Here is an example of a typical scene along the highway between the big windy city and our little town:
Here is a view of our sunset over a mass farm irrigator:
While in Michigan I gave Dan a tour of the places where I hold the most memories. Below is a photo of the lake across the street from the house I lived in from ages 0 to 7. Frozen lakes are very novel for Dan, as you can imagine he didn’t see many such scenes in his native California:
Here is the front side of my old house on Fawn River Road (across from above lake):
And here I am pointing at the backside of the house from a nearby hillside drive:
We also visited my old Catholic school and church, my extended family’s hardware store, my mother's parents' house and nearby Portage Lake, my father’s mother’s house and nearby lake, most of my aunt and uncles’ houses, the house I lived in from 7 to 10 (not pictured because I’m embarrassed by the tacky renovations they’ve done on the >100 year old building), “Dead Man’s Hill” (the local sled spot), and my grandfather Pappa Dan’s grave to pay our respects.
We spent one of our two evenings having an amazing mexican dinner with available family members (below), and the other at my cousin Angie's high school gymnastic's meet (she's the one with the white scarf towards the front of the photo below... we're related on both sides of the family since her mom is my mom's sister and her dad is my dad's brother).
We were made to feel perfectly at home by everyone, perhaps most especially Aunt Julie (mom's sister) and Uncle Dan (dad's brother, pictured below). We had good snuggle time with their new golden retriever puppy, Jake, and played as much pool as we could possible fit in. Life goal, get own pool table!
We left Michigan at 6am on our third day there, missing a major blizzard by only a few hours. We’ve been blessed with narrow misses of bad weather all along our journey. Here is our Indiana sunrise from the day we left:
Here are a couple winter landscapes typical of the region of Indiana we drove through that morning:
Our only car malfunction this whole trip (besides bottoming out when attempting to leave Kansas and having to turn around an unload a bit at my parents’ house) was that those silly California car shop folks don’t use windshield whiper fluid containing Anti-freeze. The clear benefit of this is that Anti-freeze is terrible for the environment and animals within it… and in most parts of California it’s unnecessary most (if not all) days of the year. HOWEVER, when you leave California and enter into freezing climates, guess what freezes with the climate? Your windshield washer fluid!
Here’s the nasty mess we drove around looking at between gas station stops (people talk about acid rain, but what about acid snow?!):
The next series of photos do absolutely NO justice to the INCREDIBLE scenes we saw during about a half hour stretch of southwestern Pennsylvania, which was hit by a major ice storm (as was most of the East Coast) just a day before we passed through.
I cannot describe the elation we experienced driving through this landscape of glassy diamonds. The sun shone through each thick layering of ice on every plant as if shining through nature's own prism. It was absolute bliss. For those folks on our email update list, I’ll attempt to send a video.
As if to compete with the stunning ice sculptures in southwestern Pennsylvania, as we passed through Maryland and West Virginia and entered into Virginia the sky opened up and it was as if heaven was looking down on where we were headed and shouting at us “Welcome home, this is the place!” It was unbelievable, and it lasted the remaining 2 hours of our drive to Charlottesville.
While we were in Charlottesville we met up with our farmy friend Anne’s old college buddies Ben and Courtney. We joined them for dinner at a locally owned restaurant that serves local fare, including meats from Polyface Farm (a Virginia rotational grazing livestock farm now made famous through Michael Pollen’s book, Omnivore’s Dilemma). We then stayed the night at Ben’s rented farmhouse just south of Charlottesville, and headed out the next morning to visit Best of What’s Around Farm.
(image taken from their website: http://www.bestofwhatsaround.org/)
The farm is actually a conglomerate of several old farms purchased by Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band. Dave lives in Washington state and travels around a lot with his band, but the band originally formed in Charlottesville. Dave, a member of Farm Aid, purchased the farm to support the local foodshed (and health and environment) by keeping folks farming sustainably there.
We were made to feel perfectly at home by everyone, perhaps most especially Aunt Julie (mom's sister) and Uncle Dan (dad's brother, pictured below). We had good snuggle time with their new golden retriever puppy, Jake, and played as much pool as we could possible fit in. Life goal, get own pool table!
We left Michigan at 6am on our third day there, missing a major blizzard by only a few hours. We’ve been blessed with narrow misses of bad weather all along our journey. Here is our Indiana sunrise from the day we left:
Here are a couple winter landscapes typical of the region of Indiana we drove through that morning:
Our only car malfunction this whole trip (besides bottoming out when attempting to leave Kansas and having to turn around an unload a bit at my parents’ house) was that those silly California car shop folks don’t use windshield whiper fluid containing Anti-freeze. The clear benefit of this is that Anti-freeze is terrible for the environment and animals within it… and in most parts of California it’s unnecessary most (if not all) days of the year. HOWEVER, when you leave California and enter into freezing climates, guess what freezes with the climate? Your windshield washer fluid!
Here’s the nasty mess we drove around looking at between gas station stops (people talk about acid rain, but what about acid snow?!):
The next series of photos do absolutely NO justice to the INCREDIBLE scenes we saw during about a half hour stretch of southwestern Pennsylvania, which was hit by a major ice storm (as was most of the East Coast) just a day before we passed through.
I cannot describe the elation we experienced driving through this landscape of glassy diamonds. The sun shone through each thick layering of ice on every plant as if shining through nature's own prism. It was absolute bliss. For those folks on our email update list, I’ll attempt to send a video.
As if to compete with the stunning ice sculptures in southwestern Pennsylvania, as we passed through Maryland and West Virginia and entered into Virginia the sky opened up and it was as if heaven was looking down on where we were headed and shouting at us “Welcome home, this is the place!” It was unbelievable, and it lasted the remaining 2 hours of our drive to Charlottesville.
While we were in Charlottesville we met up with our farmy friend Anne’s old college buddies Ben and Courtney. We joined them for dinner at a locally owned restaurant that serves local fare, including meats from Polyface Farm (a Virginia rotational grazing livestock farm now made famous through Michael Pollen’s book, Omnivore’s Dilemma). We then stayed the night at Ben’s rented farmhouse just south of Charlottesville, and headed out the next morning to visit Best of What’s Around Farm.
(image taken from their website: http://www.bestofwhatsaround.org/)
The farm is actually a conglomerate of several old farms purchased by Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band. Dave lives in Washington state and travels around a lot with his band, but the band originally formed in Charlottesville. Dave, a member of Farm Aid, purchased the farm to support the local foodshed (and health and environment) by keeping folks farming sustainably there.The farm grows an abundance of beautiful organic produce planted in accordance with the astrological signs.
After our visit to Best of What’s Around, we drove down to Roanoke and had lunch at the INCREDIBLE restaurant “Local Roots Café”.
This café features ALL local and regional food (and mostly all local drink) sources, with a menu that changes with each season. The food is delicious and (hold the phones!) AFFORDABLE. Go figure. I think EVERY town needs one of these restaurants… actually, I think all restaurants should be run like this! We continued in our transition from a locavore-vegetarian to a locavore-omnivore diet by dining on local pasture raised chicken and pork.Next we went down to the Roanoke Market Square, which is the oldest continuous farmer’s market in Virginia, operating since 1882. The highlight of the market, for us, was “On the Rise Bakery” located at the heart of the Roanoke Market Square. Here is a snapshot of their menu (they also bake fresh pizzas and subs daily):
We next hit up the Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op (http://www.roanokenaturalfoods.coop/) and were pleased to see that even in winter they have plenty of local food to offer, especially lots of meat and dairy and apple juice. Yum.
We left Roanoke in late afternoon and began our 45 minute drive to Floyd, where we planned to spend at least a few days visiting local farms and searching for job opportunities.
Here’s a couple shots from the drive to Floyd:
Our Floyd experience TO BE CONTINUED in the next blog…
Thanks for sharing in our journey!
We left Roanoke in late afternoon and began our 45 minute drive to Floyd, where we planned to spend at least a few days visiting local farms and searching for job opportunities.
Here’s a couple shots from the drive to Floyd:
Our Floyd experience TO BE CONTINUED in the next blog…
Thanks for sharing in our journey!
