New Truck-2023 Ford Maverick

We got a new truck for Jeremy today! 

It's a used (1500 miles) 2023 Ford Maverick. It's a hybrid so it gets amazing mileage. Gas prices are around $5 a gallon, so this will help a lot. He really only uses it to drive to work and drives 32 mile round trip every day. Getting a commuter truck just made sense for him. 

Nathan needed something to drive, so he is driving the 2012 Camry. Jeremy drove his old 2003 Ford Ranger for a few weeks and decided it was time to upgrade. He needed bluetooth and some other features. Interestingly, our neighbor across the street bought the Ranger for $7000. It had about 70,000 miles and was in great shape other than just being old. So we still see the truck every day. 

 

First Day of School

First day of school!!! 

Nathan is in 10th grade. Elizabeth is in 8th grade. 

Nathan got his driver's license on August 18th so he just drove off to school in the Camry! That was very strange indeed. He'll be able to drive himself home from Cross Country so we won't be in the carpool this year. 

Nathan's classes are Biology, Geometry, LA 10, Kinesiology, AP World History, and Metals Tech. 

Elizabeth's classes are Physical Science, Pre Algebra, LA 8, US History, French 1, and Orchestra. 

Two 8th graders!

 

50 State Challenge

After our trip, we are making good progress on our 50 states challenge!! The map is looking much fuller!  We only have 10 states left in the lower 48. The plan is to do one last big trip next summer to hit those 10 states. Then, the next summer we hope to do a Washington, D.C. trip. After that, we will hopefully someday visit Hawaii and Alaska. It will be harder once Nathan is in college and has a job though. Those might have to be just Claire and Jeremy trips. We will see! 

 

Trip Day 14-Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and Flying Home

Today we had a VERY long day. Our first stop was the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum outside of Washington D.C near Dulles Airport. We had already seen the space shuttle Atlantis in Florida and now got to see the spaceship Discovery!  

Nathan had another nice birthday present visiting an air and space museum!! We let him get presents from the gift shop here. Here he is in front of a blackbird. He loves these. 

Discovery! 

The area around the museum was so beautiful!

We went up into the tower and the views were incredible. If there were chairs, I would have sat up there all day and just looked at the views and the planes landing and taking off from Dulles. 

The bottom of a blimp! 

Enola Gay-dropped the atomic bomb in Japan. 

More space shuttle Discovery photos. 

After we left the museum, we headed right for Dulles and dropped our car off. We dropped the car off at 3:00 and our flight left around 5:00 for Seattle. We got home around 8:00 our time and then took the shuttle bus to Jiffy Car Parking. From there, we drove all the way home. We were exhausted. We dropped Laura off at Vantage around 10:30 and the grandparents took her home. We got to our house about 1:00 AM and went right to bed! We had another successful trip and saw so many news places and historical things!!! We now have just 10 states left to visit in the lower 48. We hope to do one last big trip next summer to see those remaining 10 states.  

Nathan at 16

Nathan is 16! He is 5'9" tall and weighs 132 pounds. He's lost weight from last year due to all the running he does. I think the food restrictions from the allergies keeps his weight lower too. 

When he grows up, he doesn't yet know what he wants to do. 

His favorite books are Red Rising and Jack Ryan. 

His favorite TV show is Andor. 

His favorite movie currently is none. 

His favorite subject at school is History and his least favorite is LA. 

He dislikes running in the cold and doing AP World History homework. 

He likes to run and watch rocket launches. 

He is in 10th grade. He is taking Geometry, Kinesiology, Financial Literacy, Metals Tech,  LA 10, Biology, and AP World History

He's been running all summer in preparation for cross country this fall. He runs in the evenings around 8 when the sun is setting and it's cooler outside. We both take our runs/walks then. It might still be 95 degrees but when the sun isn't beating down on you, it's not too bad.  His Cross Country practices begin the week before school starts. 

Nathan finished Driver's Ed earlier this year and will be getting his driver's license on August 18th! He will get the Enhanced one. He'll drive our car and Jeremy will be in the market for a new truck. 

Trip Day 13-Shenandoah National Park and Luray Caverns

 Nathan turned 16 today!!!! We took him to a park and some caves for his birthday. It wasn't a very usual kind of birthday for him and a strange way to have a 16th birthday, but we're here on our trip. 

We spent our day driving through Shenandoah National Park. It was very beautiful! The views were amazing and it was very quite. The weather wasn't too hot and it was very relaxing. I am posting a lot of photos of the pretty views. 

Halfway through our trip, we took a detour out of the National Park and went to the Luray Caverns!! They were out of this world!!! So interesting. I had no idea something like this existed here.  We walked about a mile through the caves seeing all kinds of interesting formations. It was nice and cool inside too. 

Elizabeth is in front of Mirror Lake. The bottom part is a reflection of the top! 

It's hard to describe how big these caverns were. The pictures don't quite capture it. 

There were an overlook called "Jeremy's Run" overlook. Jeremy ran away from it...

and ended up here!! 

We exited out the north entrance and headed to our hotel. 

We were very close to Washington D.C that night as we were flying out of Dulles the next day.