I was
married twice before, had a baby from my second marriage, and swore off
men after my second divorce. Swearing off men lasted about 18 months.
It was time to date again. Bars were no use, I didn’t want to marry a cheater or drinker. (Not to say that’s the only type of men in bars.)

Plan B: local newspaper personal ads (this was before the internet). I
don’t know why I didn’t think I’d find cheaters or drinkers in
newspaper ads as opposed to bars. My success was much greater. I met
super nice guys but didn’t hit it off with any of them. They would make
good friends, but I wanted a deeper relationship.

Until,
that is, I saw Bob’s ad (above). I thought, “HE sounds like the man I’m
looking for.” At the time, I was reading “Atlas Shrugged” for the
second time. I sent off a letter in response to the ad. He called me a
few days later. Our phone conversation went like this:

He then brought out his list of interview questions:

• What kind of music do you like? 
• Who are your favorite bands? 
• What movies do you like? 
• What kind of food do you like? 
• What kind of work do you do?
• What are your favorite books?

National Park Week happens in April each year.
All National Parks waive their entrance fees during that week. If you are anywhere
near a National Park, National Monument, National Seashore, National
Battlefield, National Historical Site that normally charges entrance
fees, National Park Week is a good time to get in free.

If you
miss out on the National Park Week offer, we recommend that you obtain
or buy one of the following passes, especially if you plan to sightsee
at numerous national parks within the year:

• America the Beautiful – 2013 Annual Pass – $80 (AKA Interagency Annual Pass):
  Good
  at all national parks, seashores, monuments, etc., and federal
  recreation areas. The pass admits the pass holder(s) and passengers in a
  non-commercial
  vehicle at “per vehicle” fee areas, and pass holder plus three adults at
  “per person” fee areas. (Children under 16 are admitted free.)
  The pass is good for one year from the date of purchase. The pass is not
  valid for Expanded Amenity Fees such as camping or parking at Mt.
  Rushmore. This pass can be purchased by mail or at a national park visitor center or entry gate.
• Free Annual Pass for Military (AKA Military Annual Pass):
  For active duty military personnel and dependents with proper identification. Pass must be issued in person.
• America the Beautiful – Senior Pass – $10 (AKA Interagency Senior Pass):
  This is a lifetime
  pass for U.S. citizens or permanent residents age 62 or older. The
  Senior Pass can only be obtained in person at a park. The pass admits
  the pass holder(s) and passengers in a non-commercial
  vehicle at “per vehicle” fee areas, and pass holder plus three adults at
  “per person” fee areas. (Children under 16 are admitted free.) The
  Senior Pass provides a 50% discount on some Expanded Amenity Fees
  charged for camping, swimming, boat launch and specialized interpretive
  services. In some cases where Expanded Amenity Fees are charged, only
  the pass holder will be given the 50% reduction.
• America the Beautiful – Access Pass – Free. (AKA Interagency Access Pass):
  This is a lifetime
  pass for U.S. citizens and permanent residents with permanent
  disabilities. The Access Pass can only be obtained in person at a park
  entrance or visitor center. Documentation is required to obtain the
  pass. Acceptable documentation includes: statement by a licensed
  physician; document issued by a Federal agency such as the Veteran’s
  Administration, Social Security Disability Income or document issued by a
  State agency such as a vocational rehabilitation agency. The pass
  admits the pass holder(s) and passengers in a non-commercial
  vehicle at “per vehicle” fee areas, and pass holder plus three adults at
  “per person” fee areas. (Children under 16 are admitted free.) The
  Accesss Pass provides a 50% discount on
  some Expanded Amenity Fees charged for camping, swimming, boat launch
  and specialized interpretive services. In some cases where Expanded
  Amenity Fees are charged, only the pass holder will be given the 50%
  reduction.
• America the Beautiful — 2013 Volunteer Pass – Free :
  This
  pass is for volunteers who acquire 250 service hours on a cumulative
  basis. Good for one year beginning with the date of the award. The pass
  admits the pass holder(s) and passengers in a non-commercial vehicle at
  “per vehicle” fee areas, and pass holder plus three adults at “per
  person” fee areas. (Children under 16 are admitted free.)
• Some of the major National Parks also have a park-specific annual pass for $50.

Bob
and I love frequenting national parks. Even when we think there may not
be anything interesting there, we’re wrong. We love exploring trails,
reading history, checking the visitor centers for geology and animals in
the park, and absorbing the experience. Each park is different.

Summer’s
coming. I urge you to get out and explore our national parks and
federal recreation sites. Hike, discover, fish, watch sunsets, go on
ranger-led tours, photograph, smell the air, search for wildlife, and
have fun!

With a moniker of TravelBug, what else could “T” stand for but travel in the A-to-Z Challenge?

What
about traveling motivates us? What keeps us focused on moving down the
road pulling our home behind us? What are our favorite spots to which
we’ve traveled? What setbacks can happen? What is in store for the
future?

I’m going to answer the last two questions first.
One of the sayings full-time RVers live by is: “Our plans are made with
Jello.” In other words, we have no crystal ball. What we thought we
might do one day, gets changed the next. Just as Jello doesn’t stay
stable, but wobbles around and changes fluidity, so do plans of
full-time RVers. What causes our Jello-like existence? What changes?
Setbacks are a part of it, that’s why I’m answering that question now as
well. Here’s a partial list:

*Breakdowns or mechanical
problems requiring an extended stay, the length of which is determined
by the availability of parts or mechanics to effect repairs.

*Illness:

• A loved one in another part of the country becomes quite ill necessitating travel to be there for them
• One of the RVers becomes too ill to travel

*Accidents: vehicular or personal. These can ruin your plans for
quite some time. In a motor vehicle or motor home accident, depending
on the severity, you will need to deal with insurance companies, the
possibility of replacing vehicles, or doctor/hospital visits. If you
don’t have insurance or adequate savings, the time spent in an area
becomes quite prolonged. (I speak from experience on this one!) You
gotta do what you gotta do.

*Family/Grandchildren: birth of grandchildren in another state, travel for unexpected family events, death in the family.

*Change in job situation: job ends unexpectedly and you find a job in another state or area.

*Weather:
predicted hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, high winds, snow, ice.
With your home on wheels you can do your best to avoid bad
weather…just pack up and move. Savvy RVers keep their eyes on the
weather.

*Sale of your sticks and bricks house: You may be ready
to hit the road in your RV; however, the sale of your home may fall
through, be delayed or it may take more time than you thought.

*Bugs/infestations:
Not a pleasant topic, but bugs can be a problem. Just ask anyone who
has had ants invade their RV. I heard a story of one couple who were in
the South. Ants took over their RV, swarming on the floor and even in
their bed. They cut short their trip because they heard the best thing
to kill them was freezing weather. They headed home to the north where
freezing weather would be the ants’ demise. No see ‘ums, mosquitoes,
wasps/bees/yellow jackets – all can make being outside (or inside)
miserable.

*Allergies: if something in your current camp area is making you miserably allergic, it may be time to move somewhere else.

*Detour to meet friends and/or fellow bloggers who are in your vicinity.

*Travel before we get too injured/ill to enjoy it.

What motivates us? What keeps us focused on moving down the road? Why travel?

1. See beautiful natural surroundings: forests, beaches, rivers, lakes,
   deserts, caves, gardens, arches, hoodoos, natural bridges, waterfalls,
   national parks, Corps of Engineers campgrounds
2. Learn history
3. Experience different cultures
4. Taste new foods
5. Volunteer, if so inclined
6. Find something unexpected that delights us
7. Meet interesting people, including blog friends
8. Visit relatives we haven’t seen in a long time
9. Freedom of the open road
10. Go to dark sky parks (e.g. Natural Bridges National Monument) to see
    the nighttime sky without city lights diminishing the intensity
11. Learn what we like and don’t like
12. Look for a place we’d like to settle permanently if, or when, the nomadic tendency wears off
13. We like the people we are as travelers
14. Sporting events in different cities
15. Anticipation of a new adventure
16. Bob enjoys running, and I enjoy walking/hiking, in new places, 
    (e.g. the RiverWalk in San Antonio, along the Truckee River in Reno,
    Yellowstone, Big Bend…you get the idea).
17. We’re able to immerse ourselves in areas like the Oregon Trail
    through Nebraska, the Old Spanish Trail (Camino Real) and the Military
    Road in Texas

And our favorite places we’ve traveled (in the RV)?

1. Yellowstone National Park
2. Black Hills, South Dakota
3. Texas Hill Country
4. Reno/Sparks, Nevada
5. Big Bend National Park, Texas
6. San Antonio, Texas
7. Corpus Christi, Texas
8. Delta, Colorado and Black Canyon of the Gunnison
9. Kearney, Nebraska: Great Platte River Road Archway spanning I-80, and history of the area
10. North Platte, Nebraska: Union Pacific Railroad Golden Spike Tower at Bailey Yard
11. Thermopolis, Wyoming
12. Cody, Wyoming
13. Oklahoma City, OK: Cowboy Museum, walking downtown along the river
14. Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, south of Ely, Nevada

Favorite places (before the RV or not with the RV)?

1. British Columbia, western Alberta, Canada: Vancouver, Victoria and
   Vancouver Island, Fairmont Hot Springs (before it was hit by mudslide in
   2012), Kicking Horse Pass/Spiral Tunnels, Banff, Jasper, Icefields
   Parkway
2. Vienna, Austria
3. Southern Germany
4. Southeastern Australia: Coffs Harbour, Blue Mountains, Sydney,
   Canberra, Great Ocean Road, Bowral, Australian Southern Highlands,
   Waterfall Way, Melbourne
5. Utah: Zion, Bryce, Grand-Staircase Escalante, Capitol Reef, Goblin
   Valley State Park, Arches, Canyonlands (Island in the Sky and Needles
   districts), Natural Bridges National Monument, Lake Powell, Rainbow
   Bridge National Monument
6. Western Montana
7. Oregon
8. Hawaii
9. Colorado: Mesa Verde
10. Tennessee
11. North Carolina
12. Kentucky
13. Washington: Mount Rainier, Seattle, Olympic Peninsula, Goldendale (sun observatory)
14. California: Yosemite, Monterey/Pacific Grove, Redwoods, Gold Country

You can tell by our list we haven’t spent much time in the northern, central or eastern United States.  All in good time.

Tell us why you travel. What are your favorite places? What causes you to change plans?

Travel Bug out.

Back in the mid-1980s, I worked as a seasonal park
ranger/costumed interpreter at Hopewell Village National Historic Site
(now Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site) in southeastern
Pennsylvania.  Hopewell is an interesting site, as it is one of the few
historic properties operated by the National Park Service that
interprets the nation’s industrial heritage prior to the Revolution
(although the main interpretive focus at the site is the 1820-1840
period).  As a costumed interpreter, I dressed in “period” costume…mob
cap or bonnet, dress, apron, shoes, etc.  As a female, I was expected to
focus on “women’s work” at the site, which, of course, focused on
cooking, baking, cleaning, weeding, etc., since we were interpreting
early 19^th century history.

Blog author wearing stylish mob cap, Summer 1984.

Now women at Hopewell had quite a few
responsibilities.  Mothers were responsible for child rearing as well as
taking care of the home.  Single women worked at the moulder’s kitchen,
which essentially served as a cafeteria for workers at the iron furnace
(both single and married, since some workers lived away from the iron
plantation).  The moulder’s kitchen included the bake ovens, so when we
interpreted (explained) what was done at that part of the site, we
talked about food preparation and actually baked bread and cakes in the
bake ovens (which we then fed to the pig at the end of the workday).  We
also were responsible for visitor safety, which meant we also had to
make sure that we had to keep small children from climbing on walls, on
the top of the bake ovens, etc.—and, unfortunately, my supervisor told
us we weren’t allowed to tell the story of Hansel and Gretel when
dealing with unruly children.

Kitchen area at Moulder’s Kitchen. The food on display is not authentic to the time period interpreted at Hopewell.

The life of housewives was interpreted at another
part of the village, where the tenant or workers’ houses were located. 
Here, we prepared full meals (which also would be fed to the pig at the
end of the day), weeded the garden, chopped wood, cleaned…in other
words, we did what a typical housewife of the early 19^th
century did. The other location where women’s work was demonstrated was
at the cleaning shed outside the cast house, where women and children
would clean the casting made by their husband/father before it was sent
to market.  Again, the men manufactured, and the women cleaned.

Cooking over an open hearth fireplace at one of the tenant houses.

My last year working at Hopewell, budget cuts had reduced the living
history program to one that only included moulding and casting
demonstrations at the cast house, and I worked as a park ranger
conducting tours of the historic area.  In this role, I was better able
to provide a historical context for what was happening at Hopewell both
during the Revolution (where they produced cannon and shot for the
Continental Army war effort) and during the early 19^th
century.  Instead of being in costume, I wore the standard NPS ranger
uniform, complete with the “Smokey the Bear” hat (straw, since it was
during the summer).  But I missed being in costume, because even though I
described the past in the third person (“this is what happened in the
moulder’s kitchen”) instead of first person (“I’m Ellen, and I’m one of
the girls working here in the moulder’s kitchen today”) when I was in
costume, I felt like I was more effective at presenting the past to the
public when dressed in period garb…and was more than a history teacher
who had a summer job teaching history to a non-captive audience.

The point I’m trying to make is that learning about
the past occurs in a variety of ways.  Sometimes, you read about it. 
Sometimes, you research and write about it.  Sometimes, you visit places
to see (and perhaps experience) it.  Sometimes, you get to live it like
I did during the summers of 1984 and 1985.  Most important, though, is
that the past is all around us, and it’s nothing to fear.  If anything,
the past is something to embrace, because it definitely shapes who we
are and what we hope to become.

My blog is going to focus on how visiting historic
sites can be fun.  As someone who has worked in the field, my views will
be different from those of a typical academic historian.  At the same
time, occasionally I get to see a site from someone else’s
perspective—and, in that case, the adventure is quite different from
when I experience it alone.