I finally got in to see a base doc for my shoulder on Friday, only after calling at the first minute the sick call lines were opened. When I called the morning after I got hurt and told them what had happened and that the ER had told me I needed to see a specialist ASAP, they originally scheduled me for a visit to see the doctor, a WEEK later. Socialized medicine in action! After I saw the doc, a nice civilian woman whose husband is my dentist and did my surgery a month ago, she put me on quarters for the day. I didn’t really think it was necessary since I could, with mild discomfort, sit at my desk and type, but I didn’t mind the little extra time to get ready.
We left early Saturday morning and headed to Mansfield, MO. It was a ~10 hour drive but wasn’t bad and the kids held up nicely considering. We, as is our custom when traveling, got a book on CD from the library to help pass the time. We got Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
which we had listened to before but it was a good one and I thought appropriate for the kind of excursion we were on. I will expound more on the book at a later date. We got to our “Inn”, a place one online reviewer described as “Bates-esque”, about 4 and only checked in before heading to out to Mansfield’s claim to fame, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum just a few miles up the road. There we met a long time “friend” of Holly’s and toured the home. When I say met, I mean I, the kids, AND Holly spoke to him for the first time in person that day. I’ll let Holly explain on her blog.On Sunday we woke up, ate some breakfast in our room and headed out to the festival. I struggle when people ask to explain exactly what this event was. Here is an excerpt from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Companies’ website:
Come join us and 6000 others for America’s premier event of seeds, plants, music, culture and the celebration of historic foods.
Enjoy a sense of community with fascinating seed collectors, renowned musicians, national speakers, historic demonstrators, food activists, home schoolers, western re-enactors, organic growers, gourmet chefs, free thinkers, historic farm animals & poultry, Ozarkian crafters, trendy vendors & herbal hippies.
I don’t think I could describe it much better than that. It was really a unique event and something that, even after going to, I’m going to have a hard time writing about. I saw the dreaded-out Bob Marley wantabes, the Deep South rednecks, the make peace hippies, tons of people in western and 1800’s period clothing. I listened to one family band sing beautiful southern gospel music on one stage while “The Checkered Past” band sang about environmental responsibility and clashing political one-sidedness on another. We met a family of 24 kids, 19 of which had been adopted from countries all around the world and has had a book written about them. There were a lot of older retirees, which I expected, but there were several young families and even a few young couples, which I had not. Basically it was a whole slew of people who felt like us. Yes there were widely varying political and religious views but we feel that the mainstream, throwaway society is failing us and that there is a better way of doing things.
That night we camped in an open pasture nearby. Xander and Lorelei entertained themselves by sword fighting everything in sight (we had watched Hook on Friday) and making a friend with our 2-year old neighbor. That night we built a fire and chased fireflies (I did the chasing while everyone else thought I looked ridiculous) and we fell asleep to the sounds of crickets and frogs singing their song. It sounded just like a sound effect simulating the night that you might hear on TV or the radio. The following morning we awoke to our “cow alarm” in the field behind us and the birds having a festival of their own and we killed some time outside our tent by reading, collecting firewood, and generally running amuck. I felt a little redneck when we were sitting in our folding chairs in front of our tent brushing our teeth and spitting on what ever open ground we could find, until I realized that the neighbors on our left had chickens running around in their “yard” and the neighbors on our right had slept in their car. Good company I guess.
We went to the festival again that day and there were much fewer people there making it easier to get around and into shops. We were blessed with beautiful weather all weekend and we ended up with 8 basil, 2 tomatoes, and 4 pepper plants, all of the heirloom variety. Unfortunately we couldn’t leave with chickens, heirloom or otherwise. We had planned on staying the night there and camp again but we were just kind of bushed at midday and wanted to get going. So we packed up all of our gear and headed out. We got about as far as Conway, AK, just north of Little Rock and stopped for the night. The kids and Mrs. were ready for a rest so we did and then kept on this morning.
It was a very fun, educational, interesting, eye-opening, enlightening, quality vacation and not something we’ll soon forget. We’re pretty well exhausted at this point and all kind of sick of each other on some level or another but we'll think about going back to this or another festival of it's kind in the future.
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