Tag: Travel

Although we didn’t have as bad a winter as they’d called for, I’ll sure be glad if spring ever stakes its claim. 

Right now we seem stuck between the two seasons: wearing shorts one day, long underwear the next. 

And, the recurrent theme right now? 

No sun. 

The color of the days falls somewhere in the midst of charcoal smeared with a smidgen of white. 

Yuck. That gets old. 

Something really cool happened a few days ago. We found a place that is the perfect cross between where black and white feel quite at home.

About forty miles from here is a seed farm that is bathed in old fashioned. As soon as our truck door opened, we stepped back into the 1800’s. 

The “town” consists of a blacksmith shop, apothecary, seed store, barn, and a restaurant. 

While bits of color were sprinkled here and there, I was reminded that there is an absolute beauty in weathered gray. 

We live in an area that’s rich in history. A lot of pioneers settled in these hills in the 1800’s and Laura and Almanzo Wilder were among them. 

Yesterday we went to see Rocky Ridge, the home where Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her Little House books. 

We’ve been there before a few times, but this year there is a new visitors center, gift shop, and museum, so that was quite a treat. 

There’s something comforting about being on their land. It’s kind of a cross between feeling completely “at home” at a grandmother’s house, mixed with the nostalgia of stories that seem to come to life while looking around the property. 

Just being there, I can picture the scenes from the Rose Years books. Can you imagine Abe and Swiney traipsing through the woods and Alva and Effie living back in those hills? 

Right now their yard is blanketed in yellow and white wildflowers and there is a dogwood tree blooming. Spring is so beautiful in the Ozarks. 

After our tours, we stopped at a park that’s across the street from a bank that opened in 1892. 

It’s pretty neat to stand under those oak trees and imagine the wagons and train whistles of long ago, during those days gone by. 

When you go on vacation, do you take home a souvenir?

Sometimes we do. For instance, last year my husband and Little Bit got shirts from a restaurant we really liked in Orange Beach, Alabama. 

When we were leaving Grand Isle, Louisiana a few days ago, for our “souvenir”, we did something a bit different. We stopped at a seafood shop on the canal to buy some fresh shrimp to take home. 

I have to say, it was definitely a different shopping experience than we’re used to. Here at home, the only shrimp we can get is in the frozen section of the grocery store.

When we walked into the seafood shop, it looked similar to an open type warehouse. In the middle were three large containers. 

One was full of ice and the others were brimming with fresh shrimp. It was really neat to see. I mean, here this place was, right near the water, with shrimp boats docked just outside. 

All we had to do was, walk up to the containers and choose which size we wanted (there were three), and tell them how many pounds. 

A few moments later, he had them scooped into the scale, bagged up, and ready to go. From start to finish, including paying for the shrimp, the whole process took about ten minutes. 

For our trip back home, we had a separate cooler and ice for the shrimp, and stopped every few hours to make sure they were still iced down. They made it home wonderfully.

Last night my husband cleaned, bagged, and put them in the freezer. Months from now I can just hear the conversation as we sit down to a delicious meal of gulf shrimp. 

We’ll probably talk about how much fun it was to stop there, then chuckle when we recall that the amount we paid for the fifteen pounds came to less than the price of two t-shirts.