Road Trip Part 3 - Kentucky (the highlight, so lots of pictures!)

And thus we crossed The River and were headed to Kentucky.  Actually, we were far enough north that we crossed into Illinois first before crossing into Kentucky.  However, the distance we travelled in Illinois was probably less than a city block before we crossed another bridge and were in KY.  We aren't counting that we've visited Illinois; we'll have to make it back up there one of these days :)

Kentucky (and a brief stop in Tennessee too)

So, we crossed into KY and soon hit Paducah, our first town in KY and the welcome center, source of all kinds of lovely tourist info.  And let me tell you, KY was earning points right from the get-go.  The welcome center was in a historic house, complete with historic marker!  We've done a lot of travel, and that certainly ranks as one of the coolest rest stops we've ever come to. 

The first day we were there, we went to Kentucky Down Under.  It's a tourist thing, but hey - we were tourists!  There's a show cave and a working farm, and (most exciting) kangaroos, up close and personal.  So, a few pics from Kentucky Cavern, the cave at Kentucky Down Under - trying to get underground as much as we could!

 

There were a lot of gorgeous birds there, including kookaburras (first time I can remember seeing them in person and hearing the famous laugh!).  Also including lorikeets, like this little guy who wanted to ride on my head.  Stay up there the whole time I was in with them, too!

     

The highlight of Kentucky Down Under was the "walkabout" in the kangaroo enclosure.  A guide goes in with your group, so you get to pet the kangaroos, should you want to (but why wouldn't you??).  SO COOL!  This guy here is one of mellower ones, or as our guide put it, "he's a big ol' teddy bear who loves his belly rubs."  They are suprisingly very very soft.  The guide (who's another caver, as a side note) said the very thick, soft fur helps keep them protected from the harsh, dry environment they are naturally found in.  Makes sense, but I'd've still thought it'd be coarser.  So we all took our turns giving him a pat on the back:

 

 

The kangaroo enclosure houses both red (below left) and grey (below right) kangaroos, in case you're curious.  I just love that picture of the red below.  He was sooooo mellow, and just tipped forward as he was falling asleep, propped up on his nose :)

 

The big stop of the trip, though, was Mammoth Cave National Park.  And it earns it's name - 400 miles of passageway and counting!  We took the historic tour, partly because we already know a good bit of basic cave geology and partly because it was the most convenient time-wise. 

 

The tour was pretty interesting.  Ancient peoples used to use the cave, but for some reason they stopped and it was left alone for a couple thousand years.  In the late 1700s it was rediscovered, and (like a lot of caves in that region) mined for the salt peter.  It was last mined in the War of 1812, since it was too close to too much fighting during the Civil War.  After it stopped being actively mined, it became a show cave.  So, people have been touring Mammoth since the early 1800s!  We even saw graffiti from the 1830s!!  Yes, somethings don't ever change about people - gotta leave their name and show they've been there.

 

 

The downside to Mammoth Cave was that having been a show cave for so long, it has become so accessible.  The flip-side to being a national park, too - it's protected so more people can come see, so more people do come see.  What did that mean to us?  BIG tour group, so slow moving tour and small children who started to get fussy before the tour was over :(  The group was big enough that we'd miss parts of the guide's talk, simply because we were still walking to catch up.  Or the fussy small children - there really should be an age limit on tours sometimes!  Two hours of walking is a lot for some of the really small ones (I'm talking just-past-toddler stage).  We were slow enough moving as a group, we had chances to stop and easily snap some pictures as we moved through the cave, simply because we were waiting to pass through, not because it was one of the 'stops on the tour.'  Below is Heather in Fat Man's Misery, for example. 

Still, it is a very unique cave and a cool one to visit; just make sure to try and hit the off season!

And one final silly story from KY: our last dinner in Bowling Green.  We took Heather to Taj Palace, a delightful Indian restaurant, as she'd never really tried it before and we were there to help her find something she'd like.  Apparently Zach and I are "foodies." :)  I ordered the Tulsi Kabab, chicken marinated in cream with basil and spinach.  I didn't think about it when I ordered it, but it was perfect for St Pat's - the chicken was bright green from the spinach!  It was delicious too, but it definitely made us all laugh when my bright green chicken arrived at the table :)

 

Overall thoughts?  We reeeeeeally liked Kentucky!  Would not be surprised at all if we decide down the road to settle in the area (you know, once we can actually choose where we live again!).  Oklahoma was interesting, and the Ozarks were pretty, but we really liked KY.  I guess we've been living in regions so drastically different to where we grew up that being someplace that felt more "us" was a really nice change.  Now, if only we could get moved to Fort Campbell...

Road Trip Part 2 - The Ozarks

Second phase of the trip was through northern Arkansas and southern Missouri.

The Ozarks

The Ozarks are a very pretty drive, even in late winter/early spring, before everything is coming to bud.  Be prepared, though.  There are a lot of little towns marked on the map which are really just crossroads, no gas station, restaurants, stores, barely more than 4 houses...  Make sure you have a full tank gas in the car and have hit the rest stop before heading too far into the national forest!  There was a very friendly little shop near the junction of AR-16 and AR-21, on the north side of the forest.  Perfectly timed pit stop, and a friendly hiking suggestion from the store owner too!

We ended up taking her advice and stopping to stretch our legs at Glory Hole, a hiking spot just up the road from her store off AR-16/21.  It's a little hour-long hike (give or take) and pretty relaxed (kids could do it).  Perfect for a pair of people who had had a long day sitting in the car and needed to get out and stretch their legs before it got dark.

 

The trail follows a stream down the hill into a small valley, to where it makes a little waterfall through the rocks.  Well, relatively little.  It's not Niagra or anything, but it's still a sizable hole in the rock (Zach is about 6 ft tall, for a sense of scale in the picture below).

To make things extra fun, by continuing on down the trail, you come around to the other side of the rocks and can stand underneath the waterfall too.  Too cool!

 

And even without the highlight of the waterfall, it's still a very pretty hike along the stream.  Especially for a little water-baby who's been living in The Dry too long :)

 

Turning north from the mountains after our little walk, we came down into the Buffalo River Valley, very understandably a popular recreation area.  Pretty valley so a nice drive; two rivers join there, so opportunity for some water sports and paddling; hiking through some gorgeous woodland.  And the wildlife: ELK!

The elk are actually a reintroduced animal in the valley.  The original species was hunted out, so they have reintroduced a similar variety of elk, which has taken hold very healthily.  Lots of elk, as you can see!  Very laid back animals, it seems, completely not disturbed by the cars passing on the road nearby.  But, they are HUGE!  Would definitely do a lot more damage than the average deer, should you have an unfortunate vehicular encounter with one!  Thankfully, they just hung out and let us proceed along our merry way.  Big ol' fellas, though.  One of the ones closest to the fence line had a sneeze, and we could hear it distinctly from the car!  Line from the evening:  "Elk sneezes are very wheezy."

 

Once we passed through the Ozarks and Missouri started flattening out, it honestly wasn't as exciting.  Nothing rolling, and no small towns to speak of.  Just the occasional tiny, tired little crossroads of a town: a gas station, a church, and a restaurant where "they serve everything you could want.  Like burgers."  We actually heard that in more than one town.  We were very excited to cross the Mississippi and be back on the right side of the river (emotionally and geographically!).

Road Trip, Part 1!

Yup, I know I've been spotty over the last few weeks, but it's been Spring Break time around here, and we took advantage of it - Road Tripping!  Zach and I took a week and went up through eastern OK, through the Ozarks in northern AR and southern MO, and across to Mammoth Cave, KY.  And then, of course, back to TX.

With all those stops, now my Map of States Visited looks like:

visited 29 states (58%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

And my Map of States Visited With Zach looks like:

visited 17 states (34%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Yes, there are a few gaps on the "With Zach" map, but some of those states we've merely passed through (and not taking the scenic route), and not actually visited.  I stand by my maps :)

And then once we got back, I started a new job!  Woohoo!  Still working for the same place, but in a different department.  I really enjoyed my other job, but this one is still interesting, so that's good.  And then there is the plus of having a better schedule and other practical benefits like that.  With all the new schedule changes after getting back from meandering across the middle of the country for a week... well, it took some time to get the pictures organized and labeled and ready to post. But we're ready to go now!  First up on the tour....

Ok-la-HOOOO-ma, OK!

We went northeast up through Texas into Oklahoma to start the trip.  Neither of us had ever been before, so we picked out a few state parks and a couple museums to check out as we worked our way east.

Impressions?

• The Red River really is red.  The river runs through what's called "red-bed country", meaning it runs through a lot of reddish sedimentary rocks.  As the river carrying a lot of sediment, it appears reddish itself.  Think deep south red clay color to the streams.  Interesting.  (Yes, the geo classes are coming out).  
• Neither of us had ever considered OK to be a forested area.  Too influenced by what we know of Army bases in OK and by song lyrics sweepin' down the plain, but the eastern side of the state is logging country, very pretty forests.  Learn something new every day!
• You can tell states that have an active or outdoorsy population.  They take care of their state parks and support the park system in general.  OK has some pretty nice state parks, at least in the eastern side where we were.  Very pleased.
• The Texas vs Oklahoma 'thing' is weird.   Overheard at Beaver's Bend:  "Oklahoma is Texas' wasteland."  Who said it?  A college kid to his friends, a group that had driven up from Texas to spend money and camp in an OK state park.  How sarcastic he was being, I don't know, but we were in a park that has more and taller trees than anything in several hours' radius from where we live in TX.  Yeah, a real wasteland...

The first stop was in Broken Bow, OK to visit Beaver's Bend State Park.  Besides being a pretty state park, Beaver's Bend houses the Forestry Heritage Museum.  I know it seems like a random museum to stop at, but it turned out to be pretty interesting.  My curiosity had been piqued after having worked a little with US Forestry folk when I was in SC, so I figured it was worth a stop.  It covered forest history and conservation and so forth, and had a lot of history information about logging in the area, too and how folk expanded into that section of OK. Totally new history for us.  And being a wood-focused museum, it hosted classes on wood carving and displays from local artists.  Some beautiful pieces!  And as a random-trivia bonus, the mascot was designed and the dioramas painted by Harry Rossoll, the creator of Smokey the Bear.

 

Robber's Cave State Park was the second state park on the tour, a little further north in Wilburton, OK.  From a caver's perspective, it's not really much of a cave.  And from a history nut's view, I'd have loved to hear more about the robbers they think used the cave.  But it was still a nice state park.  Plenty of hiking a riding trails, and some easy rock climbing points too.  For us, a nice little stop to stretch our legs and enjoy the lovely weather as we worked our way through OK.

 

The highlight of OK was kinda a surprise, at the Cherokee Heritage Museum in Tahlequah, OK.  Not that it should be a surprise that it was a good stop (why would we stop someplace bad if we can help it?), but it was a more involved museum than I had expected.  I had picked it out as a museum to break up the driving, it was close to where we need to turn to start heading east, and I didn't know much about Cherokee history to start with.  All good reasons to stop and visit.  But it turned out to be a very well done museum.  Restored buildings, artwork, history, demonstrations, a pretty thorough tour, and changes in progress as more is learned or exhibits grow or evolve... we were both pretty impressed.

 

I really like all the incorporation of the Cherokee language.  Most of the labels in the museum were bilingual, and the displays on the reconstructed town outside included words in the Cherokee alphabet, as well as their pronunciations.  85 symbols in the Cherokee syllabary!

The demonstrators were very cool people.  The guys showed how to play Stickball, as well as use several traditional types of weapons: blow dart, atlatl, and bow and arrow.

 

We hung around a little to ask questions and Zach and a few others got to try out the atlatl (pronouced AT-lattle, by the way, not attle-attle like I said when I was younger).

 

I liked this one.  Yes, I know it's named after a person named Swimmer, but education and aquatics in one building.  Made me smile.

And a truly random surprise.  Our tour group included a bunch of student nurses from south FL also traveling over spring break.  One was wearing a sweatshirt from Lost World Caverns in WV!!  Zach and I met there, at that cave specifically, and we have known the owners for a buncha years through assorted caving activities.  And here was someone from FL on a tour in OK wearing a sweatshirt from that particular cave in WV!  Craziness!

Personality Time!

So, working in a new department, meeting new people, learning all sorts of new routines, keeping very busy.  One of the fun things we've done, though, is at one of the staff meetings we have each month, people have been taking personality, communication style, etc. tests to get to know each other and each other's work styles a bit better.  Here are my two from this month's meeting:

I am predominantly Left Brained (sorry, no real "results page" for that one).

Color Lingo Communication Quiz

GREEN The GREEN Approach – OBJECTIVE & STRATEGIC When communicating, Greens tend to think before they speak. They like to analyze what they have just heard, explore the many ways they could respond and choose the reply that most accurately and pertinently expresses their thoughts on the matter. Their goal is to obtain information so they can figure out, fix, improve, or invent something as a result. To learn more about the GREEN communication style go to: http://www.tinyurl.com/GreenStyle Have fun!

Facebook quizzes & Blog quizzes by

Oh So Pinteresting Wednesday: Lip Balm

This Wednesday is a project I've been meaning to try for a while, and am finally getting around to it.

Homemade lip stuff (gloss, balm, whatever you want to call it).  I am a dry person physically - skin, hair, nails, etc - and living in the desert kinda killed me.  My body just couldn't handle it.  I am not built for the desert!!  Texas is a bit better, but it's still pretty dry where we are.  I'm always looking for good moisturizers that work and don't cost an arm and a leg.  And my new office is pretty dry too, so I figured this would be a good time to try out one of these recipes.

There are BUNCHES of different recipes for this out there, from 2-ingredient versions that would be easy to do with kids, to ones that have a dozen different oils and waxes and moisturizing what-nots.  The ones I've read through are below, in case you want to browse through for your own inspiration.

• Brilliantly Bland has a Honey Orange Lip Balm recipe, with some great tips on using a double boiler for beeswax.
• Mountian Rose Herbs gives recipes for three different variations, plus tips on customizing your own favorite.
• Rustic Escentuals uses much more specialized ingredients in their Swirled Lip Balm Recipe, but I do like the detailed instructions and the swirled pattern idea.
• Beautylish has a Cool Winter Lip Balm recipe.
• Instructables provides information about using empty tube containers in their Delicious Chocolate Honey Lip Balm directions.
• The Camera's Lying's Tinted Lip Balm was the first set of instructions I saw that used lipstick to color the balm. 
• Torie Jayne gives instructions on coloring with food coloring, as well as other decorations, in her Hand-made Cool Mint Lip Balm instructions.
• Cheeky Kitchen also plays with coloring and with flavors in her Homemade Kiss Gloss instructions.  I also like the container tips (Bead organizers!  Genius!)
• Design Sponge gives instructions for a Solid Perfume Pocket Watch Locket.  Yes, she's not making lip balm, but I really liked the idea of the pocket watch as a tin.
• And what crafty DIY list of links would be complete with a Martha Stewart version?

Now, after all this research, what did I do myself?

Ingredients

• Vaseline with Cocoa Butter
• Coconut Oil - yup, just regular from-the-kitchen coconut oil
• Peppermint Essential Oil
• Lipstick - I had a stick of Clinque Pink Chocolate that I used.  Like the color, but more of a gloss person, rather than a lipstick girl.
• Small tins - as I am addicted to Altoids, I had an assortment of small mint tins to refill.

• Double boiler or microwaveable bowl (depending on how much you are making)
• Spoon
• Aluminum pie tin

Directions

1. Add 3 heaping T of Vaseline and 4 T coconut oil to small bowl.  
2. Add lipstick, broken into pieces if possible.  This will help it melt more evenly (Vaseline and coconut oil both melt much more quickly).
3. Melt in microwave.  I used 60% power and 30-sec bursts, stirring after each one.  I used a plastic spoon to stir the mix.
4. Mix in several drops of flavoring oil (I used mint, my favorite)
5. Pour into clean, prepped containers.  I set up mine in the pie tin, to give myself a clean, contained workspace.  I knew I'd spill some, after all, and didn't want it all over the counter.
6. Let cool.  Some of the recipes above recommended putting them into the refrigerator as they cooled.  I just left them on the counter all afternoon, but I didn't use beeswax either, which does take longer to set.
7. Enjoy!

Overall Comments and Thoughts

• Let the rest of your household know what's cooling in the kitchen.  I came down to check on them, and found a fingerprint in one of the tins.  Zach was curious as to what I'd been making :)
• I like the small tins to hold them, but don't like the big Altoids logo.  Thus, my tins sport a coat of nail polish to make them a little more decorative.  Also to keep me from getting my lip balm confused with my mints when reaching into my purse!
• I like the soft balm that I made (I've often used just plain Vaseline to help my lips when they get really dry) but I'm curious about some of the other variations.  I think I might try a honey-beeswax version when I make my next batch in several months.
• I know the picture on the right is a little blurry, but it best shows the color of the lid.  Which is a nail polish I really like :)