the gookins dot net

Here are some pictures from Texas and Louisiana for your viewing pleasure:

Allison “swading” in Galveston

Look, Trundle, Don really does exist!

Where’s the basement?

Jess at Houston Children’s Museum

All of us at the Tabasco Factory

The Tabasco Fish

Fort Pike (near Slidell, Louisana)

Bad Alligator! Bad!

Anyway, here’s the real update. We are just outside of Pensacola, Florida. Today we went to the Museum of Naval Aviation. It was way too cool! I felt like a kid in a candy store. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera at home (the RV) and had to buy a disposable camera along the way. We only had 2 hours there, and did not get to see everything we wanted, so we might go back tomorrow, since it is FREE. There is also a lighthouse, 2 old forts, and other stuff to see in the area, which is actually in the Pensacola NAS. I would definitely recommend a visit there if you are ever in the area.

So before this, we stayed outside New Orleans in a nice state park, Bayou Segnette SP. It had a boardwalk into the swamp, and we saw many egrets, and heard owls and toads. We would have liked to stay longer, but they were “full” for the weekend. It poured again Thursday though, and there were many empty spaces when we left.

When we registered at Bayou Segnette, we were amazed to find another family that we had camped by in Galveston checking in just after us. The kids played at the playground together, and I got a chance to talk to their mom, Stephanie. It was nice to talk to someone going through the same things we are. We didn’t get to see them again before we left because of the lovely weather, and we were kinda bummed. But, you never know, maybe we will catch up with them at another park.

Florida.

We have been going through internet withdrawal, so we stayed at an RV “park” (quotes, because that is all there is room for at our site-park the RV) that has Wi-Fi, for an extra charge. So we paid $5.95 for 24 hours of internet access, and we intend to get our money’s worth! We are going to pull an all-nighter, and let the kids fend for themselves tomorrow while we sleep. Not really, Jeff, so don’t be calling your social worker friends on us.

School has been going much better, I finally sat down and got better organized. I was trying to do things like at our house, which didn’t work having all that stuff out. I pulled worksheets out of the books a week at a time, and now I can stick all the big books away.
It rained all day yesterday, and we developed our own personal swamp right outside our door. It has now receeded back to the part of the campground that is supposed to be a swamp.
We made it in to see the French Quarter today, but had an uneasy feeling about parking the car and actually walking around, so we didn’t. Don & I decided it would be a place we would like to check out ourselves, not with the kids. We did drive down part of Bourbon St., luckily the kids were too engrossed in being goofy or reading to notice the shops. Now we know why it has such a raunchy reputation.

This post was written Feb 20.
Don has been hogging our website (nothing new), so I thought I had better do something about it. He has been blogging like crazy, and I really don’t even know much of what is on here. Right now we are driving from Lafayette to New Orleans, and even though we have only been buckled up for about 2 hours I am already hearing “Are we there yet?” types of things.

The kids seem to be handling all of this traveling well, there hasn’t been too much arguing or irritability (no more than usual, anyway). Jessica’s bossiness is about the same, and we have to keep reminding her that she doesn’t need to take control, that we have things under control. I thought at first that maybe she was having a hard time adjusting, I know she misses her friends, but then I thought “Oh, yeah, she’s always been like that” it’s just that we are in closer quarters, and I can hear how often she tries to take charge. Matt and Allie seem to get along very well lately (with only a few outbursts), they are often silly and giggly and play well together. I try to get Jess in on it too, but she gives me the “I’m too big for that” scowl and says they are bothering her. I feel like she feels like she’s on the outside of their inside joke or something. My hope for her is that she will learn to relax a little and not feel like she’s too big for all the fun. And not feel like she has to be in control. Or maybe it’s just in her personality, she has always been a little irritable, a little moody, a little controlling, a little…too much like me for my comfort.

Allison has been sleeping in her own bed for almost a week now. We finally just had to put our foot down, and after a couple nights of frequent trips across the rv to drag her back to her own bed, it seems to be going much better. But I am not going to hold my breath, because she always seems to revert back to her need to snuggle up real close (practically pushing you over kind of “snuggling”) to someone. Not such a safe thing when your bed is 4 feet off the floor.

Schoolwork (the book kind) is not going as well as I had hoped, but I thought by now we would slow down our pace a little. I would like to sit down every morning, at least for math. Much of what we have done would be considered unschooling, and I don’t think the state of Iowa likes that. But I did have a plan, we just have been moving through the book work part of that very slowly. We have learned a lot,though, especially in history. I finally figured out a good way for us to make a “time line”- we put the dates on index cards, so they are easy to arrange and fit in new dates. This is probably nothing new, but it was a great discovery for me! So everywhere we go, we take a stack of index cards and the kids’ journals. Though getting them to use them is another story…

The weirdest thing we saw in Texas: a guy crossing a major highway on a riding lawnmower, with a microwave oven on the front.
Weirdest thing seen in Louisiana: Drive-thru daiquiri shops. They’re all over the place. Anyone know what’s up with that? If you do please let me know.

We left Texas and headed into Louisiana last Thursday (the 17th). We spent one uneventful night in Lake Charles then went on to Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun country. Yesterday we went on the tour of the Tabasco factory on Avery Island. Tabasco is one of my favorite foods, so I thought it was really cool. (Or should I say, really hot?) One of the really cool things was how the McIlhenny family (who started and still run the company) have protected the environment on Avery Island, and even helped save the snowy egret from extinction, all long before environmentalism was a trendy cause. We also got to sample a bunch of Tabasco products. The kids recently started using a small (very small) amount of Tabasco on some foods, so they even thought it was neat to see where it’s made.

Written 2/17/05:

We went to San Antonio yesterday, and went to the Alamo. It was a really neat educational experience for both us and the kids. (Did you know Texas was actually an independent country between from 1836-1846?) I was a little disappointed though because it wasn’t really like I expected. I always imagined it to be on the dusty plains, with a lone cactus and some tumbleweed blowing by. In reality it’s in the middle of downtown San Antonio. Obviously, it was there first and the city grew up around it, which is the reason for one of the other disappointing things; that only two of the original sections are still intact. A big portion of the original structure was destroyed, and other buildings popped up where it’s walls once stood. Not that I’m complaining, because it was still really cool.

P.S. - If you know the movie referenced in the title, leave a comment! The first person to get it right gets …probably nothing, but comment anyway.

Written 2/17/05:

Two observations about Texans driving:
1. At least 40% of all drivers in Texas are completely and totally insane.
2. Apparently, lane lines are just followed arbitrarily. They are more like a suggestion of where might be a good place to drive.
The scariest thing is that I fit right in.

This post was written on February 14th.

We had some really good weather today, so we took the kids back to the beach for some “swading” (Jessica’s term for half-swimming, half-wading). The forecast was good for the next several days so we decided that instead of heading into Louisiana, we’d go a little further south along the gulf coast. We drove to Port Lavaca (is that Spanish for “the cow”?), and found a decent campground on the beach that is actually pretty cheap too. We will probably be here for 3 nights. We’re planning to stay around here one day for more beach fun (and laundry) and a trip up to San Antonio to see the Alamo before we head out again. I’m not sure yet if we will venture further south (Padre Island) or head back east at that point. I think the mood is improving for us all, and maybe we are finally getting into stride with the fact that this is our home and our lifestyle now, rather than still being in “vacation mode”.

This post was written on February 13th.

Despite all of the cool things we’ve done and seen so far, Chris and I have both been feeling somewhat discoraged because things aren’t working out as well as we had hoped. Other than the fact that the weather has been cold and/or rainy almost everywhere we’ve been, we’ve had a lot of problems with the RV. Our bed is hard, and we both wake up with aching backs. Even though we got the new water pump installed, we still don’t have very good water pressure when we use it. Our auxillary battery doesn’t hold a charge very well. And we’ve found out that although a 29 gallon gray water tank (where the sinks and shower drain to) sounds big, it can fill up in as little as 1 day. What most of this comes down to is that it makes it difficult for us to do any boondocking (camping without any hookups). Since boondocking is generally free, we figured we would be doing it about 25%-50% of the time. Since we can’t do that we’ll have to stay at campgrounds with hookups, which are substantially more than free. We are thinking about cutting the trip short. We will still be heading to Florida, and then to visit my sister in Atlanta. But after that, we may head back to Des Moines, sell the RV, and buy a conversion bus. Buses have many advantages for long-term traveling, but we would want to do a lot of the conversion ourselves so we could have things exactly as we wanted. On the other hand, we’ve only been on the road for about 1.5 weeks, so maybe we’re still adjusting.

Chris and the kids at the hot springs:

A cool pic from the hot springs:

The kids running on the promenade at the hot springs:

Our RV with our “toad”:

After a brief overnight stop in Nagodoches, we made it to Galveston Island where we are currently staying at the state park campground, which is right on the beach. We have a nice view of the gulf right fromthe RV. The weather has been rainy and cold, but we let the kids wade in at the shore, and took a long walk on the beach to collect shells. We could even see some dolphins jumping a way out from the shore. Today (Sunday) we went into the big city and went to the Children’s Museum of Houston. They have some really good exhibits, and it was free since we have a reciprocal membership from the Science Center of Iowa. We’re staying in Galveston one more night, and probably heading east into Louisiana. Mardi Gras ended last week, so it should be safe to visit with kids by now shouldn’t it?

After Hot Springs, we headed to Crater of Diamonds State Park. We stayed in the park campground, which is right among the tall pines. We spent a couple hours prospecting for diamonds in the mine field. Basically, the way it works is that they bring up tons of dirt from the mine, and spread it out over like 49 (muddy) acres, which visitors can then go through (for $6 each) searching for diamonds. We found some neat calcite and other minerals, but no diamonds. Jessica was a little disappointed, but she still had fun. Matthew got the “muddiest kid” award. After two days there, it was time to go further south in search of some warmer weather.

This post was written on 2/5/05:

OK, we stayed at the same campground in Hot Springs for the past two nights and the owner seemed like a pretty friendly guy. He came around to collect money from us shortly after we got there, gave us directions, and made small talk whenever he went through. So today we worked on replacing the water pump and then flushed out and refilled the water tank, which took all morning. About lunchtime, the owner drops by and asks if we were having trouble. I told him I was working on the water pump but we had everything under control. So I go take a shower, and we get everything packed up and are just minutes from heading out when the guy’s wife (whom we hadn’t even met before) comes zooming up in her minivan and says in a nasty tone “we were under the impression you were staying another night”. I’m thinking “what the hell is she talking about?” and she starts going on about how checkout is at noon and now it’s nearly 4pm and we’ve been down here using the utilities that they have to pay for, for FOUR EXTRA HOURS, and she feels taken advantage of, and blah, blah, blah. I tell her that nobody told us checkout was at noon, and that I told her husband we were fixing the water pump, but never said anything about staying an extra night. At this point, I’m about dumbstruck because I can’t believe this lady is getting up in my face about a few hours of extra utility use. Christine came out then and tried to be the voice of reason, and even paid her $5 for the extra utilities (because their $25/day rate comes to a little over a dollar per hour). Even at that, this wench keeps going on about how our kids were turning the water on and off (which they weren’t), and how terrible we are, blah, blah, blah… Can you believe this woman? Going off on customers like that for what… an extra 5 bucks? We owned a retail store for a year and a half and never treated any customer that badly. If you’re ever looking for a camping spot in Hot Springs, just pass up J&J RV Park; there’s a KOA campground right across the interstate and you can bet they’ll treat you better there.