Our Kozy Kabin

I know we're "tenters" but sometimes we need a break from the elements and nothing beats a Kozy Kabin at a local KOA.  You can only unpack and pack in the rain so many times!  Besides, we have two solid weeks of tent camping coming up next month so it all evens out.

This was the first time we had a chance to try out our new double sleeping bag with a 0 degree rating.  We were roasting!  Granted, the overnight low was only 50 and we were in a cabin, but I have high hopes that when paired with our long johns and fleece blankets, we are going to be nice and warm this winter.

I love Charlotte, NC!  It is such a beautiful city and I really look forward to the fall race there. The week started off a bit rainy (of course it did, NASCAR was in town!!!) but quickly turned into the most perfect fall days - cool nights, warm days, beautiful leaf color. You couldn't ask for more.

I have found that the best part about living on the road is getting to catch up with old friends along the way.   I am very excited that Chris & Shawn (friends of mine from high school) and their girls have settled in DC.  Our time in Baltimore will be so much more fun with them close by.

Dr. Shawn at the Pumpkin Patch.

And, while in Charlotte I was able to have lunch and catch up with Brad & Cindy (Texas friends of mine).  A lot of our time seems to be spent in Charlotte so I am hoping to be able to spend more time with them.  So much of my time lately is spent with people that I have only recently become friends with that it's nice when I get to be around the ones that "know" me.

So, this wouldn't be a Camping for Christ post with out a God moment.  This encounter has to one of the more unusual ones that we've had.  On our way to Charlotte we stopped at a rest stop to, well, rest.  When we only have one night between cities we don't get the tent out, we just put the air mattress in the back of the van and sleep.  State welcome centers/rest stops are the best for this since they have 24 hour service attendants.  Normally this is a great set up but this night was not one of them.  I tossed and turned.  It was warm.  I was getting more and more cranky by the minute.  Instead of picking a fight I really didn't want to have, I grabbed my pillow and blanket and went to the front seat.  If I need to sleep in the front I usually put up the sun shade and hang a blanket by each window.  I had no patient for such things this night.  I reclined the chair and went to sleep.

In the middle of the night it started to rain (remember, NASCAR is coming to town and that means rain!) and through the constant drop, drop, drop on the roof I heard "Hey folks!".  I hear this but don't stir.  Seriously, what ever it is can wait until daylight.  Nope.  Every few seconds for a good two minutes I hear, "Hey, Folks.".  I open one eye to see a guy standing in the rain, which is now coming down quit hard, and trying desperately to get our attention.  Fine!  Both eyes now open and I'm sitting up.

"Woah!  Ma'am, I only have my keys and cell phone!", Rain Man tells me.

I reach one hand back to wake my lumberjack in the back seat who is still sawing logs at this point.  This freaks out Rain Man a bit.

"Ma'am, I just have my keys and cell phone.  See?" He has his hands raised.  "I am almost out of gas.  My car is right behind yours.  I swear to God!"  I'm not sure if he had more he wanted to say but I reached into my purse and pulled out the only cash I had - $9 - open the door and handed it to him.

"Oh!  Ok!  Thank you and God Bless." says Rain Man.

"You have a blessed day." were my only words to him.

"What was that?"  Finally!  He wakes up!

God really does work in strange ways.  He took something that irritated me and turned it into a mission.  If I had been nice and comfy on the mattress Rain Man might not have stopped at our van.  But, as with everything, God had a purpose and He used it for good.

One of my favorite blogs is by Susan Horn, author of My So-Called Life as a Proverbs 31 Wife.  I hope you will take the time to check out her blog, take the Proverbs 31 challenge and, most importantly, read her book.

www.myproverbs31life.com

Coffee, campfires and free WiFi

I realized this morning as I am sitting in one of my favorite Hot Spots (Caribou Coffee!!!  I am from the frozen tundra of the north, after all.) that one things I didn't think about when I started this blog is that I will need internet access.  Seemed easy enough when we still had a house with WiFi but on the road it has been a little hard to locate.  The hotels will sometimes have free WiFi but as I found out last week in Dover it's not always the fastest and I am not the most patient.  Thank you Caribou, Starbucks and Chick-fil-a for being easy to find and for your free WiFi.  I couldn't do this without you!

With my last post we were trying out our new Dutch oven.  Dinner was awesome!  We didn't make coals and put the oven in them as the recipe called for but, instead, I used the grate and full flame just like a stove top.  The recipe made so much that we had it for dinner that night, Darren's lunch the next day and dinner again the next night.  Even though the meal was delicious, for us, the best part was the work it took to get it made.  And, let me tell you - it was work!!  In a kitchen I would have had this meal cooked and on the table in under 45 minutes.  This one took over 2 hours!  When you have to build a fire to cook your food and wait for it to get going before you can begin cooking makes the end result that much better.

If you can't get out and build a campfire, this will still work on the stove top.

Making Witch's Brew

Witch's Brew

1 lb bacon, uncooked, chopped

1 lb hamburger

2 cloves garlic (or a "glob" of minced garlic from the jar)

1 cup celery

1 cup onion

(if you grocery store has a salad bar, get the celery and onion there.  When camping it's so much easier to have it already chopped.)

28oz can diced tomatoes, with juice

2 15oz cans black beans (I used seasoned)

2 cups uncooked egg noodles

1 10oz can mushroom (I added 2), plus liquid

black pepper, salt and cayenne pepper to taste

Brown bacon, hamburger and garlic in pot.  Drain fat.  Add celery, onion, tomatoes, beans, noodles, mushrooms and the liquid from all the cans.  Season and stir.  Add a bit of water if necessary to cook the noodles.  Bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes.

After our camping adventure we made our way down to Charlotte, NC to hire our first employee!  Our friend, Joy, is now the newest member of The Spicy Chocolatier family.  She will be making all of our Wild Hunt packs.  We are so excited to have her on board and know that she will be a real asset to our little company.

The night we left Charlotte for Dover we had the most amazing God moment.  We met Erin and her five kids. As we were pulling up to a stop light, Darren spotted her by the gas station holding a sign that asked for help.  Erin is a victim of domestic violence and she had been at that spot most of the day hoping to get enough money for gas to get home.  Her children were with her also, sitting in the van waiting for someone to help.  God nudged Darren to help but we didn't have any cash on us.  The light turned green and instead of turning left for the highway, we went right and right into the gas station parking lot.  We stopped and talked about what we could do to help.  We decided that it would be best if I went up and asked her if there was anything we could do to help but that we didn't have any cash.  Surprised and a bit overwhelmed, Erin told me that she just needed some gas to get back home with the kids so she could get some more job applications turned in.  I told her that we would be happy to fill up her tank.  Darren pumped gas while Erin and I went inside to get some snacks for the kids.

We exchanged info and this week we sent Erin a package to let her know that we are thinking of them and praying that she finds a job to help her out of her horrible situation.  She is a woman of faith and even though she has not had it easy lately, she stands firm that God is good and everything has a purpose.  I hope that during our next trip to Charlotte we will be able to spend time with Erin and the kids but in the meantime, she remains in our prayers.

Darren is off to Kansas without me this week.  I will be staying with one of my oldest (based on time, not age!) and dearest friends this week, Dr. Shawn!  She and I have so much catching up to do.  She did tell me that there is a Starbucks across the street from her apartment.  Free WiFi, here I come!!

Time to catch up

Holy cow!  It's been forever since I posted.  I didn't think I had anything to say so I just kept putting it off until "something big happened" not realizing that there are small things that happen every day.


Last you heard from me we were in the Great Smoky Mountains on our way to Atlanta.  The big and small that came out of our week in Atlanta was rain!  Rain, rain, rain and more rain!  But that was just the last two days of the trip.  The beginning of the week was beautiful and we managed to make it to two Braves home games!  Before one of those games we had the honor to meet Braves announcer and pitching legend, Don Sutton!  He is a fan of trail mix and we had sent him some of our Hot On The Trail mix a few weeks before.  He loved it and when a tv friend of Darren's mentioned to him that we were at the game, he invited us up to the announcers booth.  

Valerie, Don Sutton (with our HOTT mix) and Darren)

After Atlanta we were in Richmond for a couple days.  With the rain out in Atlanta putting us behind two days, our time in Richmond seemed really short.  Being in the hotel give me access to luxuries that I don't have while camping - namely electricity!  It's hard to make our Wild Hunt packs with a vacuum sealer that runs on electricity if I don't have any.  So, when I get a chance to plug in I get as many packs made as possible.  


We took last week "off".  Not off from racing, just off from NASCAR.  Darren worked an ALMS (American Le Mans Series) race in Ohio so it was like a week off for him.  This is where we saw God in the small details not the big ones that everyone hopes for.  Don't get me wrong, He's always there we just don't listen well enough some times to notice.


Northern Ohio is beautiful.  Rolling hills.  Farms.  Small, quaint towns.  If I could draw more than a stick figure, this would be scenery worthy of painting.  Amish and Mennonite communities are also very prevalant in this area. Most of the fruit/vegetable markets are owned and run by Mennonite families.  We found one of these stands 30 minutes from our hotel.  The second night we were there we decided to go check it out.  Walking out of the hotel we ran into Mike, he works with Darren.  As we got in the van to leave, Darren suggested that we invite Mike to come along.  Mike drives the truck for BSI and didn't have a rental car that week.  He was at the mercy of any of the other guys going out and asking him along.  This is an unusual gesture for Darren because after spending all day with these guys he doesn't usually come back to the hotel and hang out with them.  This night he felt the need to ask Mike along and he was thrilled!  The other guys hadn't come back from the track yet or were busy with other stuff and he was so happy to be asked along.  No, this isn't a life changing God moment but it is one of those times that listening to Him and letting Him lead you brought joy to another person.


Keeping Darren's "out of character" gesture in mind, I had my own.  I am not a salesman!  I do not like to cold call.  I can't even think of something else I would rather do since I would rather do anything but show up at a business unexpectedly.  But, that's what I did!  In the tiny village of Lexington, OH is the Itty Bitty Cupcake Shoppe.  This lady make the yummiest  little vegetarian (no milk, no eggs) cupcakes.  It was her Oreo Creme cupcake that got us thinking about the mint chocolate Oreo fragments we make.  Darren suggested that I take some samples over to her.  "Ok, on Saturday.", I said with no intention of going.  Remember, I don't cold call and I'm not a salesman!  "No, I need you to go today.", he insisted.  Not happy and not the least bit full of good cheer, I packaged up some samples, dropped him at the track and went back to the cupcake shop.  Our spicy chocolate was just what she had been looking for!!  She wanted to do a spicy cupcake that had heat but not a change in the flavor.  She was so excited to get the samples and hear that I could make her a block of chocolate for shaving.  I didn't leave her shop excited about a possible sale, that was the farthest thing from my mind, I left there excited that I had been able to help her and bring her exactly what she was searching for.  It's not always about doing big gestures that are the most meaningful but the small things we do for people that bring the most joy.


In family news we have had some big milestones in the last couple weeks.

Happy 5th Birthday Jaclyn!!!!

(she is our youngest)

Jaclyn Michelle

Happy 14th Birthday Rebekah!!!

(she's "the middle" - there are 3 younger and 3 older)

Rebekah Caroline

Happy 1st Birthday Jazlynn!!

(our granddaughter)

MeMaw & Jazlynn Kay

Congratulations Keirstin on getting your learner's permit and Congratulations Kayla on getting your driver's license!!!!

We are camping in Baltimore for the rest of the week so Darren can get some shop hours in. I am so excited to use our new Dutch oven tonight!!  We are making something called Witch's Brew (it's a hamburger/noodle stew).  I'll let you know if it's a success and post the recipe.  This weekend we will be down in Charlotte and then on Monday in Atlanta for one of the last Braves home games of the season.  Go Braves!!!!  Next week is Dover.

"With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments." ~Psalm 119:10

And so it begins...

I have a lot of catching up to do!  Last week was so busy.  We packed up and moved out of our trailer and took up permanent residence on the road.  All of our stuff is either in "don't need it now" storage or "gotta get to when we come to town" storage or with us.  It's the last one that we really need to work on getting to a more manageable load.  We have things for the hotel and things for camping and both places take a lot things!

The view from the roof at Bristol Motor Speedway

Bristol, TN was our first stop on this adventure.  The weather was fantastic considering that we pulled in that Sunday night to a whole lotta rain and a hurricane was predicted for the East Coast that week.  We had  sunny skies all week with only a bit drizzle on race day.  This was also my first week volunteering with Motor Racing Outreach (MRO).  In a nutshell, they are NASCARS ministry group.  On race days they provide a Christian "community center" for the children of the drivers to play and fellowship.  I helped set up and clean all the toys.  Being outside and by the track those toys get grimy!  I will help with set up and cleaning again this week in Atlanta.  Bringing God to kids who have such a nomadic lifestyle is such a blessing and MRO is doing an amazing job of getting His word out to the NASCAR community. (www.go2mro.com)

Visitors to our camp - wild turkeys

Darren setting up camp
    

Elk having a bit of breakfast

After a week in a stuffy hotel we were so excited to finally get to some camping.  We made plans to stay at a commercial campground but on the way there God had other plans.  Driving along the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains signs for the National Park were
all over.  Turn here for this camp site and turn here for that one.  Almost to our original campground we decided to turn into the park and see what was available.  Smokemont campground is on the TN-NC boarder and in the direction we needed to head to get to Atlanta.  Off to Smokemont we went.  Let me back up.  When we were first planning on camping between Bristol and Atlanta a friend suggested that we hike up to and camp at the Kephart Shelter.  It's a backcountry shelter that he goes to quite often.  We haven't done any backcountry camping yet and didn't feel comfortable trying it on our own the first time so, a pull in camp site is what we found.  BUT, and this is where God knows better than we do, Smokemont is near the 2 mile Kephart trail that leads to...Kephart Shelter!  He led us right to the spot that we wanted to see!!

The beginning our our hike to Kephart Shelter

Even though Darren's week is filled with a lot of walking there is nothing that compares to a good hike up a mountain.

Crossing on of the bridges

Kephart Shelter

If we had been looking for this on our own, we never would have found it or, more likely, gotten very turned around and very lost!  So, our best plans are nothing compared to His plans.  You never know what will happen when you listen to Him and follow.  It just might surprise you!  Also by following His lead we discovered the town of Cherokee, NC.  Located in the Cherokee Indian Reservation it's a great little town that has a lot for the the kids to do if we come back next summer.  We did a bit of shopping in town.  The cast iron Dutch oven we had been needing but not wanting to spend the $70+, we found on sale!  We also found FlapJacks (old fashioned red longjohns) to keep us warm on the cold nights ahead. And, Darren found this (thankfully he only tried on the hippy hair/hat combo):

Goof!

What a great start to our life on the road and there was God reminding us that He is along for the ride if we just take the time to listen.

"God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our master Jesus.  He will never give up on you.  Never forget that."
1 Corinthians 1:9

New Beginning

Most babies of my generation were baptized within a month or two after being born.  I was no exception.  My parents put me in a beautiful white gown and had me baptized in the hopes that I would have a relationship with Jesus.  For the next several decades I had a great Sunday relationship with Him.  I did my duty and volunteered at the church when asked.  I took my turn leading Sunday school and helped out with VBS every summer.  This is good enough, right?  Not really.  Something was missing.  A real relationship with Christ was what I was looking for but it wasn't the winter of 2009 that I started to get to know Him.


It is so hard to build a relationship with Christ if you don't surround yourself with other believers that also want to know Him personally.  It's not a coincidence that my relationship with Christ grew as my relationship with Darren did too.  I could never do justice to his testimony but in a nut shell, he began is walk with Christ while still trying to live in this world.  As those things faded away his relationship with Jesus really took off.  That's when we met.


Even though I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I still wanted to hang on to parts of this world.  It doesn't work!  On Sunday, August 14 I decided that enough was enough and if I was going to call myself a believer then I was going to have to take the first step and be baptized again. This time it was my choice.  Now, I didn't just walk into church and say, "ok, baptize me!"  The month of August at Lifepoint has been dedicated to All Things New.  Each Sunday we have been talking about how each of us can give more of our time and energy to the church and saying that now is the time to start our new life with Chirst.  More than 250 over two weekends came forward to commit their life to Christ!!!!  


So, this rainy Sunday morning I go to church not knowing what to expect.  We sang a bit.  Took offering (at the beginning? odd.) and Pastor Daniel came out.  My favorite part.  His sermons ROCK!!  "You can't call yourself a follower of Jesus if you don't take the first step." is how he starts.  I'm thinking I'm good since I already accepted Him as my Savior but I was wrong.  He's talking about baptism.  I was gone in July when they did it last time.  I made a mental note that this must be a monthly event and I would be prepared for it in September if we were in town.  "NO!  NOW!"  That's not Pastor talking to me but Him!  And He's a bit impatient with me.  God understands that He made me stubborn but still gets impatient with me.  I'm ok with that.  I have that effect on everyone.  Now the objections begin.  But, I'm not dressed for it.  "We have clothes for you to change into.", Pastor says. Oh.  I was baptized when I was a baby.  "You need to make it your choice in order to truly follow Christ.", Pastor says.  Ok.  I need to pray about it.  "Really???", God says!  At that point anyone who was taking this step in their life was asked to come forward and God said "GO!" I went.  On this rainy Sunday in August I chose to step out in the rain and get wet on purpose!


I am so blessed to have a Father in Heaven that loves me enough to send His Son to die for my sins and gave me someone here on Earth that helps me and encourages me daily in my life long walk with Him.

T minus 17 days and counting

With only 17 more days left with a roof over our head (ok, that's a bit dramatic).  With 17 days left before the adventure begins (that's better)...there is still so much to do!  My job is to pack, organize and separate the stuff that is going into storage and the stuff that is going with us.  It is a daunting task to say the least.  I went to storage today to get some of the boxes we saved from the last move and was so overwhelmed by what I was looking at.  WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF!  I know this - Goodwill is going to love me!  I am only saving the stuff that is near and dear and, to me, irreplaceable.  
Thanks to NASCAR our first stop won't be a camp site but rather Bristol, TN.  However, between Bristol and Atlanta we are planning to get in some hiking and camping in the Great Smoky Mountains.  A friend told us that the Kephart Pong is a great place to do some backcountry hiking.  After spending the summer hiking the easy trails with the kids we are really looking forward to tackling the more challenging trails.
"God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son, and our Master Jesus.  He will never give up on you.  Never forget that." 1 Corinthians 1:9