We spent one morning walking around Manassas National Battlefield.  The kids hated it but we made them do it anyway.

Then we went to our niece’s wedding, which was great fun.  Though Ian thought it was all boring, but he liked eating dinner.  Again, I did a bad job with pictures.  I only took this one shot of the kids, didn’t even think to take a better one of them all dressed up.  Then I got tired of lugging the big camera so I put it back in the truck.

On the 4th we went over to Don’s house for a cookout, which was great fun.  The kids got to play with cousins, which they loved.  They had a Magic 8 Ball, which said we’ll be settling in New England.  If only I had thought to ask two years ago.  The kids played with sparklers, then we crashed the Congressional Country Club fireworks and watched from beside the fairway.  It was great, close to the house and no throngs of people.

Next stop – Hershey PA

Luray was very hot, so not nearly as much fun, or pretty,  as when we were there in the fall.  We didn’t do as much hiking as I would have liked because of the heat.  We did go up to Skyline Drive a couple of times though.  Don’t forget to hover your mouse over the photos to see the comments.

Sean went for a hike by himself along the Appalachian Trail.  We dropped him off in the afternoon, then picked him up about 20 miles down the road 2 days later.  I’m very proud of him for accomplishing his goal, but I don’t want to do any overnight hikes myself.  Maybe if someone else carried the backpack, but I doubt it.  It was very hot and buggy.  And yes, I had to feed the kids.  I love PBJ.  I did grill hamburgers one night but they weren’t great.  The chocolate frosted donuts for dessert made up for it though.

We repeated a hike we did last time we were here, down to Dark Hollow Falls.  It was a lot more crowded this time, even on a weekday.  We had to wait quite awhile for people to get out of the way so I could take pictures.  By the time they did, the sun was back out from behind the clouds, spoiling my pictures.

One day we drove over to Harper’s Ferry, where we had a good hike last time.  Sophie came with us since we were going to be gone for several hours.  The hike was steeper than I remembered, and she had some trouble with it.  Looks like age is slowing her down and she won’t be able to go on hikes that aren’t mostly flat.  Its hell getting old.

We checked out the used book store in Front Royal that I found for sale online.  The store itself was great, but when I asked the guy behind the counter if it was for sale he said no.  Okay, hmm.  We stopped again a few days later (buying more kids’ books) and there was a woman behind the counter.  I asked her if it was for sale.  She said no, but she’d sell it if I wanted it.  We exchanged a few emails and I found out she had listed the store for sale a couple of years ago but took it off the market.  I think I must have found the old ad.  I checked out the area schools a little bit online and it was not encouraging.   I found a site that compared schools within the state, and these schools all ranked in the bottom third.  Its a nice area to visit, but it didn’t make me want to stop looking.

In the meantime, I’m thinking of using the blog space to chat about our efforts to be more eco-friendly. Here’s a new blog that’s just launching that looks very interesting to me. Can’t wait to see what they post in the next few weeks – http://simpleorganic.net/

Continuing the nutshell, after Spokane, we went down to Bozeman, Montana, and LOVED it! It was gorgeous, a cute little town, and seemed like it had stores on the main drag to draw locals, not just tourists, which was nice. In the end though, I’m afraid it might be too small. I’m thinking of very social Caitlin, and the people who mentioned that in small towns, you’re kind of stuck with the people who are there, you have to make friendships work, even if you don’t like the people that much. And Ian, who I would like to be able to know other autistic kids, in addition to typical kids. These things lead me to gravitate toward the outskirts of larger towns/cities. Much as I loved Kalispell/Bozeman/Glacier National Park, I think those places are too remote from bigger cites.

We’ve just spent 5 days in Colorado Springs, and loved it. We need to go back to Orlando, and work on getting the house sold. I don’t think there is a whole lot we can do, other than replace the dead grass (don’t get me started) and get the carpets cleaned. While we are waiting, Sean and I plan to take a trip by ourselves to New Hampshire/Vermont in October. We still want to see at least that much of New England before we make a final decision. Other than those two states, our top picks are Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. We need to do some tax comparisons before we make a final decision. I would really, really love to have a state picked before we sell our house. Unfortunately, I think we’ll have plenty of time to arrive at a decision. The good news is, I know we can find places in each of the states I mentioned, that will make us happy.

I really will work on getting pics up reasonably soon. I’m just too anal about that, I like them to be perfect, and I like to process them in order, I’ll try to get over that…lol.

We stayed fairly busy here.  We went to see fireworks at a nearby town, Deer Park.  The guy in the office of our campground said they put on a really cool display every year.  We couldn’t find any info about exactly where, or what time, so we ended up getting there about 8pm.  Turns out fireworks weren’t until 10pm, so we had some time to kill.  The kids were pretty good about it.  We were at the high school, on the track field.  Ian ended up walking/running an entire mile, while Caitlin did half.  They also practiced summersaults which is always funny to watch.   The fireworks were cool, but only lasted a little over 10 minutes.  I’m guessing with the economy woes, they had to downsize this year.  I talked to someone else later who was also there, who said her 9 year old daughter was really ticked off because last year was so much better.  I was okay with it, my kids were tired.  I got to practice fireworks photos, which was fun.  One nice thing about going back to Orlando, is that I know where I can see Sea World’s fireworks without going into the park, so I can practice some more.

We did a good bit of driving around, and found a lot of really pretty properties right outside the city.  This could be a possibility for us.

One of the funnest things we did was go to a U-pick strawberry farm.  Oh my gosh!  I have never done this before, and these were the BEST strawberries I’ve ever had!  They let you eat as many as you want while picking, which is smart, because we ended up buying a lot more than we planned.  They did start to get mushy by the end of the day though, so we froze a bunch for smoothies.

We went to lunch with a friend’s brother and his wife while we were there, and it was really neat.  Their office is on the penthouse floor of one of the historic buildings downtown, with quite an interesting history.  We got fantastic views of the city, and had a great time chatting about life in Spokane.

I’ve fallen behind, because I’m losing interest in keeping up the blog.  Not just that, but the whole trip in general, really.  Which makes me mad because we’re finally at the best part.  But its just too much traveling, for too long a time.  I’m sick to death of being the tourist, always trying to figure out where we should go, what we should see, and always on the go.  I know there is so much interesting stuff everywhere, but I’ve gotten to the point that I just don’t care about most of it anymore.  I’m also finding it harder and harder to keep up with school with Ian.  Its too hard to have a routine and get it done while we’re traveling.

The big news is that for many reasons, we are cutting the trip short.  We plan to be back in Florida sometime in mid-September.  We’ll continue through Washington to Montana, and down to Colorado for a bit, then head back to the humid hell.  At this point, I don’t know what we’re going to do about seeing the Northeast.  It seems too much of a shame to skip it altogether, but the idea of getting back in the RV for another extended trip is so repugnant to me.  It depends too somewhat on what time of year our house sells.   We’ll see.

We stayed at a campground right on the Columbia River, and watched lots of big ships going back and forth from Portland.  It was really cool.

One day we took a Scenic Drive and saw a few waterfalls, and did some geocaching.  We stopped at Vista House, which overlooks the Gorge.  What a beautiful view!  Multnomah Falls is the popular one.  I first saw it on one of those art doors back in Grants Pass, then people told me we had to go see it.  It was really beautiful, but pretty crowded.  You can see it from I-5, and there is a rest area where highway travelers can stop and access it.  The kids loved it, they got squished pennies and ice cream.

Mount St Helens was really cool.  It was a pretty drive through a bunch of forests owned by Weyerhauser.  It was neat seeing signs for when they planted and when they plan to harvest.  I think they let the trees grow for about 45 years.  Talk about long term planning.  Anyway, it was so interesting to see where the vegetation changed so much after the eruption.  Its still looks very different almost 30 years later.  Right near the mountain it still looks deserty and surreal. I’m waiting for free internet access again to upload a bunch of pictures to Flickr.

I took the photo of the Noble Firs because they looked so neat.  With the branch structure, it looks like the whole scene is composed of layers that don’t quite match up.

Our GPS let us down on the way here though, it said the entrance was several hundred feet past where it really was, and we weren’t watching the road closely enough.  We missed the turn off, so drove down some other streets trying to get turned around.  It looked like one street made a loop but when we got to the end, it was a dead end.  Sean had to back the rig up for 1/4 mile to get to a point where we could turn around.  Its really hard to back up in a straight line, and keep it straight, for any distance.  That was LOTS of fun.  Good thing we were in the middle of nowhere, there was no traffic to worry about.  Then, within 2 minutes of getting out of the truck, Ian found fireants and got 4 bites on his hand, and 3 on his waist.  On his waist??  I still haven’t figured out how the heck that happened.  I had him wear a glove on that hand, since I couldn’t put bandaids between his fingers to stop him from scratching.  I almost stopped to see if I could teach him to moonwalk, but we were busy setting up.