Traveling Across The USA Ends Up With a Big Move!

The Latest Trip Across America Ended Up In a Move For Our Family

I've told you about the traveling to Virginia and I've told you about the traveling to California.  But now it's time to tell you about the trip.  This trip we just took was to Washington DC.  We saw the monuments and museums.  We saw the Capitol Building, the Pentagon, and toured the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the Library of Congress.  When we weren't in DC, we visited Civil War sites.  We did something exciting every day of the two weeks we spent in Virginia.  We also spent time with the Kipps, who are a nice family that live in New Market. 

Before I went to Virginia, I didn't even know that a battle of the Civil War happened in New Market.  I don't remember it in my history books or the history films I watched but the actual Civil War Museum is in New Market and I learned about the New Market "field of lost shoes," where Civil War soldiers were fighting in mud that sucked off their shoes... yet they kept fighting!

My favorite place in Virginia to visit was the Roanoke Transportation Museum, which I wrote about on a previous blog.

After we left Virginia, we went to visit friends in Texas.  We have a friend near Dallas and my mother has a Navy friend from the old days in San Antonio.  This was an exciting visit to Texas for us because our family has been considering relocating.  We found out how much homes rent for - which is amazing compared to California.  One bedroom apartments are only $500.  Huge homes rent for $800-$1000.  My mom was offered a job!  When she looked into other work in the area, it pays the same as she would make here!  We met such nice people who said they were willing to help us relocate.  We stayed with a family friend who we have known for about ten years.  He travels during the school year on the road but said we are free to stay in his home even when he's on the road, when we arrive to relocate in Texas.  So, we wouldn't have to rush into finding a place.  We could find the right place for our family.  There are very good colleges in Texas.  One of the best engineering schools is right there in Texas.  I want to be an engineer so this is great for me.  There are five community colleges in the area our family wants to move to.  Since I go to community college now, that's super important to me.  Right now, my community college is an hour away from where I live.  School would be much closer to get to if we moved there and I'll be driving myself to classes next year.

Here are some pictures I took of homes for sale for $90,000.  These are 3 bedroom homes!

 

 

Right now, when we are in California, I sleep in a small area in the kitchen of a single wide mobile home because we are so poor there.  When we looked at homes in Texas, near Dallas, we saw four bedroom homes that rent for less than what my mom now pays in rent.  It made me feel hopeful, like we could have the kind of life I've been wanting for a long time.  Some of these homes come with swimming pools and it seems like every house has air conditioning.   When my mom sat down and figured out the math, we would have twice the size home we now have and spend less every month than we now do. My dad is totally supporting our move.  This makes me really happy.  He is looking into moving there, too.  My dad was offered a transfer by his company, with a raise and a promotion, if he takes a job with them in Houston.  He is thinking it over but I hope he will say yes or find other work near us.

I expect to live with my mom until I at least finish college but maybe even a couple of years after that, just enough to get my career started and save for my own home.  That won't be for another six to eight years.  So, you could see why having my own room means so much to me.

Traveling has taught me so much.  The one thing I know for sure is that the rest of the United States is totally different from California.  People really care for each other in other parts of the States. People are more respectful in other areas, too.  What I also noticed is that there are so many stereotypes Californians have about people in other states that aren't true.  There is prejudice but it is just in a few areas, not everywhere.  In most areas, people don't care that I'm not white.  But, when I was growing up, I always heard that people would treat me badly if I traveled to the South.  The funny thing is white people are the ones who told me this so I believed them.  Now, I know that Southerners are actually nicer than the people I live near in California! Texans have some funny ideas about Californians, too... like many of them think everyone who lives here is liberal and pro-choice.  But our family is conservative so that's not true for us.  But, that's okay.  I think Texans and Californians just need to get to know each other a little bit better.  Then they won't think these things about each other.  I love California so I will always return here for trips.  I just know our life will be a better one for all of us in Texas.



 

Driving From Phoenix, Arizona to Santa Monica, California

Back In California!

      We have officially arrived in California. We took I-10 from Phoenix, Arizona all all the way to Santa Monica, California.  First, we made it in five hours to L.A and then we drove west to Santa Monica.  When we arrived in Santa Monica, we saw that the state park we were planning to go to was closed so we had to find another place to car camp.

 

       Santa Monica is a beach community, consisting of 90,377 people, and it is the place where the original Route 66 ends. When we visited Santa Monica, we went to Starbucks in the morning, (My mom's favorite place to get online.)

     We then went to Santa Monica State Beach after parking and paying for a meter, which goes up to five hours, and then we went to the beach, which is a beautiful beach with warm showers. We swam there for a approximately two hours, and then we went to the Santa Monica pier - where there are rides, food stands, and coin tosses. My sister and I went on the roller coaster there, and then we saw our photo of us.  I was laughing in the photo, and my sister was freaking out. She said that they caught her "private moments," a phrase she totally made up one day.

     We also played a game where you have to squeeze the trigger of a gun to shoot water into the hole of a rising object with a hole in it (Hello Kitty sat on top of this thing), and I lost the first time, but won the second time. I won a big dark snake, who I named Sharkey. We then realized that the time on the meter was going to expire, so we bought something at the souvenir shop there, got a picture of me and my sisters underneath the Route 66 sign, and walked back to the van, which I call "Mecur", because it is missing the y in Mercury insignia on the back of the vehicle.

Driving West to East in the USA in Four days

     As we traveled on I-80 through 11 states, the weather in each state was different. The first day, we drove from Northern California to Salt Lake City, Utah.  We went through Reno-there are a lot of casinos there. Next, we drove through Salt Lake City-very hot and in the high 80's.
       



There's not a lot to see in SLC, Utah.

    
     The next day, we drove through Wyoming, where we were snowed into the Rocky Mountains.  We were going about 40-45 miles an hour on snow, and the people passing us were going 60 miles an hour on the frozen left lane. We pulled over at a truck stop near the border of Nebraska and just stayed there. There were about 20-30 truckers there as well.  It got down to 8 degrees that night. My mom woke me up around midnight to tell me this, and we tried to get the heater working, and we eventually did, after I turned the radio on a a couple of times, since I was half-awake. In the morning, the roads were cleared.

Building a snowman in Wyoming.

My sisters and I were glad to reach Nebraska because it was warmer than Wyoming - but watch out for snakes!

     On the third day, we woke up and drove for five hours.  We reached Omaha, Nebraska, which is on the border of Iowa and Nebraska.  We stopped there for the night, before heading off to Des Moines.  Des Moines is famous for the girl who stopped the midnight express when the bridge in her town went out. She crawled across the broken bridge and ran all the way to the Des Moines station and told them to stop the express.  She then told them where the train crew was that went down with the bridge.  The train crew was rescued, and she received an award. When she got home, she fell in a deep sleep. She was exhausted.

Nebraska looks like this for 8 hours.



Missouri weather was nice - in the 70's - but the people aren't friendly there.

 

We stopped at the site of the original Pony Express Station for a break while we were in St. Joseph, Missouri.

     The fourth day, we arrived in Springfield, Illinois.  We could have kept going to our final destination - New Market, Virginia.  But we spend a day visiting the home of Abraham Lincoln at the National Park Service.  It was well done and a great visit to the former town of President Lincoln.  The homes and streets from that time are all there - just like they were when he was alive!

 

My sister is almost as almost as tall as I am - and I am tall!

My little sister is cute.

Inside the homes in President Lincoln's old town are artifacts from the period.

Here we are in front of President Lincoln's Springfield home - before he left to be President.

We really loved the room we stayed in that night.  My mother was able to get this room for only $60!

 

My visit to The Virginia Museum of Transportation

     I recently went to the Virginia Museum of Transportation, located in Roanoke, where I had a tour from a fellow who actually worked for the railroad for seven years before working at the museum. It was a great tour of the trains and of the transportation of yesterday and today.

     He showed me one coal-burning class J locomotive, the only one left of its kind. The first locomotive is Norfolk & Western class J 611, and she entered service around 1950. It served as a passenger train, and could run up to 110-140 miles per hour. She could pull a 15 car train at 115 MPH. She can hold 35 tons of coal in her tender, and 20,000 gallons of water. She was retired in 1959 until she was returned to excursion service in 1982. She ran as a excursion train until 1994, when she entered the Virginia Museum of Transportation, where she had been before. She ran between Cincinnati, OH and Norfolk, VA.  She also ran between Monroe, NC and Bristol, TN. She is restored and the museum is doing research to try to get her to run again. For more information about 611,      the website is: http://www.fireup611.org/main/index.php.

     There is Plexi-glass in 611,  because regular people have been stealing levers and gauges, and then they put it up on E bay as a "collectors item". He then showed me Class A locomotive 1218. It is restored, but there are missing parts scattered all over the tender. It is the only locomotive of its kind to escape the scrap yard.   For more info on these trains: http://vmt.org/collections/rail.htm

     After I saw 611, I was able to go inside a 1963 GMC bus, and I was able to sit in the driver's seat. The bus can run and it is in good condition. The doors, however, have to opened by hand because the bus has not been used in a while, so the things that open the doors have broken. The truck directly behind it is a 1965 Bull Dog Mack truck, which is fully restored and it can run. It even has a little bull dog on it.  I then saw two operating trains moving cars for a steam train excursion next week. The steam train is coming up from North Carolina, and will do a excursion train. I was actually allowed to walk up to the diesel locomotives and see the interior of them. The yard switcher does not have a bathroom, but is similar to the other diesel locomotive.

     A little later on in my tour, in a train cab, My tour guide told me and two other guys stories about when he worked for the railroad. He told a story about a jogger that got run over by the train. The jogger was wearing headphones and jogging across the trestle.  The train crew noticed the jogger, and they were blowing the horn and the conductor was shouting. The jogger got to the track directly across the trestle, and then he did a thing that cost him his life. He turned around and froze. The dirt was only 2 feet away. The train hit him at 55 MPH, with brakes on and everything. The jogger was tossed up and thrown into the coupling and he was cut up.  They told my tour guide this, but they did not tell him that there was a hand wedged between the hand rails. My tour guide noticed the hand during an inspection of the train, and he took off. Someone had to go and get him, and they even bought him a Dr. Pepper to calm him down.   

     He told a couple more stories, and then his friend went by in a diesel locomotive hauling 76 cars to Chicago, where he was expected at 9 AM in the morning the next day. My tour guide started yelling at him to give the locomotive more horsepower. He said to count all of the cars, and I lost track about 65.  After, I was able to see a 1930 Dodge school bus. There were no seat belts in those days, and there was no ventilation in the bus. High school kids sat on the outside, and elementary kids sat on the inside. The roads were not paved, so if your bus got stuck, you were given a shovel and you had to dig your bus out. I was impressed. After that, the tour ended. I thought that the tour guide had explained everything pretty well to me and I liked the 611 locomotive most of all, because it stands out and it is a beautiful locomotive. 

     The museum itself is a great museum if you are into transportation, and I think that the museum should continue to restore locomotives for people to see as they were back in their time. Class J #611 is going to be tested to see if it can be returned to excursion service, and I think it would be great to have a 1950's train in today's railroads.

                                      

Fundraiser To See The Last 10 States of the USA!

I'm really excited.  I've visited 40 states, so far.  So many people have helped me that I want to say thank you! Some people let us stay with them, some people gave us gift cards to restaurants or Visa gift cards for hotels.  Every little bit has been really helpful. 

I'm a kid so I've had some ideas before about how to raise money... I sold jewelry I made, I sold homemade birdhouses, then ornaments, then baked goods. Now, I'm trying to do an online fundraiser. I am asking each person to donate at least $5 to my fundraiser.  Donating more would be great but if everyone donated $5, I would be able to reach my goal.  Are you able to help me?

Here's my fundraising link... Please donate to my cause (click on the blue words), which is to see the last 10 states of the USA! 

I hope you've enjoyed reading about the states and regions of the country that I've been to so far.  Here are some pictures from our travels that you might like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to go to my fundraising website.  Thank you for your help!

 

Winter Break - A Vacation At Home!

We are on Winter Break. We spend each year at home, in Northern California, between the months of October and April, in a little town called Windsor.  My mother is not just a writer.  She's a credentialed tax preparer.  So, she returns home every winter to complete her tax law studies (the IRS changes the laws every year) and get ready for a new tax season of work.  When her tax season ends, in April, we hit the road again!  My sisters and I look forward to it because right about February is when my mother starts getting grumpy again and we all know what that means... She's getting sick of the house!  But once she hits the road, she is super happy and all laughs again.  We all love to travel.  I think I love it as much as my mother but, as she says, sometimes it's good to take a break and relax at home.  Besides, there's no place like home for Christmas.  My mother makes the best food for Christmas!

A picture of my mother working online.
You can't see the laptop in the picture but it's permanently attached to her lap during the day, while she's working!

Now that I'm turning 15 years old, I'm mainly taking most of my classes online through the junior college.  Right now, I'm enrolled in Algebra, Spanish, and Typing.  I study Biology and American Government at home.  I should have all my work completed by the time we leave town again.  Once we hit the road, I'm taking 2 online high school classes in writing and high school grammar.  Since my mother doesn't teach me that much anymore, I now have many teachers. They aren't as easy with deadlines as my mother was.  They are pretty strict about turning schoolwork in - on time! At first, this was a little hard to get used to but now I have no problem staying on top of my work.  You might remember last year that I had to miss a couple of family activities and sit in Starbucks to catch up on school assignments... like that time in San Antonio.  But that's not true anymore.  Now, I'm ahead and getting As in all my classes.  This upcoming travel season, my mother plans to return in August.  She says she wants me to take an in-person class at the college for English but I'm secretly hoping they will have the class available online so we can keep traveling!   But, as my mother says, "There's only one chief."  So, it will be up to the chief.

I don't usually blog during the Winter Break, since we don't go anywhere.  My mother drives once or twice a week... maybe!  My mother even makes us walk to after school activities.  She says it's good for us to get exercise.  Well, I can't wait until I can drive.

This is a picture of my mother, my sisters, and me at Fort Sumter in the summer of 2012.
This is the place the Civil War began!

I did want to give you all the heads up that we are off to Washington, D.C. this April 2013.  We won't be back until the end of May.  We're staying with my mom's friend's sister the whole time we are in D.C.  Here's something she wrote about Washington DC monuments and museums.  She also wrote an article about visiting the White House.

After that, we are supposed to leave from June to August for my mom's work but her agency representative still has to confirm work for my mother before we leave.  My mother is looking into back up work in Puerto Rico, in case this summer job falls through.  She wrote about Puerto Rico, too!  What's cool about Puerto Rico is that it's part of the USA but it feels like you're in another country.  Most of the people there speak Spanish - not English.  So, it's a good thing we are studying Spanish!

My mother asked me if I want to go to high school and I visited four high schools last year but I decided I really love our life and I wouldn't want to go to high school when I can get my AA degree by the time I'm 18 years old.  So, that's what I'm planning to do:  travel with my mother, home school, and get my AA degree.  I am almost done with my freshman year of college.  It will take me at least another two years to finish my sophomore in college because I'm only going half time to college and the classes are starting to get a little harder.  Then, I'll need the last year to wrap up any classes to complete my AA degree before I transfer to a university.  I still want to go to Stanford.  I still want to be an Engineer.  What's great about Stanford is that I can still live at home and just commute there.  My mother is thinking about getting a truck so I can do that.  She says she it will be her truck and she will only let me use it for now but, if I graduate from Stanford, I can have it to keep.  That would be an awesome graduation gift!

By the way, we are selling our baby grand piano.  It's a Kawai (see below).  Maybe you heard of them? They are really good pianos.  The piano is actually worth $11,000 but my mother is selling it for $6,000 or for a trade of a used truck that seats at least four (for me to drive!) plus $2,000.  We really want to sell it before we leave on our travels. If you're interested, we are in the Santa Rosa area of Northern California.  You should contact my mother at:  artemis.in.action@gmail.com.  Write in the subject line "piano for sale on Emilio's blog."

If you're interested in reading my blog and seeing what I'm up to, you can follow me (See that follow button on the right side of the screen?).  I only blog once or twice during the winter and about once or twice a month when we are on the road.  So, you won't get tons of blogs from me but it would be nice to keep in touch!  Feel free to leave comments, too.


I'll write you again to let you know about the upcoming fundraiser!