Johns Trippin'

I love checking things off of lists. I've gotten to do a lot of that over the past 20 months, and I'm almost done. We've visited 47 states as part of this trip. We'll pick up the last two on the mainland over the next two weeks. We've visited 57 parks as part of this trip. We'll pick up the two that we missed in Florida next April with my sister's family. We don't have the offshore ones scheduled, but I'd love to get to them someday!

We stayed for two nights at Tyler State Park in Tyler, TX. We arrived at night; cue the dark music... duh duh duhhhhhhhh! Trees by the road are normally okay, but this one leaned toward the road and we had to take a tight right turn by it and away from other campers. Did I mention that it was dark, really dark? We scraped the slide cover on the tree and bent it. I say we, because, I saw it and said nothing. Michael was able to take off the cover, no sweat! He rocks like that. Michael drove 99.999% perfectly and we were so close to our site. So frustrating.  The next day after school, we went to go and see my Aunt Donna and Uncle Lindsey. Caleb woke up with a cough, but they told us to come anyways! We got to go outside and see their garden and irises! I looked through a huge book of beautiful pictures that Uncle Lindsey took of birds and irises while the kids watched some of the World Cup and played with Lincoln logs. Like his dad, my Great Uncle Ned, he is a master naturalist. Mic...

We left Tiger Safari in Oklahoma and as soon as we were heading out, the Harvest Host we were heading to canceled. Okay. Normally, that would be fine, but this is the weekend after Thanksgiving and everything in the area was booked. I called an RV Park for the third time and the woman answered and said that they were full, but then she put me on hold and then... told me a spot did become available. Yay! We had a spot at Creek Crossing RV Park from Friday to Sunday with a free late checkout! How do you fix a sliding door? I have no idea. Michael got this door off of our back bathroom and eventually fixed it. He rocks the RV!   After setting up the RV, the kids watched a movie and ate pizza. Michael and I went on a date! Caleb and Asher gave Michael a birthday present of money specifically for a date with me! (Bonus!) That is so adorably sweet! We asked my cousin Genea for some good Texas restaurant ideas and she recommended Spring Creek BBQ. First, we stopped by Home Depot to get a ...

A few weeks before we went there Mom/Julie called the manager of the zoo and, when she did, no answer. Then a little bit later, Mom called again, this time he answered the phone and said, "Sorry, I just got back from India." I'll tell you Mom was surprised by that!  She asked if we could park at the tiger safari and he said "You can park in my driveway, if you want. It's only a walk away from the safari." And she accepted the offer.  If you don't know already, we got to pick where we want to go to for to states and the tiger safari is where I wanted to go to in Oklahoma.  Anyway, when we got there the manager asked, "Do you want to see a baby zebra?" "Of course!," we said. And boy that zebra was not happy. She would probably bite your fingers off if you put your hand too close. She would kick the walls of her cage. She was about 1 and a half years old. When I saw her I thought:  Tomorrow we get to go on the Mega VIP tour and bottle fe...

We were tired of staying at three campsites for only one night, so we decided to take a break and stay there for two whole  nights. As this picture shows, we had an oil rig and a highway in very close proximity. Courtesy of Google Maps On the plus side, we've never lived on a service road or this close to an oil rig before. We were just there for the full hookups, but we did do two things here: We got our Covid booster shots and our flu shots. Dad took us to a movie theater where we watched the first two episodes of Season Three of "The Chosen."

  Triple L Farm is a Harvest Host. We stayed there one night. It's a small farm with goats, chickens, two pigs, about five dogs, and a cow. Right after we got there, we got a barrel train ride behind a tractor. Playing on the trampoline with their daughter Dad posing with Thor the cow That night we had a nice campfire with them. We all had a lot of s'mores and marshmallows.

As we were driving in, there was a dog laying in the middle of the road. We later found out that there was a girl dog next door and the dog that was laying in the middle of the road was a boy dog and he liked her (🐕+💙), so he tried to stay as close as he can to her. Apparently that requires laying in the middle of the road at 7pm at night. When we parked and I got out I was kind of surprised to see a free range mammoth donkey named Tinkerbell. Well I've never gotten to pet a mammoth donkey... until today! Apparently they are one of the only species of donkey that are social/nice. Tinkerbell is the only one that will come up to you. Then we slept and in the morning mom told us to draw one of the mammoth donkeys in our sketchbooks. Also we found out that there was a fun zipline to zip on. The zipline was perched atop hay bales with tarps over them. We played on the zipline a while then we bought some donkey milk and left to another RV place. They are eating their grain Big hay bale...

Most people we meet on this RV trip ask us "what's your favorite place?" Well, for starters, favorite what? Favorite National Park, favorite campground, favorite thing we've seen, etc. It is really hard to answer that question because of how different everything is. You just can't compare anything. So, short story shorter, there's no way to have one single favorite anything in this lifestyle. Unless it's a shower. 

The reason we went to Baxter Springs was because I didn't feel like we had gone to Kansas. When you think of Kansas, you probably think of a never-ending prairie. To me, the middle of Kansas City (the Kansas side) didn't feel like that prairie. So, we went to Baxter Springs. We picked Baxter Springs for two reasons. One, dad had heard that it was part of the inspiration for the movie Cars. Two, Baxter Springs is right in the corner of Kansas. We stayed at the Baxter Springs Campground in the city park. The campground was empty so we got it to ourselves. Caleb and Jordan liked bringing the bunnies to the picnic shelter and letting them run around between the tables. We went to explore the town. The population of Baxter Springs is around 3,852 .  We tried to go to the Baxter Springs Visitor Center but it was closed. Instead we went to the Baxter Springs Heritage Center and Museum. There was some interesting things there such as the world's longest wooden carved chain . You ne...

Caleb was excited about going to this state park. Who wouldn't want to visit the only public diamond-producing area in the world? More than 400 diamonds are found every year on average including the biggest diamond ever found in the US, The 1924 Uncle Sam diamond of 40.23 carats! There have been many other notable diamonds such as the 1998 Strawn-Wagner Diamond. It is a 1.09 carat diamond described as a "flawless 0/0/0 perfect diamond" by the American Gem Society. We drove into the Crater of Diamonds State Park at dusk and found our spot for the RV. Starlink doesn't work well here with all the trees. Michael drove up a few feet with Asher on the roof with Starlink, but the connection only got worse. Fortunately, it was good enough for Michael to get his work done for the week.  It was sunny, but really, really cold. It went below freezing on some nights. I read from the book "Peter Nimble" a couple of nights. On the other nights, we watched "The Mysteri...