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Cindy's World Trip Blog

June 27, Month 1

Griswold Family Vacation?

We have been traveling on our 'pre-trip' trip for a week now. We left our home in Texas and are traveling to visit family in Utah and Nevada by way of North Dakota (our travel route is a story in and of itself). Our van is packed nearly to the top and we know the kids are in there somewhere because they ask to stop to go to the bathroom every few hours:)

By the way the first rental of our house went fantastic and so did the second hopefully the trend will continue!

Road trips always make me think of the Griswold family (National Lampoons). I have always enjoyed watching the TV reruns and died laughing at their mishaps and misfortunes. We have had our share of mishaps already on this trip and they have been fine because we have had so much fun too, but today when I heard on the radio that there were tornado watches for the area of North Dakota we were headed for, I thought of our mishaps- having our car window busted and our camera stolen (on our first full day) and having our dog 'hospitalized' at the vet's with pancreatitis. I could handle those two things, but add a tornado on top of that?? Forget it! We may as well rename ourselves the Griswold's. We seem to have missed the storms though.... luckily.

Like I said even though we have been robbed and we learned first hand where the saying 'sick as a dog' came from, we really have had a good time. I think part of the stress has been reduced because we don't have any strict deadlines. If we only had one week to take off from work to get relaxed, have fun and gear up for another six-months without a vacation, I think I would be a bit more uptight.

The car break-in happened in while we were visiting a church in San Antonio on Father's day. It was Richard's camera that he was worried about taking on the trip because it is a nicer camera it would be more likely to get stolen in other countries. He took it pretty well and laughed, 'at least I don't have to worry about it getting stolen anymore.' My 6 year-old daughter wanted to comfort Richard and said, 'Daddy, maybe the boys who took it needed to have that camera to give to their daddy.' We thought it was so sweet. Later when it was starting to sink in more, she was starting to get really upset about it and said that they were really mean and they should apologize. Ah the innocence of childhood.

Although we saw an uglier side of humanity that day, we also saw a very beautiful side. Many people from the church we visited gave their numbers and genuinely wanted to help in anyway they could. One family, the Parsons even insisted that we join them for dinner. We ended up talking with this family for hours and hours like we were the oldest of friends. Because we could not find anyplace to fix the window on a Sunday, before the night was over, they insisted we leave our van with the broken window at their house in a more secluded-safe neighborhood and take their car to our hotel. After we drove away, we realized that we hadn't even left our cell numbers. I emphasized and pointed out to our girls that even though there are mean people out in the world there are very nice ones too.

The next afternoon after we got the car fixed, we visited the Alamo and walked around the river walk. Our two oldest had been there before, but because they were so young, they didn't remember.

Our most fun day by far has been our visit to the water park called Schlitterbahn's in New Braunfels. This amazing park is divided up into two sides and they provide a bus between the two. We got there a little after they opened at 10:00 AM and left when they kicked us out soggy, tired, and happy at 8:00 PM. The girls are big enough and brave enough that we could go on everything together rather than trading off who was staying with the younger one(s). They have a lot of cool slides that are tube rides run with natural river water on the original side, on the other they have some water slides that are more like a roller coaster than anything. I mentioned our dog being sick. It turns out he had pancreatitis instead of a stomach bug like we initially thought. The first day he was sick we babied him, had him lick ice cubes, and did our best to make him comfortable. The second day it seemed like he had turned a corner and was feeling better so we decided to give it a little time. The third day we took him to the veterinarian in a little town we had stayed in the night before. We still believed although he looked pathetic, he seemed to be getting better (he more or less only barfed on day one). We were taking him to the vet because we wanted to make sure we were right and needed suggestions how to help him recover faster. Nope. We were really wrong about our thoughts that he was getting better. The vet took him and did a few tests, gave us the diagnosis, and explained the treatment plan- a night in the 'hospital' with medicine and an I.V. I felt so bad for thinking he was getting better! The vet had an indoor part and an outdoor stalls for bigger animals such as horses which reminded me of the small town vet I grew up taking my dogs to. The vet seemed great and we were so happy that our dog was getting what he needed.

I would be lying to say though that we were excited to take a closer look at Concordia, Kansas (no Dorothy you haven't left Kansas). On the surface the town seemed, um, less than impressive, but it turned out to be pretty fascinating. After making new reservations at a hotel, we started exploring. Before the day was through we ate at a great B-B-Q, 'Heavy's' visited 2 lovely museums and found out that this town had a rich history. In the early days of the town, a tribe of Native Americans had kidnapped 2 young women from this town. There was such outrage that the governor resigned his post to lead the group to find them. General Custer (as in Custer's last stand) got involved. A total of 2 years was spent trying to get them back and it was finally accomplished after they captured some chiefs to trade for the girls.

Later it was a frequent stop of the orphan train. I had never heard of the orphan train, but we visited a museum about it and found out that in the late 1800's lots of kids ended up as orphans fending for themselves in New York and Boston from the crowed and rough living environment. The idea was formed to send them on a train to new places where they would be able to get a loving home and a better upbringing. The first experiment went so well that it was continued. The train would go to a town and with the help of trusted people in each town placements were made in homes. The train would go to a new city with the kids that remained until most had found homes. Between 1850s and 1920s, up to 200,000 kids were placed in homes across the country. They estimate that one in every 25 Americans today have a genetic link to these kids. It was heart wrenching and touching to read accounts of kids that rode the train and the people that adopted them. Imagine coming to this country to make a better life for your family only to end up dead with the children you love left behind living on the streets. These kids were tough and so resilient.

During WWII the town housed 5,000+ German POW's (Prisoner's of War). Really? The town's whole population is only around that.

We also learned that the town is among the few places where service dogs are trained to detect seizures that are about to happen for people with harder to regulate epilepsy. These dogs can sense when the person is about to have a seizure, they signal to the person some how and/or help get them to a position that they won't get hurt while they have the seizure.

I guess every town, just like every person, has a story. This one turned out to be much more interesting than we thought.

Gizmo was well enough to leave the veterinarian's this morning and we were on our way....right into the tornado... hee hee. Thankfully no.