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One of the great things about traveling in an RV is the unexpected
treasures you discover along the way.
For example, we were looking for a place to stay near Cooperstown, NY so
that we could see the Baseball Hall of Fame (which, by the way, has a great scavenger hunt just for Boy Scouts).
We ended up at Herkimer Diamond Mine Resort. Right across the street was
the Herkimer Diamond Mine. (read what the Travel
Channel had to say) We got to pound on
the rocks and search for real treasures! What's even better is that we didn't plan to go there. We just stumbled upon it. For
our boys, the extent of their mining knowledge came from the Webkinz site. The reality was nothing like what they expected, but
they were very intent on finding a gem.
After 2 hours, they actually found a rock with 2 Herkimer diamonds embedded in
it totally by accident - it way lying on the ground. The rock will make a great souvenir
and the memories of us diligently hammering away will last as long as the diamonds.
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Thanks to our newest sponsor, graphics designer Dan Bernardo, we now have a
logo! You'll soon be able to show your support for homeschooling by sporting your very own D2E gear. The logo is exactly what we had hoped
for...the image represents a road winding through an area near both water and
lush vegetation. The red dot represents
us, in the RV rolling down the road. The
image as a whole spells out D2E, for Driven to Educate. We love it!
Dan was quick and clever and very easy to work with! If you need a great designer, he's your man!
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During our travels we’ve been learning the capital of each
state that we travel through. To help us
remember, we’re using “movies” in our minds.
Here are the movies to help your children remember too:
Tennessee - Picture
a tennis player smashing a large pill over the net, instead of a ball.
Smash+pill=Nashville, tennis = Tennessee
Virginia – A very
rich man asked a cute girl named Virginia for a date.
Rich+man=Richmond, girl’s name=Virginia
Maryland – You
see a woman dressed as a bride dangling an apple from a fishing pole. She’s trying to hook her groom, not a
fish. She really wants to land this one
and get married.
Apple+pole=Annapolis, married+land=Maryland
North Carolina – Think
of the North Pole and carolers. These
carolers aren’t singing Christmas songs.
Instead, they’re cheering, “Rah, Rah, Rah!”
Rah=Raleigh, North Pole Carolers=North Carolina
Pennsylvania –
You’re a cartoonist and you’re using a pencil to draw a cartoon of a hamburger
with weird punk-rocker hair.
Hairy hamburger=Harrisburg, the cartoonist’s pencil=Pennsylvania
New York –
Picture the Empire State Building in New York City (New York is the Empire
State). Now picture a bunch of bunnies
hopping all over it.
All bunnies=Albany, Empire State Building=New York
New Jersey – Your
favorite football player took off his brand new jersey and stretched it out on
the ground. Then he put a tent on the
jersey.
Tent+on=Trenton, football jersey=New Jersey
Connecticut –
Picture a giant heart flopping around in the back of a Ford truck. What keeps it from bouncing out of the
truck? It’s connected with a rope.
Heart+Ford=Hartford, connected by a rope=Connecticut
Rhode Island – Picture
a small island that you can hold in your hand.
On the island is a tiny road. You
see a professor walking down the road searching for evidence of a lost civilization.
Prof+evidence=Providence, road+island=Rhode Island
from Kids Learn America! by Patricia Gordon and Reed Snow
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Although we had planned to go to Bar Harbor, a few days ago
it became apparent that we weren’t going to make it (budget constraints,
scheduling problems, etc). Rather than
miss the state of Maine entirely, I began to search for alternatives.
What I came up with turned out to be one of
our best days yet. We drove the van to
Portland and spent the day doing a unique Art project.
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My boys are about to graduate from the 1st and 2nd
grades and I’m upset. We're messing with tradition. This is how it’s supposed to
look…
At the end of the school year I make a scrapbook of all of
the things they’ve seen, made, participated in, accomplished and experienced
that had anything to do with school in the past year. (I take LOADS of pictures throughout the
year because you just can't keep everything.) Then we invite all of our friends
over for a huge Open House to celebrate graduating to the next grade. The kids act as guides, explaining everything
to their guests. We put the scrapbook
out for everyone to peruse. We make
appetizers and desserts. The boys also
alternate giving a presentation every year to practice their
public speaking. They have to research a
topic, make a presentation board, memorize their “speech”, and then give it to
the group (without fidgeting), which is usually between 20 and 30 people. We've done it the same way every year for the past three years.
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Today we hauled our bikes to the “Battle Road Trail” at
Minuteman National Historic Park in Concord, Massachusetts. It’s
the same road that Revere, Dawes and Prescott used to warn their neighbors “the
Regulars are coming out!” (They did not
say “the British are coming”…at the time they were all British.) We started at the Visitor’s Center where we
watched the multimedia theater program The
Road to Revolution, which gives a great introduction to the park, Paul
Revere’s Ride, and what would come to be known as “the shot heard round the
world”. Once on
the trail, there are signs and monuments scattered here and there that tell the
story. We pedaled along 10 miles of the actual
road where British soldiers retreated under intense gunfire from the colonial
militia after the first skirmish of what would become the Revolutionary
War. It happened April 19th,
1775. It’s remembered here in
Massachusetts as Patriots Day and if you’re lucky enough to be here on the
actual anniversary date you can get up early and watch the re-enactment. It’s supposed to be incredible. We all agreed this has been one of our
favorite days so far. The weather was
perfect, the scenery looked like something from a movie, we had fun, and we
learned about history at the same time.
Perfect.
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The Jenney Grist
Mill looked like something in a painting - the stream with the arched bridge, forsythia in bloom, the waterwheel
turning. I was smitten. Plymouth, Massachusetts is really a beautiful
little town, and this place is one you won’t want to miss. Not just because it’s pretty. The tour is fabulous, enjoyable for children and adults.
You'll learn
the history of America’s first gristmill, established in 1636 by Pilgrim John
Jenney. The tour is led by the “miller”,
who explains his job, his tools, and the importance of his work during the days
of the Pilgrims. You get to see how the
waterwheel turns the 2500 pound stone that grinds the corn. You also learn interesting tidbits like where
the phrase “keep your nose to the grindstone” and “earmarked” came from. This was my favorite tour in the area…short,
interesting, very informative.
While we were there the herring were running up the river
used to power the mill. They come up the
freshwater river from the sea to spawn.
Standing on the banks we could see hundreds of them, all steadily
swimming upstream. The kids loved it. Wish we could have stayed longer, but we wanted
to see the Mayflower II and Plimoth Plantation before heading home. More on that later…
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You have got to see Mystic
Seaport! We had so much fun
there…very hands-on. In fact, we had so
much fun the first day that we came back for a second (your tickets are good
for 2 consecutive days). We started at
the Charles W. Morgan, the oldest wooden whaling ship in the world. When you climb onboard you are greeted by a
staffer that offers to reveal the secrets of the ship. After we explored the ship for a while she
told us about the green pieces of glass that were flat on the top but prism
shaped on bottom that we found all over the deck of the ship, pointed side
down. They were used as light bulbs,
refracting the light of the sun and spreading it around the hold of the ship. She
told us about the one berth on deck, for the captain’s wife, who often got
seasick and needed fresh air. Cool, and we were just getting started!
From there, we listened to a presentation on how whales were
hunted. Loved the whaling songs, but the
description, and later the pictures of a whale being killed and the blubber
being removed were gruesome. After that
we made our way to the children’s museum, which was so much fun that the kids
didn’t want to leave. I loved the fact
that it was simple. It wasn’t high tech
at all. It had a galley, an old
pot-belly stove, a wooden table, 2 berths with round windows to look out of, a
big wooden boat to climb on with fake fish that you could throw overboard and
try to catch. In addition, there was a
quiet room with books, puzzles, instructions for tying knots and a lesson on
signaling ships with flags. It was a
great place to engage the imagination.
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Driven to Educate is proud to support the incredible journey of the
Vogel family, who plan to share what they learn pedaling from Alaska to
Argentina with other children. We are thrilled to welcome the Vogels
as monthly guest contributors to the Families on the Road Spotlight!
Five weeks and counting. The final countdown has begun, and the amount of visits by the FedEx man is decreasing. Our pile of gear has taken over the garage and I'm making a valiant attempt at imposing some sort of order upon the chaos.
I feel good about where we are in our efforts to drop out of life for a couple of years, but we still have a good ways to go. This
is the very first time since 1973 that our house has been totally,
completely emptied out, and we are finding all kinds of little odds and
ends that need to be attended to. We're stripping wallpaper, patching holes, and taking off fixtures in preparation of painting the entire house. It
may not be finished by the time we leave, but we should have made good
headway – and it'll be easier for the property management people to
finish it up.
With each day that passes I feel more and more excited and apprehensive at the same time. No – I'm not concerned about the biking part of this adventure. That's the easy part. It's
all the little details that are a pain in the patootie right now –
making sure we've got our finances organized so we can access them if
we need to, arranging for mail drops, and making sure the house is safe.
I keep
telling myself that, come June 8, we will simply board that airplane
and leave it all behind – whatever isn't done at that point, won't be. And that will be OK.
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We're excited to be able to partner