I've been on the road for a year, and school has started again. I rarely hear from anyone reading this journal, so I think it probably served it's purpose and is pointless. I will dismantle it one of these days soon.

If you want to follow my travels still, check in from time to time with my photo journal, which is currently a bit behind.

http://www.cyberspaces.net/travels/usa.html

Thanks for tuning in for the last year!

Oh, you could also write to me at khryskringle at yahoo dot com.

Over the summer, this journal is pretty sparse. However, I thought I'd mention that some of my pictures from spring travel have finally been posted. You can see pictures of Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and Philadelphia at:

http://www.cyberspaces.net/travels/usa.html

If you are interested in following my summer quilting, I have a quilting blog at:

http://desertskyquilting.blogspot.com

It's been a while since I posted anything here. There are two reasons. One is that I had about 1000 pictures just for late March and early May, and I hadn't gone through them to add to my webpage. The other is that we've been sitting still in Lemmon, SD, for the month of May.

I have now started working on the late March pictures and have some of eastern Tennessee up on the website. More to come, of course, including the fabulous Valley Forge snowstorm and Gettysburg in the sun.

Check out what's new at http://www.cyberspaces.net/travels/usa.html.

We haven't had WiFi for 8-10 days, so I haven't posted anything in the journal. Dial-up, without DSL, is slow and costly by the time you get things. I had forgotten! I'm so spoiled. For tonight, we have it again. Then we'll be in Lemmon, and who knows?


We finally decided we might as well leave Mitchell, home of the world's only
Corn Palace. Really liked that town. That's about 3 places this spring that I thought might be okay to live - Knoxville - just north of in a small town, Mitchell, and another place in TN, just a cool little town we passed through.

While we were in Mitchell, waiting for the snow in the western part of the state to melt, and the air to warm up, we had a little



snowfall ourselves.

On one beautifully sunny day, we drove in to Sioux Falls. Mitchell is about an hour west of SF. There we took about a million pictures of the actual



falls on the Big Sioux.

We are in Belvidere at the KOA tonight. There's a little lake here, very little. It's very quiet, with the freeway about half a mile away. There are frogs, geese, and at least one cow we heard, as well as other critters. Spring hasn't hit here yet, really. 5 of about 40 tulips were blooming and a big tree is starting to leaf out, dandelions in the grass, that's about it.

Tomorrow, I guess we'll head on into Lemmon. I probably won't have too many journal entries here over the summer. We'll be sitting quietly in Lemmon for most of it, so if you want to see anything I'm doing, be sure to check:

http://www.cyberspaces.net/travels/usa.html

There should be a lot of updating in the next month. I have two months' worth of pictures to go through! Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Amish country, Sioux Falls, and lots more.

Today, our history lesson was Gettysburg National Military Park. We did part of the auto tour. We never did find the main entrance to the park, but we saw a lot of monuments. We overheard a tour guide say that there are 1300, and that everyone who can be commemorated is. The panel who decides these things has decided there will be no more monuments.

I think the one that will stick in my mind the longest is the one from Louisiana. I don't know what the artist meant it to be, but to me, it's the angel of death standing over the fallen.



We drove up on Seminary Ridge. I never realized it was a Lutheran Seminary. The original 1826 building is still there and beautiful. I'll post pics on my website eventually, when I have both time and WiFi. Driving into the next block, we could look out over the ridge, down the valley of farms and forests. I know the numbers. The 13,000+ dead for the union. 10,000+ dead for the confederacy. But until you are there, until you've driven miles and are still seeing monuments of where there were units of one or both armies, I don't think you can imagine just how huge a battle this was from July 1-July 4, 1863.

It gives me a feeling for other battles, such as Waterloo - thousands and thousands of men on both sides, killing and dying. I've read about the people coming out after that battle, some to find loved ones, some to rob the fallen. I wonder if it was the same at Gettysburg?

My best friend, Fran, did arrive. One of her suitcases didn't, at least not on her flight. 5 flights landed 30 minutes or more early, and 3 were from Phoenix. Her bag was on the last one, so we stood around for an hour at the baggage place, and it turned up just as we were giving up. She arrived so late at night on Tuesday, that we stayed in Philadelphia, and then drove to Lancaster, for the quilt show, the next day.

On a whim, we went by way of Valley Forge. The history there is awesome, but we were . . . I don't even know how to describe it. It started snowing while we were there. The wind was blowing and it was so cold. We stopped by one of the encampments where they have reproduced 4 cabins of the size and type that Washington's men had. There are bunks for 6 men on either side of the door, and a fireplace at the end. Very cramped quarters, indeed!

There was almost no one else there, so I pulled over and parked the car, to run the shortest distance in the cold, to take pictures inside. The wind was really strong, maybe 25 miles an hour, and it was right at freezing temperature, so that I felt half-frozen when I ran inside the door. The shelter from the wind made it feel warmer immediately, and I was so grateful.

I thought about the soldiers who had lived in those cramped quarters, and thought they must have been grateful, also, to have even that much shelter. As I stood there, little flakes of snow sifted down between the cracks in the roofing. I suddenly felt such a kinship with those men, and an appreciation for the lives they led, the wounds, the blood, the sickness they tolerated for the concept of freedom.
Truly an experience I don't want to forget.

A view into the cabin, showing the fireplace and 6 of the 12 bunk planks.

We've been having a wonderful time pursuing spring through the south! I've taken hundreds of pictures and had very little WiFi access. There are some new things up, but lots more to come as I find WiFi days.

Next week, I know no WiFi. Following that, I'll be at a quilt show in PA with my best friend. Probably little time for computers. After that, we are heading somewhere else, and I'll hope for lots of WiFi along the way. We are thinking about that satellite again. Between not finding WiFi, and not getting dependable WiFi, the satellite is looking better all the time.

http://www.cyberspaces.net/travels/usa.html

A few more pictures went up last night. Be sure to check the latest. Tomorrow night, I will post a gorgeous sunset here. I took almost a hundred picture, figuring that at least half of them would be no good. In fact, only two came out fuzzy! I've narrowed it down to 30, now just have to pick the 8-10 really best ones and put them up. Here's a preview:

Check the latest pictures, highlighting the geographic question, "What is it like there?"

Clue #2: Check close to the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.cyberspaces.net/Travels/usa.html

What is the Rio Grande Valley like, you ask. There are farmlands, homes and businesses, and towns and traffic. There are beautiful sunsets now and then, when it isn't cloudy or raining, windy or humid. Lots of sugar cane and citrus! Here's a picture of a machine loading a huge trailer with oranges.





Before we got to the Rio Grande Valley, we visited other Texas rivers, the Nueces River and also the Llano River.

On Thursday, March 2, we will be heading out again.

Clue #1 - We're heading for a big city to the north of us.

In case you've been wondering why there's no update, it's because we aren't going anywhere. We're still parked right in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

However, I did get a nice Texas sunset the other night, and I have pictures from a quilt show this morning. Check back in a couple of days for updates on

http://www.cyberspaces.net/Travels/usa.html

Finally found 4-5 hours to devote to web pages! The center and left blocks of the table are new. The left block has links at the bottom of each page to more pages.

And there are yet more! But not today. I hope you enjoy this look at . . . did you figure out the state was Texas? The western part of Texas is western in weather, environment and attitude. The eastern part of Texas is much more southern, in climate, in language accent, and in attitude. It's an interesting place! The pictures from Cattleman's and the sunset were taken in far western Texas, near El Paso. The pictures added today are from central Texas. It doesn't seem to know whether to be desert or hill country. We saw many fields with both prickly pear and non-desert bushes. More pictures from this section of the state will be going up.

We've moved on beyond that now, and are definitely in the south! We're in an RV park along the Rio Grande Valley. We are several miles from the actual river, and border with Mexico, but not too many. There have been quite a number of places where we could see Mexico a couple of blocks away. Here the weather is very warm, and often humid. It was 92 on Friday, with more than 50% humidity. Today was close to 80 and the humidity was down, so it was very pleasant.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of the Triple R Zoo! Keep following the links from the Nueces Wildlife Trail to find them.

http://www.cyberspaces.net/travels/usa.html

Wow, so much time has gone by! We've been without WiFi for several nights, and I guess I forgot to post when I updated the page last.

http://www.cyberspaces.net/Travels/usa.html

Pictures were taken with my digital Kodak DX7440, and "doctored" by Photo Plus. Enjoy them, and see if you can figure out what partly western state most of them are.

I've been so busy with the camera! More pages are up again. Some, I think, cool pictures of ice in Percha Creek, and a few others. I really have to stop taking so many pictures!

We'll be on the move again, probably Tuesday. Continuing east, and heading for a town called Van Horn. Check the map to see in which state we will be traveling for the next 6 weeks or so.

http://www.cyberspaces.net/travels/usa.html

3 new pages, including another ghost town have been added. Lake Valley is on the road to Hillsboro, which is north of Deming.

If you are into the quilting part, there is a new quiltshop posted - from Las Cruces.

Oh, my gosh! I was looking out the window while I spoke on the phone, and I noticed little white things blowing around, like cottonwood lint. But wait, it's the wrong time of year for that! So, I opened the door (into the cold, cold, cold) and put out my hand. Sure enough! There are miniscule, tiny snowflakes falling out of the sunny sky! Clouds to the left, clouds to the right, blue sky with snowflakes blowing in the middle. I have a little feeling that the sun is going to go away soon.

Snowflakes! I can't remember the last time I saw snowflakes!

Yes, we are back on the road, making our way east along I-10. We are parked in the Land of Enchantment, in an area Pancho Villa roamed and ravaged in the wild days of the west. Columbus, about 30 miles south, was his port of entry, and is still one today for tourists. There's quite a nice museum in Columbus, dedicated to information about the Pancho Villa raid. There is also a school where I taught 2nd grade for a year.

We visited a ghost town! However, we saw no ghosts, just grackles. For an idea of what a grackle is, check the pictures that begin with

Steins Ghost Town Once before, in St. John's, Arizona, toward the end of summer, I mentioned grackles, I think. They are very noisy birds!

There are new entries on the page. I hope you'll enjoy the geese and the bird pages! These were all take in Southern Arizona.

We'll be traveling again within a week. Stay tuned for hints where we will be. Our next stop will be somewhere enchanting.

While you were sleeping, I put up a few more pictures. =)

http://www.cyberspaces.net/Travels/usa.html

is the main page. The two blocks with the New graphic in them have additional pictures. See the owls at the bottom of Strange Animals, (along with the Second Story cat and the ostriches, if you missed those) and see new sunset pics at the top of, strangely enough, Arizona Sunsets!

Quilt related pictures are, as always, at the bottom of the page. I think I added my churn dash blocks to the block page under My Quilts, and I know there are a couple of new Arizona quilt shops with pictures.

On January 1, these pictures will all go away. But not really. A new page, that looks just like the old one, except it won't have all the entries in the table until I start adding a lot of stuff, will go on. The bottom left box will have a link to the 2005 pictures.

New things to see and do, coming up soon! We leave Tucson on January 2! We're going east, and that's all I'm saying at this time. =)

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year! New beginnings, new possibilites, new opportunities. The world is waiting for you to come out and play!

We aren't moving very fast. In fact, we aren't moving at all! However, we did take a little trip out toward Quartzite the other day and I took a few pictures in a place that always interests me.

http://www.cyberspaces.net/Travels/usa.html for the latest postings.

I hope you are all enjoying your pre-holiday season!

And happy birthday to me! =)