The Parkway

Cruella (Deville) and I on The Parkway

Have you ever been drawn to a place? Is there a place to where you almost seem called to be? For many, it is an ocean side or lake side, or river side location that is special to you. For others it might be a mountain top or maybe a meadow or a canyon. Still others may yearn for wind in their sail as they skip over a calm sea. There is so much beauty around us that it is no surprise that we find ourselves drawn to certain special places. For me...one of those special places is a road. It's not just any road...it is is a stretch of pavement that ribbons 469 miles over the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains from Virginia to North Carolina. It is the Blue Ridge Parkway. With its back to Shenandoah National Park, the parkway begins at Rockfish Gap near Waynesville, VA and it reaches its end at the Oconaluftee River at the entrance of Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC. What is in between those two points is a road rich in history, culture, scenery, foliage and fauna.

Kancamagus Hwy- Rte 112 in New Hampshire

I have been traveling (camping/ hiking/ lazing) on and around the parkway since the mid 1970's, not long after moving from New Hampshire to Georgia. My wife and kids likely cannot remember a time when they weren't riding on the parkway with Dad (Oh gee Dad, look, there is another mountain or ...tree or...my gosh are we ever going to get off this parkway?) I was skeptical, upon my first visit, that this road would be at all comparable to the great highways like those that that snake through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Green Moutains of Vermont. In particular, I was certain that this Blue Ridge Parkway was no match for the Kancamagus Highway that cuts 34.5 miles through White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. But I was wrong. The Blue Ridge Parkway's beauty owes no apology to any other of our country's magnificent motorways.

Cabin at Humpback Rocks, VA

One of the things that makes this parkway unique is that it stretches across the backbone and valleys of the southern Appalachians and cuts through the mountain culture of the German and Scotch-Irish people that populated this area from the early days of our country's history. Unlike what happened when the Skyline Drive was built through Shenandoah National Park, this time the Department of the Interior was intentional in not evacuating the people and razing their cabins after purchasing their land. They were determined to maintain as many of the physical structures as possible that depicted the early 20th century mountain culture. In most ways, this isolated culture more resembled life from the preceding century. The depression era road building project began in 1935 utilizing the many unemployed of Virginia and North Carolina through the recently created Civilian Conservation Corp and was a project on the grandest scale. The final section around Grandfather's Mountain, NC, which included the building of the Linn Cove Viaduct, was completed in 1987.

Linn Cove Viaduct

Over the last week, I spent some time traveling along the parkway... once again being reminded of the beauty that is this region. While dodging deer, turkey, rabbits, squirrels and spandex clothed cyclists on my 45 mph journey, my senses were in overdrive as I was in awe once again to behold the majesty of God's creation. We always associate God's proximity to us as being....up. I think the mountains give us a sense of being closer to the One that created them...and us. I'll be back.

John Brown's a-Hanging on a Sour Apple Tree

V-A-C-A-TION

Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend....vacation season in the United States. For school-age children, teachers and other school employees, summer marks a generic time of "vacation" since the obligation to be at school during the week is suspended for a couple of months. Is merely being out from school or off work really vacation? If you take a "vacation" week off from work to paint your house, is that really vacation? I don't think so. So, let's agree that, for discussion purposes, being out of school or being off from work does not in and of itself constitute vacation. I think to truly be a vacation you must leave home and go somewhere...even if it is just to go to Grandma's house.

Here's my take on vacation.

You need to go somewhere other than where you normally come home to eat and sleep. Distance does not matter nor must you be gone for a particular number of days. Just go somewhere. Growing up, I don't remember that we took a lot of vacations during the year but, we always had at least one vacation that was memorable.

Camping was my family's vacation of choice (probably because we were not at all wealthy.) In fact, I was born 10 weeks prematurely on a camping trip...fortunately there was a hospital nearby. Camping fulfilled a couple of my personal criteria of what you should strive to accomplish on a vacation. See what you think:





1. Go see something. If you are an American, you are blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Sightseeing is a very popular vacation activity. As the song says- "from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam" ...yes! God Bless America. There is so much to see. Both natural and man-made wonders. From the Grand Canyon to the Golden Gate Bridge. From the Outer Banks to Hoover Dam. From the Great Lakes to the Empire State Building. From glaciers to historic buildings. Mountains, lakes, oceans, forests, seashores, gardens. Photographs of the Grand Canyon are impressive...hiking into the canyon and watching a sunset at the rim is breathtaking. Go see this beauty that is all around us.

2. Go learn something. When we homeschooled our kids, our curriculum only covered 170 of the required 180 days. We used field trips to complete the other 10 days. What that meant was a Toomey family vacation would include at least a day or two of each vacation week that were designated as "learning days." A trip to Williamsburg, Virginia was not just a casual sightseeing tour. We wanted to learn about our country's history. And the kids were required to write a paper on a related topic. A trip to Stone Mountain, Georgia was an opportunity to learn about geology...or sculpture (sculpture on a large scale!) A trip to Cherokee, North Carolina was a chance to learn the history and culture of these native Americans. Vacations are a wonderful opportunity to learn about something or to learn how to do something. Every vacation does not have to be an educational experience but why not use our vacation time not only to relax, but, to broaden our minds?

3. Go do something. This is where vacation truly becomes an action verb. Go fishing, hunting, snorkeling, roller-coaster riding, hiking, zip-lining, swimming, cruising, skiing, horseback riding, water sliding, bike riding, golfing, climbing, tubing, eating/tasting, racing, kayaking, skating, and on and on and on. (Some, usually those of the female persuasion, would argue that "shopping" should be included in this list of the "ing's" of vacation...I would not agree but I may be outnumbered.)

You could even go somewhere and serve others. Rebuild a house, plant a garden, dig a well, teach a child to read, share your faith. Help victims of a tornado, hurricane, flood, poverty. (Might be the best vacation you'll ever have.)

4. Go be with people you love. Getting away as a family and/or going to be with family has value that is hard to quantify.  Getting away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to spend time with family and close friends is, as the MasterCard commercial used to say...Priceless. As a kid, we would often spend most of the summer at my grandmother's house. Since we were a military family who moved a lot, her house always felt like home. That time I was privileged and blessed to be loved on and to learn from my sweet grandmother was like gold to me. One of the favorite things about being on vacation with my kids was just being together. My family will tell you that when we go on vacation together, I morph into some strange, goofy person that seems to perpetually have this weird expression on his face. When Jessica was a little girl she picked up on this and once described it as "Daddy's got on his vacation teeth." Well, that stuck. I still put on my vacation teeth when I get to be with my family on vacation.

Our lives are busy. It is easy to drift away from each other and just get bone tired. I cherish vacation time. I have known people that bragged that they never use their employer provided/paid vacation time. They would proudly boast " I get 3 weeks of vacation each year but I never use it." That's nothing to brag about. I think it is downright dumb.

Summer is here. Go take some vacation time.

What's the best vacation you've ever had?

Dumb car ride games

1955 Buick Special- built like a tank

As long as I can remember, one of my fondest memories was taking trips in the family car. The first car I remember us having was a 1955 Buick Special. This mammoth hunk of Detroit steel was built like an Abrams tank. Not exactly the best handling behemoth on the road but, good grief, did it have room inside! Back in the days of no seat belts and "three on the tree" manual transmission shifters, I would lay across the rear seat deck (under the rear window) as we rumbled down the road. If the brakes were ever slammed on, I would fly forward and crash into the rear of the front seats. Ah, the good ol' days.

To this day, I still love driving places on day trips, long weekends or even week long driving vacations. I love to stop at the trashiest tourist attractions and eat at places that Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives hasn't even found yet. A few years ago, Michael and I made an I-40 road trip from Augusta to Asheville, NC, to Knoxville, TN to Nashville and ended up in Memphis. Why? Our goal was to eat as many meals of barbecue ribs as we could, see Graceland, Sun Records Studio and hang out on Beale Street. Carol still thinks we are both nuts.

How cold is it?

After I had my own family, car trips or vacations would typically generate some interesting games or contests. Contests like...who can guess what the lowest outside temperature will be (according to the car's outside temp gauge) by the time we get to our hotel in the mountains? What time do you guess we will cross the river back into Georgia? (I always won this one...I had control over the speed of the car...) Only years later after acquiring some basic mathematical acumen of their own did the kids figure out how I could guess so accurately. (For the mathematically challenged...a car traveling 60 miles per hour will go a mile each minute...if the mile marker I just passed said we were 29 miles from the border...voila! it's gonna take 29 minutes. Of course I could also slow down or speed up as necessary in order to make the time I chose hit exactly when we crossed into the next state.) The kids thought Dad had some mysterious power.

One of the most interesting hour long games was: If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life and you were assured that it would be nutritionally adequate for good health, what would it be? The food could be prepared multiple ways but it had to basically be just one food item (condiments, simple additives are allowed.) First, I got screamed at that my question was ridiculous because no one could survive on just one food for the rest of their life. So I had to explain again the hypothetical caveat that whatever food you chose in my make believe scenario would be completely nourishing. Then I get a million clarifying questions asked. You would think I was asking them to jump off a bridge. Finally grasping the concept, they begin to give answers.

 I'm pretty sure Carol's answer was rice since Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were disallowed for being a candy not a food. Rice was a pretty good answer though...steamed rice, fried rice, rice pilaf...lot's of ways to enjoy rice and lots of different kinds of rice...Carol takes an early lead in the contest. I think Michael's answer was some type of meat...chicken or steak maybe...can't remember exactly. I was proud of my carnivorous son for giving a manly answer though. Jessica cheated and said something like salad. Buzzer goes off...no--- salad is not a single food ...do you mean lettuce? Then 15 minutes of arguing before Jessica picks another food item...I think it was a fruit. She kept thinking she needed to choose something healthy since it was the only thing she could eat for the rest of her life. Tiring of my silly game, I just let her stick with her fruit choice. Being a good ol' Irish boy, my pick was...potatoes. Boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, crinkle french fries, scalloped potatoes, potatoes au gratin, hash browns, baked potato, potato chips, potato sticks, home fries, potato pancakes, waffle fries, curly fries, tater tots... I went on and on with my assortment of potato dishes.

The incredibly versatile potato

Then the the car just went quiet. They knew that Dad had won again. Then they all verbally attacked me for playing such a stupid game. Sore losers.

Fun times in the car with the family...having a blast playing silly games and actually...talking to each other (with a little shouting added in.) Turn off the radio, take out the earbuds, put down the book or computer and have a good old family competition. Dumb car games.

So, if you could only eat one food item for the rest of your life (and that food item would be nutritionally perfect for you) what would it be?