Wednesday we decided to go to one of our favorite camping sites in Beavers Bend State Park near Broken Bow, Oklahoma.

We waited to reserve our campsite until we pulled into the Steven’s Gap area. We chose site #37 in the Coyote campsite. This is one of the largest sites. Besides our tent, we set up two tent hammocks and three regular hammocks.

Tip: There is no potable water at this campsite and the restrooms and showers are at the entrance so bring plenty of water to cook with and a camping toilet for those of us who prefer to pee sitting down.

The beauty of this campsite is that it’s a stone throw from Broken Bow Lake! Although there were quite a few families using this as a day area, shortly before sunset we had the entire campsite to ourselves.

With one around and minimal light pollution we were able to stargaze under the night sky and were treated to views of the milky way and shooting stars.

On Thursday we spent the day swimming kayaking and rock hunting. We found several specimens of petrified wood and tons of milky quartz and clear quartz crystals.

Thursday night we had the entire campsite to ourselves yet again.

On Friday we went to the other side of the park to explore the Lower Mountain Fork River. We accessed the river at one of the day use areas. Tip: you need a parking pass for all areas of the park and it’s strictly enforced.

We found some small rapids and floated about a quarter mile or so in some of the most pristine water you will find in Oklahoma. The water is cold but that’s just how I like it on a hot summer’s day.

By afternoon, our campsite was starting to fill up with 4th July revelers, just as I expected it would. We spent the last of the day back on the lake.

This is when I had one of the most magical moments of my life. I was out on my kayak as the sun set, relaxing in the small inlet near our site when the sky above me became center stage to a family of bats. I watched them for about 45 minutes as they danced back and forth under the moon and stars.

We left the following morning after an more than annoying night of not being the only ones at the campsite. Loud people have every right to be there but why so loud? Car alarms and music and bright lights galore.

We stopped for breakfast at a coffee shop and then hit the road for the short 4 hour drive back home.

I 100% recommend camping here during the summer even though it takes a little while to cool down at night. BUT, I only recommend camping during the week unless you like to listen to people and watch flashlights and headlights, instead of listening to tree frogs and watching the stars.

We arrived deep in the Rio Grande Gorge at my favorite camping site in Pilar, New Mexico. This area is run by The Bureau of Land Management. It’s official name is the Orilla Verde Recreation Area.

If your lucky you can snag a spot at Taos Junction which is what we did. The great thing about this site our the shelters, bathroom with flushing toilet, and community water spigot. There were fire restrictions in place and we did not have a fire.

This area is best described as rugged with a capital R. It’s not quite primitive, but it’s close. The first night we were there was cool and peaceful. Perfect sleeping weather for camping.

The next night the wind was angry. If you have ever stood in the tornado tunnel at SMO then you can imagine what it was like. I would guess the wind gusts were 60-70+ miles an hour. After two hours of relentless wind, we decided to sleep in the car. In the morning, we discovered our tent had been blown over and the poles had come apart at some of the joints.

After setting the tent back up we continued our adventures!

Our last full day we took the Taos Junction Road which is a rocky road that takes you out of the gorge toward the Rio Grande Bridge and then we took 522 through the Carson National Forest up to Eagle’s Nest Lake.

Finally, we backtracked to the town of Red River were we are at our favorite pizzeria Main Street Pizzeria.

The last night we were treated to a gentle rain and woke to the amazing smell of desert sage. We packed up our gear and said goodbye!

After a 6 hour drive and pleasant night’s stay in Redondo Beach, we drove 30 minutes to Long Beach to watch for ocean life. Technically, it was a whale watching tour, but I knew from the sighting logs on the tour boat’s website that we most likely would not encounter whales on this trip.

We boarded a Harbor Breeze tour boat and sailed off into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. We sailed for about 30 minutes before actually leaving the harbor.

Once we got out into the open ocean, we were met by Risso’s dolphins.

Next, we encountered a pod of common dolphins.

Finally, we encountered a second pod of common dolphins. This pod swam up right next to the boat and seemed to race with us while also surfing the wake. I don’t need to tell you how fantastic it is to watch dolphins swimming and playing in the deep blue waters right off the side of your boat!

The cherry on top was watching the sun set on Redondo beach next to the Veteran’s Center in the old Redondo Public Library, a nationally registered historic building.

The people in both Long Beach and Redondo were friendly and accommodating. We became fast friends with everyone we interacted with. I think I’m in love! 😍

Tips for out of towners:

Take Dramamine an hour before getting on a boat. Kid’s, too.

Driving during the weekend within Los Angeles county to this area has lots of twists and turns, but the other drivers were sane and didn’t even speed! 😮

Use a booking app like Booking.com. Our room was 100 dollars less than the normal price. Be sure to bring your confirmation email.

Stock up on food and water at the grocery store to keep in your hotel room. Eating every meal out adds up quickly.

If you eat on the Long Beach pier be sure to get your name on a waiting list ASAP. We ended up waiting an hour for a table at a family friendly restaurant.

Expect to pay for parking. We paid $15 to park at the aquarium in Long Beach which gave us access to the pier. There is metered parking at Redondo beach.

Tomorrow, it’s back to Arizona! Wish us luck!!

Trees, trees, and more trees!

From Joshua Tree National Park we drove straight through to Kings Canyon National Park.

There are no words that can describe the beauty of the sequoias so I won’t even try.

Things I learned:
Despite what I had read, you do need reservations to camp in most of the park. Luckily, I found that out just in time to snag 4 nights.

Bear lockers are big enough to store a ton of food.

Fire restrictions were different in different areas, and we were able to have a fire inside our fire ring.

Besides the viewing the majestic trees we also swam in Hume Lake.

We picnicked by Grizzly Falls.

Finally, we drove down to Kings River where we entered a magnificent realm of epic mountain views  and a magical river that will make every difficulty in your life worth suffering through just to arrive at the moment you get to dip your toe into its roaring waters.

Watch out for bears! This area is considered bear active. We did not see any bears, but we definitely think we heard them in the middle of the night! We did see bear scratches on trees. 

We also saw a sweet deer nibbling a bush within our campsite; adorable chipmunks chasing each other up and down the trees; bossy ravens; insistent ducks; a soaring bald eagle; zipping lizards; lazy swallowtails; little blue dragonflies; and an inquisitive grey squirrel.

What is really unique about the area we were in was the absolute silence at night. Once the sun goes down and the stars come out, the forest turns off. No crickets chirping or owls hooting. It was a little eerie, but it made for a great night’s sleep.

The breathtaking beauty of Kings Canyon National Park makes it worth the drive. I am already planning my trip back.

We arrived at dusk, just as the temps cooled to a reasonable 80 degrees. This was a camp and run stop, meaning a place we would stay at for 24 hours or less.

We reserved a spot in Jumbo Rock campground, nearly 35 miles inside the park. Each campsite is beautiful.

It was incredibly clean and the night sky was spectacular!

We slept peacefully and then woke at 7. It gets HOT at Joshua Tree so we hightailed it out of the park by 8:30.

We are leaving for California. Wish us luck!

Besides my official title as mom and teacher, I am a poet at heart. I was a poet first, after all. I wrote my first poem at age 7, and it was about the poor crocodilles, baby crocodiles who cried crocodile tears in their tiny homes under the grass canopy of my front yard. 🐊💧

I don’t publish or perform my poetry, instead my poetry is like a delicious secret that links moment after moment of my private experiences.

Sometimes I do share my poems, as I am about to do in this side post. I studied poetry as a graduate student at Oklahoma City University. I workshopped and presented and edited and even performed once at a local coffee shop, but ultimately I decided that writing poetry was more of a private and sentimental act for me.

If you know me, then you know you don’t actually know me until you have known me for some time, and I’ve been able to let down my guard enough to be my true and silly sentimental self.

However, I have recently decided that I want to share my poetry in a more public way which means that I want to read it in front of an audience.

It doesn’t really matter who that audience is. But, I don’t want to just read it, I want to inflect it intentionally the way I do when I read it out loud to myself. Inflecting intentionally takes some bravada, some stage presence which I can definitely muster when I am talking to my students or children or a close friend. It’s not something that comes naturally when I’m talking to a group of strangers.

In order to overcome this stage reluctance, I have decided that I first need to do karaoke. I have never done karaoke. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of doing karaoke. I have no idea what song I would sing in karaoke. So for the past few YEARS, I have been thinking about what song I should sing in my big karaoke debut.

While driving down a pretty desolate and depressing highway 70 toward the more interesting I-10 in the Texas panhandle towards Arizona, I listened to an array of potential songs, and I think I’ve finally landed on The One. Let me practice it for the next few months, and maybe I can get up enough nerve to do it!

One of the reasons I’m so adamant about my karaoke experience is because I think it will help me level up my performance presence, so that I can intentionally inflect some of the obviously nuanced inflections that are sooo important to understanding the essence of my poetic work. 🙄

Wish me luck!

Speaking of that desolate drive on highway 70 South of I-40 and on the way to I-10, I was awed by the number of dust devils there were. One even crossed the highway were we drove. It lifted us like gentle turbulence. I naturally kept my foot off the brake and my hands firmly on the wheel. It left just as suddenly as it arrived. I’m used to large gusts of wind jolting my vehicle an inch or so to the side, but this was a little different. It was a lift instead of a push.

Later, I began to see signs that instructed drivers on best practices during a dust storm. Foot off the brake, steer toward the shoulder, engines off, keep seat belts on. In other words, let go of control because control is no longer yours, instead go with the aerodynamic flow.

As often happens while I lie awake at night, my mind gets creative and I come up with snippets of poetry/titles/concepts that I write down, and while writing them down I may go ahead and complete a verse or two to be looked at later, admired, edited and then forgotten. I always rediscover my poetry later, about every spring. I add it to an ongoing collection and then promise myself I will share it one way or another and perhaps even, dare I say it, publish something!

My poetry is usually instigated by an outward experience, usually natural, that makes me think of a similar inner experience that is often hidden. In other words, the concrete world gets translated as abstract idea. Because I love language, I play around with literary devices and I usually land on something that is both clever, at least to me, and poetic. It’s also very sentimental, and every scholarly/ literary ideologist knows that, past high school, sentiment is not wanted in poetry. Too bad for me. Good thing I don’t want to be a famous or successful poet.

True story: I once asked Neil Gaiman in a tweet on Twitter if it was ok to be a closet writer and he said yes, it was ok to be a closet writer. So, I’d like to invite you to my closet and share the following poem that was inspired by a dust devil, a natural phenomenon, that just earlier reminded me of the abstract idea of falling in love.

Dust Devil

Love is like a dust devil

that lifts you off the highway

as you barrel through your life.

Naturally unnatural,

it lifts you from the ground and

you must keep your feet off the brake,

steer your car in the direction of the wind,

and keep your seat belt on.

Whatever trajectory you were on

is now changed

just enough that you are

no longer who you were

before it struck.

(C) Aharen Richardson

Apparently, I’m not the first to connect dust storms or dust devils in this region with poetry! https://shallowsky.com/blog/travel/burma-shave-dust-storm.html

Since yesterday went so smoothly it was only natural that we’d have a few hiccups today. One of us has had tummy troubles and this caused us to leave later than planned and arrive at our second stop later than expected.

The drive from Roswell to Tucson was easy peasy. Driving west from Roswell, we were met with the amazing view of White Sands National Park and decided to stop. We spent about an hour exploring the museum, gift shop and the accessible board walk about a mile into the park.

The next two days we will be visiting with family, swimming, and shopping for non-perishable food for our first 6 days and 5 nights of camping. Basically six days of some variation of the following:

Non-perishable because we have to keep everything in a bear-locker since we are going to be camping in bear country.

A note on overpacking. You either pack too much or your don’t pack enough. Do whichever you prefer, but I’d rather come home with unused paper goods and pants/shorts/jackets than do without. BUT, I have a mini van with the back seats folded flat so I have tons of room.

Ok, no more blogging until day 4.

Go have some adventures! 😘

We are well into summer vacation and we begin our first official summer trip tomorrow! This will be my biggest trip so far. I’ve literally been planning this trip for two and a half years. In that time it has morphed from a pre-covid quest through mountain country to the tip-top of the west coast to a more modest journey through Southern California. We are leaving Oklahoma and traveling through New Mexico to Arizona and then on to Joshua Tree National Park. Next, we are headed to see the sequoias! After a leisurely stay there, we will make a quick trip to the coast. On the return trip, we will be visiting some of my favorite spots in New Mexico.

Preparing for a long road trip with kids!

Summer Reading Goals

We have so many goals this summer but none is more important to an English teacher like me than our summer reading goals. So besides all of the packing that needs to be done which I will discuss below, I have to prepare for meeting our reading goals. At the school that my son attends, there are two books he must read this summer. One is Bridge to Terabithia and the other is Tuck Everlasting. Both of these titles are appropriate for my eight-year-old who also needs to complete reading minutes, but does not have a specific title that she must read. Hence, I come to my first problem. (Warning! Problems and inconveniences will occur! Thats just life!) My aux cord does not work! Otherwise, I would totally just connect my iPhone to my stereo system and play the audible titles for both of these books. Unfortunately, I did not have time to replace my Aux cord port in my 2010 Honda Odyssey. So I’m off to the library to find CD versions of these books. We have a entertainment center in our van, so I am also going to be renting DVDs from the library of classic movies we love. Most likely those will be studio Ghibli movies. I am discouraging devices on this trip. They always run out of batteries, anyway, so it’s best to discourage them or only use them for certain times. Otherwise, your child will be begging to charge their devices your entire trip which can be a true pain. Also, if they are on their device they probably won’t be paying much attention to the book which is important. Some people don’t like audiobooks, but the truth is an audiobook works just as well as any book being read aloud to your child. There literally is no difference. So audiobooks for the win, but, as you can imagine, if they have two different things going on at the same time say playing or watching on a device then they won’t absorb the contents of the book they’re listening to. Duh!

Food and other necessities…

You and your kids will get hungry! So unless you want to spend literally hundreds of dollars for snacks at a gas station or on fast food (which by the way will make you sick, I promise) you have to pack some snacks that are easy to get to while on the road. I like to make bags of individual snacks to pass out to my kids and to keep by my side. I also include a cooler in the van with drinks. For this trip I made my own grain free trail mix and mixed candy bags. I will also be taking a bag of chips to be shared along with a pack of Capri Suns a pack of mini Cokes and for me a pack of mini Diet Coke’s because yeah I drink Diet Coke now. Thanks Covid! Don’t forget water bottles!

Tip! Take a camping toilet with you that littles can use when they just can’t wait. It’s better than sending them off into the bushes on the side of the road. Of course, you will need to stop in order for them to use the camping toilet; we keep ours in a convenient location. Be sure to pull off into an area that is away from the side of the road for maximum safety. If your little one is shy you can always use a sheet or blanket to give them privacy.

Camping Gear

We have collected camping care over the last nine years. In that time we have two sets of gear: one for my husband who is a camping aficionado. He will make you pancakes and a full course breakfast if he comes on a camping trip. He has a special camping hammock along with all kinds of nifty camping gear that I simply don’t have the time for. My set of camping gear includes kid friendly items that aren’t very expensive. That includes everything from my tent which is a pop-up tent— the kind with joints that allows an adult to quickly set it up by themselves—to our folding chairs that take a licking and keep on ticking to our kitchen gear. By kitchen gear, I mean anything that you will use to store or prepare food. My number one essential is some form of camping stove. My camping stove is a lifesaver. You won’t always be able to make a fire quickly enough or one strong enough to cook your food. You can’t guarantee that you will even be allowed a camp fire depending on fire safety conditions. Camping stoves even work for marshmallows. I use both a single canister stove and a double canister stove, so I can technically have 2-3 burners going at once. One might be boiling water for tea and the other might be making bagel pizzas(—You take your shredded cheese and throw it on a skillet, cover it with pizza sauce, and then top it with bagels. Cover and simmer on low heat until cheese is melted and bagels are warm to the touch. Serve upside down and voilà, pizza!)

• Tent that you can put up with minimal help
• Mallet
• Sleeping bags
• Sleeping mats
• Camping toilet
• Bathroom stuff (towels, wash clothes, toiletries, toilet paper)
• Kitchen stuff (utensils, knives, cutting board, plastic bags for storage)
• Food with meals planned out ahead of time (something like Day one: breakfast, oatmeal; lunch, peanut butter and jelly; dinner, black bean burritos.) Tip: Camping is not the time to fulfill everyone’s tastes. Camping is the time to be grateful for what we have. Which means that if you have a picky eater you’re going to have to find a few foods that they will eat and that are convenient and easy to take. If they have to eat cheese and crackers the entire time that’s OKAY.

The final step is putting it all in the car, making sure everyone has everything they need (dependent on said person and their needs), going to the restroom one last time, saying goodbye, plugging in your directions into your phone or else printing them out and then saying goodbye!

Believe me, I have actually had a semi-successful camping trip with nothing but a tent without stakes and a bag of oranges in my car. Note that was a spur of the moment mini trip that only lasted 24 hours. The point is consider your essentials in life and then add a few fun things and you should be good. I always forget a pair of scissors for some reason, so bring your scissors, too!