Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Simply, Mesa Verde National Park is an extraordinary place and it has given us an extraordinary opportunity. Our purpose on this travel is to expand horizons and we have certainly done that here. We arrived here from Santa Fe on Friday afternoon, having driven from Santa Fe. It was really four drives in one: first, through the desert of northern New Mexico; second, descending from the plateau into Durango, CO; third, climbing out of the Animas Valley, through bright fall colors, to the entrance of the park; finally, winding up through the mountains to reach the Far View Lodge, so named because one can gaze upon Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Among other things, the landscape lends itself to remarkable sunsets. In mid-October, this begins at about 6:30 and lasts for about an hour. I've always loved sunsets. I used to decorate my apartment with a dozen or more large pictures of ones I had captured. This was the first opportunity in a long time. Saturda...

We all have ideas about our parents from before we were born. A few of my ideas come from stories their friends and siblings tell but mostly they come from the photo albums on the bookshelves of my childhood home. From the albums, I have always known my parents love driving in the western United States (they and I grew up in the East). So when my dad asked when and where they might join us, this seemed pretty obvious. So it was that on Tuesday, September 8th, after driving about 3 hours from Fort Stockton, Texas, we arrived at Guadalupe Mountains National Park and found my parents standing next to their rental car and waving. The kids screamed louder than the last time I cancelled dessert. El Capitain marks the highest point in Texas and the signature feature of Guadalupe Mountains National Park The girls and a Madrone (tree) Ali and Cate bonding with a park ranger Matching animal tracks was part of earning the junior ranger badge at GMNP Junior Ranger Success!...

The cure for our kids’ loneliness and claustrophobia was four days and nights at Camp Davis in Austin, Texas. Lily moved in with Annabelle, also 11 while Henry moved in with Clementine, also 8. Ali and Cate marauded through a house filled with unfamiliar toys and belongings of older girls. They sought (and got) nearly unlimited attention from two new adults, There were empty rooms (some quiet, some loud) and Real Beds. There was a dog. Miles of Smiles from the Makler/Davis Kids Cate and Eddie Some readers already know that Camp Austin belong to Lauren and Marc Davis. Some readers know that Lauren’s late mother was one of my mother’s best friends and until our lives finally converged in 1997, Lauren was a familiar reference of ambition and accomplishment (“Did you know that Lauren did such and such?”). Some readers know that Lauren has five siblings, had a garage that inspired the creation of Costco and spent her childhood in the back of a Chevy Suburban that may or may...

The purpose of this post is to show a few cute pictures and tell a couple of assorted anecdotes. There's really no theme, except for the fact that we had a minimum of 10.5 hours of driving to cover between Memphis and Austin. Story #1: The Best Restaurant in Benton, Arkansas. The children with Anjelica, mother of their nanny and owner of Riviera Maya Having decided to cover the distance in three days, we arranged our first day so that we would have dinner in the restaurant owned by the mother of our former nanny. The excellent food aside, the kids got a tour of the kitchen, various toys/treats and infinite hugs. Story #2: We lost Cate in the most beautiful campground. The Catherine Lake RV Park near Hot Springs National Park is an extraordinary facility. The pads are concrete and perfectly level. The bathrooms are immaculate. The pool, is warm and clean. The roadways are seamless asphalt. The lighting is just enough without disturbing the starry night. In other words, w...

There's a lot of fatigue going around. This day is a Monday. We wake up in a KOA surrounded by farm fields about 20 miles west of Memphis, in Marion, Arkansas. One of our travel skills is to look at a campground with Google Earth before we book it. We look to see how closely the campground sites are packed together. We look for evidence of a good (or bad) playground. We check out the pool. This one doesn't look promising. We execute breakfast. I can't think of a more appropriate verb. The KOA has a renowned restaurant. We got pulled pork sandwiches from them the night before and they were great. This morning the line is long and the food looks mediocre. School. This is a big day for Lily because we have withdrawn her from her online charter school and now we're going with a more traditional homeschooling approach. We got her new math curriculum from an Amazon Locker in Birmingham on Saturday and today we're diving in. It goes well and we feel encouraged. Honestl...

It was hard to decide that we wouldn't visit Selma. Each person we met in Montgomery gave us the same advice: go to Selma, walk across the bridge. But some of these experiences don't seem appropriate for the children, no matter how important they are. It has been in the high nineties consistently during our time here and we couldn't see how the kids would make it over the bridge and still have the capacity to comprehend what had happened and what it meant. (Apologies,:if you don't know this history, please look up the Pettus Bridge.) This is the constant debate with this in-person educational experience: confronting the history, in person and on site is more meaningful than reading about it in textbooks. This visit has caused me to consider how to encourage other families (or classes, or schools) to make this journey. But these experiences, these confrontations and emotional or intellectual conflicts, are difficult. I believe we (and by we I mean white Americans eve...