A *very* belated birthday to Whirlwind!

I know, I know.  It's been forever.  But without further ado, I'll get right back into it.  Coming about, oh....4 months late here, it's Whirlwind's birthday post.  Finally.

Drum roll please.....

The third child.  Ahhhh, the third child.....

He was different from the very start.  Of my three pregnancies his was the only one with any kind of 'incident'.  The others were smooth as silk.  His?  Not so much.  Let's just say he made his presence known from the very start...and didn't quit until the very end.  Well actually, on second thought, he still lets his presence be very well known :-).  He's got an I'm here and 'take that!' attitude!



Before his birth S and I had a short list of names we were considering.  If you've read my previous birthday posts here and here, you know we don't name our children until we lay eyes on them.  Once we get a feel for 'who' they are, based on what we see, hear and sense, then we select one name from our list that suits them best.



Well, this child was fairly easy in terms of choosing the name.  He came out roaring like a lion and was aptly named as such.  In fact, he's spent the past 6 years on this earth pretty much roaring.....



He was so blessed to enter the world having three great-grandparents!  This Great-Gramma was super lucky as she got to see him at 8 days old and witness him being named after her dear deceased husband.



Despite all his roaring, he was a precious beautiful baby who captivated everyone with those eyes...



That 'I can see into your soul' stare....



And that fat, chubby and absolutely squeezable body!



One thing we very quickly learned about our new baby boy was that he would get into e-v-e-r-y-th-ing. Excuse me, what I really meant to say was that we learned he was 'extremely smart, ambitious, determined, motivated and inquisitive'...

He was curious about the taste of crayons...



I could have taken a picture of the incredibly colorful diaper the next day, but I didn't.  S still hasn't forgiven me.

He was curious about what was in the attic....(yes, we rounded the corner to find him there)



He just had to master the computer at 18 months....



He had to figure out how the lights worked...(yes, we rounded the corner yet again to find him here)



He loved conducting food combination experiments that even caused his big brother to shake his head in amazement....



He loved reading from the very very start and sat down to truly read his first book at 3....



He's always floored us with his verbal and so called academic skills.

"Hey! This is an 'I'!"



He's managed to get himself into many tight spots over the years and each time we insisted on taking a picture before we rescued him....



We weren't trying to be mean, but come on, how can we not document these events?!  They just soooo reflect who he is!



He's always had a love affair with food.

Wearing it that is.....



Sometimes proudly.....



And sometimes not....



His enthusiasm is unbridled...



As were his stereotypical two year old temper tantrums.  Or was it three year old?  No, four year old??  He's my only child that actually thew himself down on the floor....As he got older the rage mellowed down to intense facial expressions...



If looks could kill....



The outdoors for him is heaven.



Though hiking just about kills him.  Unless of course it's done like this,




I have to admit that during this trip his hiking skills have improved.  However, remaining true to form, he's THE one that while visiting Yellowstone fell off one of the boardwalks!  If you're familiar with Yellowstone at all you know that that's never a good thing....



Thankfully we weren't walking over boiling mud pits at the time...

Being cold is not his favorite as you can tell,



However, the freedom the beach offers is.



His first meeting with the ocean was thrilling and mesmerizing,



Watching him there was pretty darn mesmerizing too, if you'll forgive me saying so :-).



He's easily entertained by animals though has a healthy fear/respect for them too (his fears are pretty surprising yet quite the blessing in this case....).




So what's with the hair you might be asking....

Well, after regretting cutting big brother's baby hair at 2, we made the decision to wait at least until Whirlwind was 3 to cut his.  Unlike big brother though, this birthday boy had mucho mucho hair.  Of course he did.  So after hearing people refer to him as a girl over and over again, no matter how much blue I dressed him in, we gave in and the haircut ensued:



Not quite sure about this Mom!

But the end result was happiness all around,



And cuteness too.  And to quote him in later years: "Oh, I get it, haircuts are for seeing!"

Music was always a big part of his life.  He started Music Together classes in-utero,



And got to see some of his favorite 'rock stars' perform live.  That's one of the Biscuit Brothers fyi.



Apparently we have some drums in our future as well.  Oy.



Today he's always humming or singing, whether he's playing with legos and humming the Star Wars tune, or walking down the street.  Music is just in his head.  In fact, one song he's always singing is 'Side by Side' from 1927, one of this beautiful lady's favorites.  His very recently departed 91 year old Great-Grandma.



And speaking of Great-grandparents, he was and IS still blessed to also have his loving and admiring great-grandpa in his life.  They're just 93 years apart, that's all.



And while were at it, he's got some super duper loving grandparents as well.

With some he's ponderous and thoughtful,



With others he's goofy and silly,



And with yet another, well, he's his wild, crazy, messy self :-),



The T-shirt Whirlwind's wearing below sums him up pretty well...I tried to be good but I got bored!



Yes, his body and mind *must* be well occupied and challenged most hours of the day or else....it's true. He's also a total ham and entertains us all.  He's determined, ambitious, curious about everything and anything, and can operate any computer or computerized device on his own.  For better or worse, he's a perfectionist.  He remembers it all, be it a word, person or event.  He's a good friend, has a huge heart, a winning smile and the kindest words when you least expect them but desperately need them.

He truly is taking the world by storm, as only a lion can!

Confusion and, conclusion?

I'm confused.

 

Not about what we're doing, but about how to reflect it all here in this blog.

 

There's so much to catch up on going way back to November, there's what we've been doing lately to report on and then there are other events, unrelated to our specific travels, that have deeply touched our lives.

 

I think what I might try to do right now is catch you up on what is happening right now and then as time goes by, go back and report on our adventures that got us to this point in time.

 

We are officially home again.  Well, in Boulder County, Colorado anyway.  As of yesterday afternoon, we have officially come full circle!  I can't believe it.  I remember wondering as we were driving out last year how fast this upcoming year of adventure would actually go by.  Well, I'm here to tell you that it has gone by in a flash!  A very fast moving slideshow of events, people and places.  It's absolutely shocking to think we've made it a full year and here we are right back where we started again.  Geographically speaking that is.  In every other aspect we are so so very far removed from where we started......It's amazing what a year on the road, with all its unpredictability, will do for your own personal human growth and development as well as that of your family.

 

Geographically, we've experienced:  Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, NY - state and city, New England - Maine mostly, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California!

 

I skipped the 'in between' states in this list since we just drove through them so I can't really claim we've experienced them.  Looking at the list it kind of amazes me that that's 'all' we've done.  It's been a year after all, but we did spend over a month and even two in some of those states, so I guess that explains things somewhat.

 

So yes, we're home now.  Or like I said, in our home county at least.  We're not yet quite sure what the upcoming year holds for us.  We have rented out our house for an additional year so we have plenty of flexibility and some decision making to do as to what we want to happen.  One big lesson we learned this year is to wait and see.  We've learned that the answers comes when you ask the right questions and when you just let things happen, or flow, if you like.  We learned that not every step in life, even the big ones, needs planning weeks, months or even years in advance.  We've learned to trust.  We've learned to listen. And we've learned to act on what we hear, see and feel.  We've learned a lot and like I said, we've grown tremendously.

 

So where does that leave us?  I don't have an answer to that.  Yet.

 

What I do know is that we'll hang around here for the next month enjoying friends and our old stomping grounds, and then?  Who knows.  We have options and we are letting them digest and process.  Who knows what may come along down the road or around the corner......

 

Whatever happens though, we'll keep you posted!

 

In the meantime I'll be going back in time to fill you in on all we've done between November and now and try to stick to the chronological order of events to the best of my ability.  The purpose of the blog was, after all, to be our travel journal that we share with all of those who are interested.  Thank goodness I take a million pictures that guide me in the blog writing process!  I also have a couple of other topics, unrelated to our travels, that need reporting on and I'll likely start with those.

 

See you in the next post!

 

:-)

A lighthouse and a VERY near disaster - Nov. 11th continued & Nov. 12th

On our way back from ferry we made one last stop for the day at the -



That's Cape Hatteras Light Station in case you can't make it out.  It's one of three lighthouses on the cape. The most interesting fact about this 'little' lighthouse, to us anyway, is that it was actually physically moved from one location to the another, a total of 2900 feet!  It was a mass operation, quite literally, but in 1999 they successfully moved it to its new safer location farther away from the ocean.  In the little museum, housed in the former keepers quarters I believe, we got to watch the news footage of it and it really was quite impressive!

Inside the visitor center we got up close and personal with an Osprey, obviously a stuffed one at this point, but it used to be alive.  We'd seen Ospreys fly high above us plenty of times, particularly in the Tetons, but this was the first time we could really take a good close look at one.  It has a wing span of five feet!



As for the lighthouse itself, it was pretty cool as well.  We couldn't climb up since it was closed for the season but we could go inside and take a look.  It was, well, an inside of a lighthouse.  Having climbed up one in Maine we were ok with not climbing up this one since at 200 feet it's a strenuous climb up 248 iron spiral stairs!



In the aforementioned little museum (seen below) we learned all about the roll the area and these lighthouses played during the Civil War as well as both world wars.  There are many many shipwrecks off these coasts thanks to major storms, shifting sands (both submerged and otherwise) AND German submarines (the U-boats) that sank many ships.  Some shipwrecks are actually buried by the beach and when sands shift, which they do quite frequently here, they are uncovered for a brief moment in time until sands shift again....Pretty neat.

Cape Hatteras is a National seashore and does have its own Jr. Ranger program but for the first time during our trip we had to pass it up.  Unlike other locations (such as Boston and Minuteman National Historic Site) they would not give us the booklets and badges to be completed and handed out later.  Some national parks are more serious and strict than others apparently.....oh well.  We just didn't have the time to complete the work then and there since it was getting late and tomorrow we had to hit the road to make it to FL by the 14th.  It was my grandfather's 99th birthday and getting to FL late was just not an option.

The other thing we learned at the Cape's visitor center was that a high tide was a-comin'.  Apparently, if we wanted to get off the Outer Banks (OB) tomorrow we had better start early...there's no telling when the roads will become impassible due to shifting sands and rising water.  Most roads would be ok we were told, there was just one area we needed to worry about in particular.  FYI, along the narrower sections of the OB roads one can routinely see snow plows parked.  Pretty odd.  They don't plow snow of course it's sand they're busy with!  Like I mentioned before, sands here shift very very frequently and the roads constantly need to be cleared.

Bottom line with all this was that we headed back home and got ourselves and the RV all set to leave first thing in the morning so we could get the h*** out of Dodge!

And so began our attempt to leave the Outer Banks.....

This was the first 'puddle' we met with once we hit the road.  We had been on the road for a grand total of 10 minutes.....

OK, not so bad, cars seem to be going through easily.  No danger to us or the RV here.  We kept going.....

Though it's not clear from the picture, things were starting to get a little more precarious....traveling in the middle of the road was the safest option for all.  The water was coming up through the sand very quickly....

Things began to get a little murkier.....

We stopped in the middle of the road so S could get out and assess the situation.

He stopped a driver coming from the opposite direction and inquired about the road conditions up ahead.

Yes, we were blocking traffic.  No, we had no other choice.  Going into this kind of situation without some information is not a good idea.  We had to make a decision a regarding whether to proceed or to turn around and go back.  Not that turning around and going back at this point was going to be easy, or even possible. There were a few problems with turning around:  1. The road is narrow and given we're close to 60 feet long we can't just turn on a dime.  2.  There were now several RVs and many cars behind us.  We couldn't just back up and find a place to turn around.  The other RVs btw were also trying to make some serious choices regarding the situation.  3.  We needed to be in FL in 2 days and I wasn't ready to give it up quite yet.

After consulting half the traffic, including several of the RVers, we decided to proceed.  Even though the road was beginning to look like this....

As we drove through, it only got worse....

Notice how close that water is to the bottom of the RV.....

It's a river.  An absolute river!

But, once we got through it we passed the location the rangers back at the visitors center warned us about so we were pretty happy.

Then, we saw this:

Apparently there was another spot we were supposed to worry about...The whole thing was very reminiscent of 'Lost'....The island wasn't going to let us go......

That poor fellow up there was not getting his car out in one piece.

Uh oh! BIG time UH OH!!  Not only was there GUSHING water to contend with, but now cars were getting stuck in the newly shifted sand ON the road!

And this is part of why:

The rising tide had actually taken out part of the dune that separates the road from the ocean!  Not only was the water rising through the sand now but it was gushing freely onto the road directly from the ocean, bringing all the sand along with it!

Soooooooooo NOT good.

S being the quick thinker that he is didn't stop to ponder this time.  He gunned it and plowed through at high speed without hesitation.  It's a good thing the camera was around my neck cause he didn't even have a chance to warn us!  My upper body was halfway hanging out the window taking picture after picture and I went flying, thankfully into the car and into my seat with the camera fully attached.  So, unfortunately no pictures of the actual parting of the Red Sea, but we did come out fully intact on the other side!  What was the greatest danger here?  Not being dragged out to sea of course, but getting stuck in the wet sand was going to be an extremely serious problem, especially with rising waters.  Water and cars, let alone RVs, don't mix.  Salt water is even worse.  To say the least.

It could have been really really REALLY bad.  But, it wasn't.  The water did not make it to the RV floor, let alone the truck's.  Yes, it did splash.  A lot.  But that's why we did this -

just as soon as we got onto the mainland about 20 minutes later.  I use 'we' quite loosely obviously.

Thankfully NC has nice travel/visitor centers fully equipped with RV services such as dumping and fresh water stations.

Once the RV and truck got a thorough wash down we were finally able to really hit the road!  We were officially on our way to Florida and we would be making it on time for Grampa's 99th birthday!

Hallelujah!