After we pulled out of Baxter Springs, Kansas, we drove through the lovely green of spring in the southeastern part of the state, 
and drove northwest.
We stopped up on the northern border of Kansas, and took a tour at Peterson Industries; they build Excel Fifth Wheels. Their Wild Cargo toy hauler is the RV that we would like to get next!
Then it was on through Nebraska. We do not prefer to travel fast, and we were lamenting our quick trip back to Montana as we were driving past places that we would have liked to stop at tour. Like The Nebraska Prairie Museum; that is so us!!!! :/
We drove into and through Wyoming, past the Fort Cody tourist trap 😉
through beautiful valleys,
and getting nearer and nearer the mountains. We miss the mountains when we travel. Those things they call ‘mountains’ in the east, as beautiful as they are with all their deciduous trees, just don’t do anything for us Montana folk. We miss rugged.
And we finally arrived at Gramma and Grampa’s house in se Montana. We had some fun visiting a little cousin, playing with the chicks, and feeding the pony. Southwestern Montana is windy.
Some of us picked ‘flowers’, which is summer for us because they don’t let you pick flowers in many campgrounds!
We adore traveling, and have no plans to stop, but these familiar sceneries were sure a sight for sore eyes!
getting closer!
And 4 days (?) after leaving Baxter Springs, we pulled in to our ‘spot’.
Vaughn and the kids got some organizing done, and he made me a ‘clothesline’ that hangs off the RV ladder and is portable… I’ve had lots of help putting it to work!
Then, just a couple of days after we pulled in, Vaughn and Jake flew out to spend a month in Alaska building a bunkhouse for Samaritan’s Purse Operation Heal Our Patriots‘ staff.
And since I’m a wee bit behind on catching up (do you know how hard it is to blog about traveling when you aren’t traveling?), at this point, they have been in Alaska for 4 weeks. And 8 kids and I are parked. Like really parked. Because I don’t pull this beast.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE where we stay for the summer – with one of our sets of adoptive grandparents – they have about 40 acres for the kids to run, they don’t park their vehicles on their garage pad all summer so the kids can ride scooters there, they set up a pool just for our kids, we have our own private yard and run of the place… but going from moving to a whole new town/area every 2 weeks or less, to knowing that we can’t go ANYWHERE because I don’t pull this big rig, is a bit of a shocker, and Hitch Itch has already set in. As in I went and looked at RVs today! Travel trailers to be exact – 24 to 26′ bunkhouses that *I* could easily pull behind the van! 
The kids and I are thinking that we need to do some weekday trips this summer to explore more of Montana that we have not before, and be home on the weekends when Vaughn and the big boys don’t have to work (or they can come see us! rofl!).
But for now, stationary means we are catching up on dr. and dentist visits, learners permits and driver’s licenses, new glasses. It means changing out outgrown clothing and reading books in storage, and kids that are selling their wares at the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market. It means getting to watch Eli prepare for his missions trip to Ethiopia next month (he is raising money to purchase Bibles to distribute there – if you would like to contribute, contact me here or fb; they are $5/bible made out to World Missions Alliance!). 
(it means the kids teaching Eli how to play Worms Armageddon 2 on the Kindle HD. lol)
For now, until Vaughn gets back, it means getting a weekly visit from P-Pods, who come out and pump out our tanks (we have huge tanks; even though there are (just) 9 of us right now, we can go for a week between dumping them). Vaughn usually hauls us out every weekend and visits the free dump station 2 miles down the road.
Being back in Montana means joining in on things that we don’t get to do on the road – like airsoft games with guys that get into it as much as we do (they’re out for blood. lol.).
Catching up with gramma, big kids, grandbaby, and friends. Going to craft nights at a local eater, with BFFs. Costco groceries taking a minimum of 2 hours because you always run into at least 2 people that you know…
There are plusses to travel, and there are plusses to stationary community.
I think that we have the best of both worlds. <3
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