Roan Mountain Shopping list 2012

This is the shopping list for the annual family trek to Roan Mountain, Tennessee. It's not all the groceries, just what my family needs to navigate through the meals supplied by others. While most years I buy from the local "American Owned" Ingles grocery in Newland, NC, this year I went to Walmart in Columbia, SC. Why I had those two to choose from is for another posting.

Bacon

Bananas

Bath Soap

BB Cards

Biscuits

Bread

Buns

Cereal

Charcoal

Cheese - Wisconsin

Cigars

Coffee

Condiments

Corn Chips

Crackers

Crystal Light

Dr Enuf and other sodas

Eggs

Esquire, etc.

Flour

Foil

Fruit

Hamburger for 8

Lighter Fluid Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies

Lunch Meat

Margarine

Matches

Milk

Mt Olive Bread and Butter Pickles

Onion

Paper Plates

Paper Towels

Peanuts in Shell

Pinto Beans

Pork Roast

Potatoes?

Potted Meat

Pringles

Salsa

Salt and Pepper

Sausage

Sugar, SweetLo, etc

Tabasco

Tomatoes

Vienna Sausage

Wasp Spray

Wood Chips

The things scratched out will remain on the list for next year, we didnt need them this time, but you never know when we might. As usual we had too many condiments, too much charcoal, not enough margarine, just enough cigars. In addition to buying this stuff, there were numerous trips to Jacks grocery for more ice, more tomatoes, more onions. The mysteries surrounding the closing of the Davis Girls Peach shed in Roan Mountain and the unusually hard peaches at the Hump Mountain Produce Stand will remain unsolved until another year.

It was another weekend well spent. Included a nice drive with Mom from Columbia, SC to the mountain. A trip to my grandparents gravesite. A minor league game between the Elizabethton Twins and the Burlington Royals. Rain delayed the game but we got to walk around the park and get some souvenirs. A drive with cousins Becky and Barbara to Fred's General Store in Beech Mountain. Lunch at Bob's Dairyland for bbq sandwiches. The best steak dinner of the year. Hiking around Carver's Gap and the torturous jog up to the Miller homestead. Sunday morning sermon at the campground, a bit rambling but heart-felt and full of truth. Kevin's story of Inez and Aunt Bill at Harry's wake, which seems to get funnier and weirder each time I hear it. Numerous games of dominoes. NT's passion for Moose Tracks ice cream. And no gathering is complete without a few heated family arguments about things important and things trivial. A good time.

As we head to the mountains one more time

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”


― Madeleine L'Engle

 

Don't believe this

But I do, I was there, I saw it happen.

246pm, grabbed a cab in downtown San Francisco on a Tuesday afternoon. Around the 500 block of Market Street.

315pm, same day 29 minutes later, I'm sitting in a plane bound for Phoenix.

Cousins

Cousins are interesting relations. When you're growing up they are a measuring stick for how your life is faring versus that of others in your extended family. Your parents and their parents were siblings so you sense that the parenting should be the same. Would be nice if you could pick what you like best from the attributes of each. You would think that at a minimum the rules would be similar, as in, "mom, why do we have to go to church today? Aunt Trudy lets her kids skip..."

You feel that you should also in some way be on equal ground with them when it comes to the material things of this world. "Dad, can we get a motorcycle like Uncle Ted?" Somewhere along the way the comparing ends as lives just get too complicated and too different. Deaths, births, college, work, illnesses, family crises affect us all in different ways.

If you're blessed, as my family is, you finally get to the place where you simply enjoy that shared experience of having a same set of grandparents. It is something special to to share, and I do so with thirteen other people. One of these is my cousin Barbara.

Barbara and her daughter, my cousin Becky, came to visit us last week. Barbara was, to her family, what my daughter Rachel was to ours, the first grandchild. Supposedly the chosen one, as they might both think. The one lavished with attention for something they had nothing to do with, landing on earth ahead of the hoard to follow. 

When we were growing up the age difference between us seemed massive, so I have few childhood memories of Barbara. She was the grownup cousin who was so old she hung out with my aunts, and at places only teenagers could understand, with mysterious names like "The Blue Circle". She was in the background as I did things with younger cousins. Now the difference is not so big, as I am catching up on her in age. And it is good that after all these years we have that family bond and a long list of similar experiences to draw us together. She and Becky serve as the best reminder to all of us, that after the parenting is over with, parents and children can be very good friends. They enjoy being together and it shows.

Becky and I have the unique shared experience of once having ordered blistering hot coffee in an outdoor restaurant overlooking DC in the middle of the hottest night of summer. It was an atmosphere so sweltering it could have been the waiting room of hell in some old movie. It was about the stupidest thing to order but it seemed like the thing to do. Because that's what our family does when family gets together. We drink coffee and then we drink some more coffee. This may not seem unique but we really had no control over the situation. It was something our people do.

The funny thing about cousins is that you know tons about each other as it relates to family travails and experiences, but often know little about their real lives. And that's why at this stage in life it is so good to spend time with them. To compare notes on experiences shared and unshared.

I am glad they are both my cousins and I am especially glad that in the year 2012 I enjoy their company more than at any time in the past.

Monday at Carver's Gap

This is where I spent last Monday, hiking around Carver's Gap, along the Tennessee/NC border. I had a meeting in Knoxville on Tuesday and decided to go a day early and roam some old haunts in Carter County. I flew in to Johnson City on Sunday, spent the night there and spent Monday night at Beech Mountain.

All in, it was a wonderful day. I spent about two hours here, up and down hills, an hour out and back. Some of it I walked and some I ran. Odd to be there by myself, as I'm always here with family. The day included a drive through Roan Mountain State Park, the villages of Roan Mountain, Banner Elk and Beech Mountain. Breakfast in Elizabethton and a drive down Main Street. Lunch at Bob's Dairyland in Roan Mountain, a treat I waited too many years to enjoy.

It was election day in Elizabethton and for an hour or so the tea party was out in full force at the Monument, protesting the latest proposed tax increase. Benny was on the porch, but I didn't stop to chat. I should have.

At Beech I stayed in a non-descript little motel called Archer's Mountain Inn. Nice views, nice rocking chairs on the porch, and good neighbors in the other rooms.

Walmart-Maplewood Missouri-10:16 pm

Last weekend we spent a day in St. Louis. No Cardinals, just family. Had a wonderful day at the lake house of my daughter-in-law's family and got to know her mom and dad and aunt and uncle a little bit better. It's a strong family and it makes me feel good about the way life is unfolding for my son.

We went to Walmart on Friday night. Nothing special happened. Just the normal stuff of life. At these visits even the mundane seems special, because you're with those you love and don't see often.

So for about 48 hours tiny little things like getting gas, and donuts, and petting dogs, and discussing the health of tomato plants seemed bigger and more full of life than they otherwise would. It's great being around family for holidays, but in some ways being together on the ordinary days is even better.

All 50 states - finally

After several years of traveling around the US, on both business and family vacations, I finally made it to all 50 states. The last one was Oregon, around 2pm this afternoon. This is a picture of the welcome center in Umatilla, Oregon. I stayed in the state for about 20 minutes, about the same amount of time I spent in Idaho a couple of years ago.

I don't remember the order I went to all the others, but the last five took a while to round up and were in this order: North Dakota 2006, South Dakota 2007, Wyoming and Idaho 2009, Oregon June 24 2012.

Nice to be done with it. I was hoping for a scenic drive, but Spokane Washington to Umatilla, OR  is more like the West than the Pacific Northwest. Hills, prairie, tumbleweeds. Beautiful in its own way I suppose.

By the time I got out of HS, I had been to TN, IL, WI, IN, KY, GA, NC, VA, AL, MS, FL, LA, TX, NY.

College travels only added a few more: MO, AR, KS, IA, SC.

The 80's and early family vacations added OK, MD, PA, DE. Business travels took me to AZ, CA, NJ, and all the New England states.

The 90's added business and family travel to CO, NM, MI, WV, OH, WA

The 2000's brought family vacations to AK and HI and the move to Minnesota opened travel doors to the west. NV, UT, NE, MN, MT, and then the last five mentioned above.

I want a lake

I am in the midst of a multi-year search for a home on a lake.

Our home in the suburbs of the Twin Cities is too big. It is great at Christmas and holidays when its all decked out for a special event, or when company is coming. But the rest of the time its a lot of space to keep clean and maintain, not because we want to but because we have to. Because its there and we own it.

Thus, the past year and a half we have been working on a dream of swapping bedrooms and an extra story for lakefront. It's a big undertaking and one that is easy to do around here, but difficult to do exactly right. While we have hundreds of lakes to choose from, finding one that is the right size and suitable for year round activities with houses in our price range is tougher. Combine that with the normal problem of finding a house that you actually like, and it gets pretty tough. In the last week we've gone back and forth between the expensive, ready to move in type to the fix-it-up yourself project that you wonder if it can be made livable. All of them are farther away from the city, which is both a positive and a negative.

We are looking for land (but not too much), privacy (but with neighbors close by), in the country (but near the city), flat lot (but not too flat), and finally a Goldilocks lake that is just the right, not too small or too big, not too deep or too shallow, not too popular or too deserted. Piece of cake. 

Running dreams

I dreamed last night that my feet had begun to change shape from years of running. They were very flat and flexible, and you could bend them so that the toes touched the shin, like with a newborn. The toes had the thickness similar to a pancake and curled upward at the end. They were very bruised and bluish. I showed them to my wife, though neither of us were overly concerned.

What is odd about this, is that after over 14 years of not missing a day of running, I hardly ever run in my dreams. My dreams are about other things that have nothing to do with my real life. Weird stuff. Like the one I had about giving golf advice to Phil Mickleson at our house in St. Louis while babysitting a kid with no body.

In the dog days of Spring

It finally got into the 80's here a couple of weeks ago, warm by Minnesota standards. Despite the fact that the AC was broken, we had a great weekend with the whole family together and Uncle Kevin. What made the weekend great was that we didn't overdo it on activities. Mainly just hung out with one another

 We went to the drive-in one night, and out to dinner another. But a lot of it was just being at home, watching the rare Cardinals game on TV in Twins territory, the girls doing some sort of craft, board games and card games, Sunday morning at church, and the like.

No single thing stood out, just a series of very nice moments together.

When I was a young parent and wondered what it would be like when the kids were grown and visit, I think it is a weekend just like this that I would have had in mind. 

Fish On

There is something about fishing that puts all the other cares of life to rest. A day of fishing is a bit like an afternoon at the ballpark. No matter what you have going on, it is easy to get lost in the moment and focus solely on now. That's the way it was last Thursday morning in Heber Springs, Arkansas.

Caroline and I did not catch any huge trout, but we caught a lot of them. On Arkansas' Little Red River at the Red River Trout Dock . We fished from around 730 to 1130, with our guide, Roy. She caught 22, I got 11. She was 2-1 on me all day and cast a line as she was born to do. Like riding a bike, once you learn how to cast you never really forget it.

This was a good ending of a week long trip of visiting family and wrapping up a first year of college. A great way to kick off the summer. An even better way for a father and daughter, who rarely get to do things together, to spend a day forgetting about everthing else that is swirling around them. For a few hours there were no texts, no emails, no clocks, no phone calls from parents or clients, no posting to facebook, no deadlines. Just a couple of rods, a boat and a cool slow river inching its way across the belly of a beautiful piece of ground.

The weekend I did almost nothing

Got rid of a futon by giving it away on craiglist. Went to see "Hunger Games". Grilled steaks on Sunday night. Cut the grass for the first time this year. Loaded salt into the water softener. Went to church. Went to Costco. Got a haircut. Ran about six miles each day. Played scrabble. Watched a Cardinals game on tv. Scotch guarded the new outdoor furniture cushions. Planted flowers in various outside containers. Restocked my supply of charcoal and hickory chunks. Pulled weeds. Finished watching "24, The Complete Series", for the third time, all while running on the treadmill. Watched game 6 of the 2011 World Series, also while running. So baisically, running, watching tv, yardwork.