to do with my hands, like knitting or sewing. I hand-quilted a full-sized quilt once on a trip to Sisters, Oregon, to a quilt show.  We have taken loaded weapons through states where it may or may not have been legal.  We have taken framed photos of our granddaughters to decorate our hotel room.  We have taken our own pillows, then left them in hotels in North Carolina and Oklahoma. We have bought plants when we were far away, then struggled to get them home alive.  Yep, we have packed some crazy and totally unnecessar...

In 1985, we went on our first long vacation as a family.  We had been to visit relatives in Indiana and Florida before, but had never set out just to see new places and try new things.  The four of us packed up our almost new Dodge pickup with a camper shell, and headed west. Some people in our circle had never heard of such foolishness. They could not understand why we would spend money that could have been used to pay the mortgage or other bills just to enjoy nature and expand our horizons. Crazy as a loon , they said. We went through St. Louis, then across the prairie.  I can remember stopping for gas and experiencing that constant prairie wind for the first time.  It snowed on June 13th, Hub's birthday, in the Big Horn Mountains. We followed the snow plow to Ten Sleep Canyon, where we found a little diner with the best pancakes we had ever eaten, except they had no flavored syrup for Mitchell. Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Mt. Rushmore, the Colorado ...

My friends and sisters, Jan and Ann, have birthdays the same week I do in January.  Every year, we have one lunch to celebrate them all. January was bad for us.  I had some oral surgery on January 5 that kept me moaning for most of the month.  Jan and Ann both had some health issues.  We postponed our lunch. We all got better, then Ann went on a wonderful trip to Florida, so we postponed the lunch again. We made dates for lunch and postponed it several more times, due to Mother Nature's confusion about North Alabama weather.  We reached the point where we were afraid to write it on our calendars, fearing another icy forecast. Finally, yesterday, we had our January lunch.  On March 12.  We had so much fun together, it was worth the wait.  Maybe we should do it in October this year. In addition to enjoying their company, I got this birthday present.  Jan is an artist and didn't know hummingbirds were my favorite, so it ...

Every place is different, and every place has unique beauty.  These photos are things I don't see every day in North Alabama. The spots on the photo above are from our dirty windshield; sometimes, it is just not smart to have the windows down. I tried to get a picture of the 80 mile an hour speed limit signs.  Unfortunately, Hub was always driving 80 plus, and all I got was blurs.  Maybe next time.