Our visit to Vicksburg Mississippi was a very educational experience. Not only did we have a great time visiting the historic Civil War battle site, we also stopped in the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. The nearby playground and mural wall were very cool too.
Our travels have taken us to many amazing places and we have seen some interesting things along the way. Mississippi was no exception. LaFleur’s Bluff State Park was a very convenient place to stay while visiting the Jackson area.
Moving around so much means that making friends on the road can be tough. When we choose our next campground there is always a randomness factor. Who will our new neighbors be? It is our hope that we get no neighbors or cool neighbors, but at least quiet neighbors. Never the neighbors with the “cute Christmas jingle” that plays every time they open their door.
Luckily for us our Thanksgiving campground destination happened to have some great neighbors. At Minooka Park, half way between Birmingham and Montgomery, we discovered a really great place to stay. It is an ATV park with RV campsites many of which have full hook-ups. The ATV riders were all very considerate in the campground and the trails are out of the way so noise is not bad. We loved it and made some new friends too!
Our neighbor at Minooka Park was one of the county commissioners, Jim Hardee. He invited us to spend Thanksgiving with him and his family. Sharing a wonderful meal with some great company made it a very nice holiday on the road. He also arranged for us to get a more personal tour of the capitol when he found out we are visiting all of them. We were very thankful to find making friends on the road is possible, especially when those friends are so awesome.
When thinking of Alabama rockets might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but it should be. Huntsville in northern Alabama is where the development of the space program, NASA, really began. Wernher von Braun was a pioneer in the field of rocket science. The US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville is like a tribute to this rocket scientist that changed the course of history in a major way.
Our travels through Tennessee led us to an unexpected location. A small town with lots of charm. Lynchburg, Tennessee might be known for it’s Jack Daniel’s distillery, but there is so much more to experience in this quaint small town.
Often when visiting an area we have a few plans for what we will see and do while we are there, but other than a tour of the capitol building, we had no idea where life would take us in West Virginia. It is nice to not really plan too much sometimes because it leaves us open to do what the locals recommend.
Our adventure basically started in Ohio where we bought our travel trailer, but we missed seeing the Ohio capitol so we made our way back to the city of Columbus. Before we got there however we made a stop back at our first camp in Amish country.
After a wonderful time in Connecticut and Rhode Island, we were really looking forward to Massachusetts. Our first stop in the state was Cape Cod. Like all the National Seashores, Cape Cod was beautiful and we loved spending time at the beach. Traffic was kinda crazy because of a large rotary plus the primary road switches from two lanes in each direction down to a single lane in each direction. So every time we drove anywhere there was lots of traffic and it took longer than we expected. After visiting the cape, I quickly realized why so many people brave the traffic to find a parking spot near the beach. We loved building sandcastles, watching the seals swim by, and seeing the sailboats. The kids were also able to earn another Junior Ranger Badge and we all learned about the local wildlife at a ranger program about the areas birds.
Giving our children an education that they could never receive sitting in a classroom at a desk has been what our adventure is all about. There are so many amazing places to see and things to experience in this country that it makes homeschooling so easy. The best part about it is that we are learning all this great stuff together. We have now taken them to half of the state capitols in the country and to countless museums both large and small. The learning never stops and what I love is that my children are so excited about learning and tell me how much they like to learn new things; something I think every parent wants to hear. Our travels have recently brought us into the first of our New England states and we experienced another first which was visiting back to back state capitols. Most of these northern states are pretty small which made it easy for us to visit both Hartford and Providence from the same camp. We made our home in Connecticut for a week and explored the area.
