Tag: National Park Service

Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Summer Trip, Travel

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Last Part

Our final stop was Gatlinburg, Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While there we visited Pigeon Forge. This stop included WonderWorks, The Comedy Barn, Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s Stampede Dinner Show, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, miniature golf, go kart racing, TopJump Trampoline Park and rafting the Lower Pigeon River. Then on our way home, we wound our way through the Blue Ridge Parkway and stopped to see family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

8/9/2023

  1. Sent the 10 year old to walk a dog at dusk alone.  He opened the front door, screamed, dog barked and he said, “There’s a bear.”  Really?! I grabbed the back of his shirt, pulled him inside, and slammed the door.  Then I watched the black bear walk to our car and grab the handle of the sliding door with its mouth and then ramble away as we all are trying to watch it through the window.  We were warned by our AirBNB hosts to lock the car doors and leave no food in them as the bears in the area know how to open unlocked car doors.  Guess we saw an attempt.   I went with the 10 year old to walk the dog after the bear left.
  2. Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee are sensory overload in every way.  Like Orlando but on steroids because it is more compact.  The kids want to do EVERYTHING and of course that is not possible.  I am having to deal with disappointment and find my flexibility as weather has forced us to change plans. First time this trip which is saying something.
  3. We went on a float (rafting) trip today.  The 12 year old got 90% ready to go, got in trouble for watching screens without being ready, finished getting ready and then decided he wasn’t going. This meant Dad wouldn’t go either as he didn’t want to leave the 12 year old alone. This triggered me for the waste of money, the lost expectation of a great family afternoon with my husband, and suddenly changing our reservation with the rafting company.   So I went to the 12 year old, asked questions why he didn’t want to go, trying to understand etc.  He wanted nothing to do with talking it out so I told him he’d have to repay the cost of the trip.  He said fine.  He would go.  The 12 year old had a good time and was glad he went.  My husband thinks he was being a moody teenager.
  4. I hate parenting with screens.  Can I be a parent 30 years ago instead?
  5. The scenery here is beautiful and dramatically different from the west.  I love it.  My husband is a desert person.  I am a mountain person.  

8/13/2023

  1. The Smoky Mountains are a temperate rainforest.  The landscape is SO different from the west.  There is a picture of us on a hike.  The areas that recently burned regenerate a lot faster than those in the west or at least look like it.
  2. Juggling 4 kids and all their individual needs is difficult as I am often bumping up against the needs of someone else or even myself.  One 7 year old wants to do things in her own time and often gets distracted, will wander away from a task and generally takes her time.  And there is nothing wrong with that or at least I keep telling myself that.  However, it often runs into the needs of the group and getting out the door.  And then I am yelling at her to get going or I am going to leave her behind. I have to take a bunch of time I don’t have to dedicate to making sure she gets her tasks completed.  Struggling with how to give her space and time but it impacts the group.   Trying to start her earlier doesn’t seem to work.  I get distracted so then she knows she doesn’t need do the task.
  3. I was both excited and nervous to get home.  And then I barely sat down as I, with help, emptied the car, ran errands, looked through mail etc.   It seems like the to do list tripled, and the weeds in the vegetable garden…OH MY.  The kids were excited to get home and kept calling out all the things they “remember” as we drove through town.
  4. We finally hit traffic in the last two hours of our drive making it 3 hours.  We were really lucky and had very few slow downs during the trip but couldn’t avoid a summer Sunday on the congested highway corridor.  I am glad we made the conscious decision to not stop at one more historic site on the way home.
  5. I think we drove about 7000 miles in 7 weeks.  That was 5500 miles doing our loop and another 1500 running around to activities and hikes etc.   We broke one rental van and ended up with a better one.  Too many fast food or truck stop meals and too many repeats of the 12 year old’s musical playlist. 

So glad to get home.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Summer Trip, Travel

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Part 4

After spending almost 2 weeks in southern Utah, we beelined across the country to Hot Springs, Arkansas. We stopped briefly in Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit with a friend and see Petroglyphs National Monument. Then it was onto Hot Springs National Park with a stop in Oklahoma City to exchange our rental van. In Hot Springs, we explored the park, the downtown area and went to the Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo.

7/29/2023

We are 2 days into our 3 days of driving from Utah to Arkansas, and the van is vibrating like it shouldn’t for the last 2 hours.  When we rented the van, they gave us one with 50,000 miles on it.  We’ve added over 5000 miles to it.  I kind of expected a break down when I saw the mileage and the shape of the interior…They are hard miles.   We are still mobile but there is definitely something wrong with the car.  However, I am having a hard time rolling with this disruption and the logistics.   Fear of losing money.  Fear of missing out.  Fear of being responsible for it all.  

7/31/2023

I am now in possession of a back seat to a Chevy Express and an extra tank of gas from our exchange.   We drove our vibrating van 100 miles to exchange that took 2 hours due to a poorly programmed computer system and irate customers.  Unfortunately, they exchanged our 15 passenger Chevy Express for a 12 passenger Ford Transit.  We left the last row of the Chevy in our house on the East Coast to give us room for cargo.  Now the van is in Oklahoma without the seats.  I’ll return the seats when I return the van in 2 weeks, but I bet these two shall never meet again.  So lots of melt downs yesterday as many of us were over tired from staying up late. And we survived.

8/1/2023

  1. Oklahoma is not as flat as I remember or attribute to it…at least not the part we drove.
  2. I think we are burnt out.  After 3 solid days of driving and 5 weeks of seeing and doing, I am having a hard time finding the motivation to go see and do more here in Hot Springs.   And yesterday when I said we were going out, the kids only wanted to stay behind and keep playing.  (This Air BNB has lots of board games.) Yes, doing nothing isn’t wasted time, but even I have a hard time with this when I know we probably won’t be back.  Working to readjust my expectations for today.  (I already had to give up on my massage as the place is closed on Tuesdays.   ).
  3. The husband is getting both dogs the next time we are in a hotel.  After having them two days in a row and being woken up early etc., it is his turn.  In the past we’ve split them up but not this time.  I told him this and he gave me what I interpreted as “Ok, but I don’t think so.”  Now I need to stick to this statement in two weeks.
  4. There are a lot more trucks driving the southern route of the US than the northern route.

After Hot Springs, we went to Memphis, Tennessee for a couple of days. We visited Beale Street, the National Civil Right Museum, and the Historic Peabody for the duck walk. We also had good BBQ and fried chicken.

8/4/2023

  1. Hot and humid is hotter than hot and dry.  I knew this but to feel it so dramatically over the course of a week as we drove east, drives it home.
  2. My husband is horribly out of shape.  I knew this, but I think he is finally realizing it. He always says to me, “I work out more than you think I do.” And maybe he does, but lifting a weight in his office and slowly pacing the house does nothing for cardiovascular health. He says things like if you tell me to go to the doctor, I will go and then he will give me a BS reason why he can’t make the appointment at the last moment. I want to support him in being healthier because I want him to stay around, but I can’t be responsible for his health. He will say things like “ask me to walk the dogs with you,” but more times than not he says he is too “busy” so I stop asking.  I have too many other worries and anxiousness that this is one item I am consciously trying to shed other than making appointments.  But sometimes it feels like because I love him, I should worry and nag more and take more of this on.  And I am also annoyed as his unfitness limits what we can do with him and if he is going to attend an outing, everything has to be planned around what he can do.  It also doesn’t help that on some health items, we have fundamental different outlooks.
  3. As we have been discussing, we all need to be kinder to ourselves or maybe see ourselves with the awe our kids see.  I am driving a big 12 person van.  And twice last week, the 10 year old was in awe of my maneuvering the van in tight spaces.  When he said with all honesty that was great maneuvering, my first knee jerk was not it isn’t.  Why is that?  I caught myself and said thank you but all I could think though was someone who drove this type of van all the time would do much better.  Why do we expect such perfection and knowing how to do everything great.  My kid thought I did great.  I did do great.  I didn’t hit anything and got the car out of the parking space.  Working on that grace and compassion.
  4. Funny note: Last year, the week before school started, all the kids picked one activity and we went and did them as a last hurrah since we had no camps.  They were 2 hour activities and we had a lot of fun.  The 7 year old commented today, “Aren’t we doing that again when we get back?” Uhm, no.  We’ve been doing all summer.
  5. The pandemic has really hit downtowns hard.  Memphis downtown is an interesting mix of rundown area, tourist area and what I assume are offices.  However, there is very little traffic.  Maybe due to the heat there aren’t that many tourist and without the offices filled, it is empty from what the density indicates it should be. St. Louis was similar.
Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Parenting, Summer Trip, Travel

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Part 3

Our fourth stop was Kanab, Utah. We visited Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Pipe Springs National Monument and Pink Coral Sand Dunes State Park. We also went swimming, motorized raft on the Colorado River, and horseback riding. Grandma and Grandpa joined us for a week and spent time with the grandkids that included star gazing. I wish I’d spent some time star gazing but I kept putting it off (sun went down after I went to bed) and it never happened.

7/18/2023

Whoo-hoo. We hiked Angel’s Landing at Zion National Park today. This was a stretch for us. (Angel’s Landing is a 5 mile out and back hike with 1 mile of rock scramble to reach the pinnacle. Popular enough you have to have a permit. After missing the early lottery last spring for a permit, I scored one yesterday in my first day before attempt.). My oldest and my husband decided not to join us. Oh wow, it was fantastic. The 10 year old started off grumpy, picking on siblings etc., etc. and I took my own advice, took a breath, looked around and Wow it is beautiful. It provided enough space for me to ask the 10 year old why he was grumpy. He didn’t have a good night sleep and that provided enough connection that he settled out after that. Then on the way back down, he took off way ahead by passing a message through his siblings about his plan. Oops, that led to a couple meltdowns that I was able to acknowledge and validate. Also, not freak out about the fact I basically lost a child and calmly take care of Mom as we sat down for lunch even though I didn’t know exactly where the 10 year old was. I was starving. And one 7 year old cried the last quarter mile because her legs hurt and she didn’t want to go any further. We were on the hottest part of the trail (100 degrees today by the time we finished) and we couldn’t stop. (Mom wouldn’t have started again.) I acknowledged, validated and accepted the crying and promised her when we got to the bridge I would carry her. I couldn’t carry her farther. Once she laid down a little waiting for the shuttle bus back to the car she rebounded. And now we get to say look what we did. Oh and the other 7 year old got her black bear, but it was her turn to I could say yes.

The beginning of Angel’s Landing at Zion National Park

7/25/2023

  1. Hummingbirds are tiny.  And how do they move their wings that fast?  One 7 year old said they look like big bugs.  At first, I thought they might be big dragon flies.
  2. Grandpa and Grandma joined us for a week of exploring Southern Utah. And I can totally see a few of my parenting strategies as I watch my father interacting with the kids.  It really is generational.
  3. The grandparents took all 4 kids yesterday to explore the national parks.  It was so quiet at the house while I was trying to work, I didn’t know what to do with myself without all the interruptions.
  4. We went horseback riding at Bryce Canyon.  I was worried about a couple of my kids as they are occasionally afraid of heights.  So for 7 year old #1, I took her aside and explained what it would feel like and put her on my knees to simulate the horse.  I didn’t do this with the other one because she isn’t usually afraid of heights.  So they load us early onto the horses, and the horses start shifting weight and 7 year old #2 starts crying.   And then, 7 year old #1’s horse moves on its own and she starts crying.  And I am sitting on my mule away from them saying it’s going to be okay.  It is okay to be scared but you won’t fall off.  They both sat with it and calmed down and once we go moving had a great time.  7 year old #2 wants to go again. It is really hard when you can’t go to your kids and they are upset. And it taught them they could handle it.
  5. It is amazing what the earth’s movement, wind and water can do and the varieties of formations over 200 miles.  If you want to be in awe and feel your life span is only a flash in the pan, come see the many canyons of Utah and Arizona.

7/27/2023

  1. Sand sledding is harder than snow sledding and sand stings when it is whipped up by the wind.
  2. Kids need downtime and choice.  Wednesdays are the slow days as I have morning and afternoon work meetings.  Activities are short and interspersed with the meetings. For this Wednesday, we were going to make the short drive to the Sand Caves and a museum.  All kid expressed interest but when time came to leave only one wanted to come as the others were engaged in playing.  When I told my husband I was leaving 3 behind, he asked why I wasn’t forcing them to go.  Once they get going they usually have fun.   In his mind, this is their one chance to see this and it shouldn’t be missed and they can always play later.  I told him that is generally true but that they needed to have a choice.  And for me, the stress and yelling of getting kids out the door, the bickering when they don’t want to go affects the activity.   I had a relaxing trip with one kid who wanted to be there and came home to 3 kids playing, excited and having fun.   They didn’t “miss” anything.  Kids don’t need to experience everything and downtime isn’t wasted time.  Why are we always pushing for every moment to be an experience or learning opportunity?
  3. My kids miss home.  They miss their space and their stuff.  They miss their routine and the familiar.  Both girls were over tired and crying how they didn’t want to share a room anymore.  They like sharing a room once a week but not continuously.  I validated their feelings and told them that sharing a room is hard.  I think we will see if we can mix it up a bit next location.  Being the youngest and twins gets the short end of the stick on room assignments.
  4. My oldest has diagnosed ADHD.   My husband is anti-medication and so far that is not a battle I am willing to have.  My father made a profound comment when talking about the 12 year old’s addiction to the screen, that he is using it to calm his mind.  We can have the medication calm his mind or the screen or to teach him other techniques but I am not sure anything will outweigh the ease and shininess of the screen.
  5. Umm….The 10 year old needed a haircut. The photo says it all. Brett may be out of the hair cutting business.
Kids cutting hair.
Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Parenting, Prejudice, Screentime, Summer Trip, Travel, Wildlife, Working Mother

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Part 2

Our second stop was Rapid City, South Dakota. We visited Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument and WaTiki Indoor Waterpark. July 4th, also, fell this week.

7/5/2023

  1. Southern South Dakota is a lot greener than I remember as a kid.  They’ve had rain or it is early in the season and all the grasses are green.  I remember miles of brown from childhood.
  2. My husband is remarkably prejudice and a number of these he has gained as his income has increased.   He even acknowledges some of them to an extent but has no desire to limit or undo them.   I have my own set also and have found it interesting in the last few years as I am acknowledging them and for some having to set aside unraveling them because I can only do so much and that is okay.   We all have prejudices, both conscious and unconscious, and I find the unconscious ones the most harmful.  For me acknowledging them, even if I don’t have the bandwidth to unravel them, reduces the harm to others and what I am passing onto my kids, or at least I hope so.
  3. Oh my god, it is tough working full time and doing childcare full time even with the older kids.  I am understanding why my two years of homeschooling during the pandemic were so stressful.  Somewhere in here, I thought there would be more time to do nothing, but all my nothing time is my job. This is enlightening because when my husband suggests, we go on vacation and I can just work while on vacation, I have a knee jerk of “No, I don’t want to do that”.  And I have a hard time explaining to him why that doesn’t work for me.  He typically has “solutions,” but they don’t work for me.   I need to plan out my responses to him when he suggests this or maybe need to draw a boundary and hold it on what I do and what he does so that we can make something like this work. I need to think about this a lot more so those conversations can be more connecting.
  4. The fireworks were freaking unbelievable.  I have never been somewhere where fireworks are legal to purchase and set off yourself. In the neighborhood where we stayed, they were and our host even said it was okay if we bought some and set them off.   We did a few.  There were fireworks going off for 2 hours and not just the little tiny ones.  It was so over the top. 
Bighorn Sheep in Badlands National Park

Our next stop was West Yellowstone, Montana. We visited Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway.

7/15/2023

  1. Yellowstone is magnificent.  If you’ve never been, go and stay for awhile.  See all the tourist things with the crowds and then get off the beaten path.  Don’t forget Grand Teton.  I wish we had more time here. 
  2. We need more space.  We ended up in a 2 bedroom hotel cabin with kitchenette and 6 people and two dogs.  Like other husbands, my husband somehow expects the kids to be silent during work hours and keeps yelling at them when they aren’t.  They are kids.   For this location, there was nowhere else to go when we were both working.
  3. Kids really don’t need screens.  We have driven over 2500 miles, and they have used the screens in the car for 4 hours total and haven’t actually asked for them too much.  They have stared out the window, listened to music, made up games, colored and only occasionally gotten too loud.  I find they are better behaved when not on screens.  (The oldest has additional screen time, and he has milked every minute.)
  4. When we stopped in St. Louis we went to our first shop with souvenirs.  3 of the 4 found something they really wanted but one was wandering the store trying to find something so he wasn’t left out.  I assured him he didn’t have to force it and could find something at the next shop.  This has led to a rotation, you can’t get something until everyone has found something from the previous round.  This came to a head today when a 7 year old really wanted to buy a stuffed animal.  However, the 12 year old had not bought something from the previous round and wasn’t with us so the answer was no.  This led to the pout face, “Come on Mom, I am so cute,” and the melting down.  I listened and emphasized with her and told her we would see the animals again at later stops.  I also realized she was likely hungry as she didn’t eat much lunch and that was 50% or more of the melt down.  Held her through being sad and off to the exhibits we went.  Biggest hit on souvenirs so far is the Dinosaur encyclopedia.  They made up an new game.
  5. Chipmunks can be aggressive. In Grand Teton at their most popular hike, one jumped on a 7 year old’s leg and started climbing up looking for a hand out. She came back down the trail in tears, scared of chipmunks. (I was behind with the slower kids so wasn’t there.) I’d be scared too. As she was explaining what happened through tears, I couldn’t understand and was in disbelief until I go to the top and saw the chipmunks. Don’t feed the wildlife.

Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Summer Trip, Travel

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Part 1

My husband loves to travel, loves the change of going or living somewhere new. I like to travel, and I like the constancy of home. Since I switched jobs several years ago and accelerated by the COVID pandemic, I am now a remote worker and not tied to an office with flexible hours. Thus, my husband wanted to travel for the summer and after some trial and error on type of trip and location, we came up with a driving tour of National Parks. As a Christmas present 2 years ago, I received a deluxe National Parks passport book and the goal to visit and stamp the 400+ sites in the book. This trip fed nicely into that goal, and I was excited about the possibilities.

I was not excited about managing 4 kids with no childcare, the packing, the travel details etc. while working full time. To help mitigate this, I decided to take intermittent vacation instead of continuous vacation. I took two days off a week throughout the trip. We had two days to do all day activities and then afternoon activities on the other days with me working mornings and evenings. We did most of our driving on the weekends to avoid taking days off of work.

During this trip, I wrote my observations of the trip for my conscious parenting group. If you are new to conscious parenting, check out Dr. Shefali Tsabary. I work with a coach who graduated from Dr. Shefali’s Conscious Parenting Coaching Institute. The coach and the group help me parent with connection and emotional intelligence rather than screaming and strict discipline. I have modified the observations to make more sense to a general audience. However, background in conscious parenting and awakening consciousness may help with understanding. Feel free to ask questions.

I may do more detailed summaries of our stops for later posts, but initially I will stick with my initial observations. We started the trip on the East coast and our first stop was St. Louis. In St. Louis, we visited the Gateway Arch National Park, the St. Louis Zoo, the St. Louis Science Museum, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site and the City Museum. We also played at Turtle Park and took a riverboat ride on the Mississippi River. Here are the observations from the week:

6/30/2023

  1. Kids don’t need all these activities we’ve planned.  The hit of St. Louis was Turtle Park, a playground down the road from our Airbnb.  The 2nd Biggest hit was the City Museum which is multiple big jungle gyms for kids.  And now they are enjoying sitting around playing D&D with each other and other games.  Still on with the activity schedule.
  2. Our society moved from corporal punishment for kids to shaming of kids to get obedience.  Where as animal training moved from corporal punishment to positive reinforcement training.  I know animals don’t have communication to allow shaming as an option, but apparently animals have more rights than our kids. I was at a NPS National Historic Site Museum (not super interesting for young kids) and watched a mom with 3 kids guessing between 3 and 10.  The middle one started crying. She asked him to stop and then took them outside when he wouldn’t.  She then stood there berating/shaming him to get him to stop crying. After a bit, they came back in without a crying child but he was emotionally detached.  And I so wanted to say, “there is a better way” but obviously couldn’t.  This is absolutely something I have done in my unconscious past and something I still do sometimes in my awakening self, so no judgement, and I was seeing how I must have looked to my kids in the moment where I am yelling and shaming them.  I also thought that if this is the interaction with others we are modelling to our children, is it any wonder our society is so screwed up sometimes. 
  3. My kids don’t like fast food, hot dogs, pizza and other typical on the go at amusement park places as much as they think they do.  They haven’t realized it, but they’ve eaten the best when we stopped at Subway or when they ordered sandwiches and salad than when we ordered pizza and hot dogs.  I wish it was easier to get vegetables on the go.