Dark Nest Travels : Flight from the Nest, School 2k18, & Family

It's that time of year again, where all the children begin their back to school endeavors. Academia, albeit, not for everyone, is there for the taking. On this past Friday, we had a bittersweet moment with our youngest daughter. She has grown up into adulthood, before our eyes, like so many before her, five to be exact, and has jumped from the nest, the "Dark Nest". We watch from a distance, now, as she spreads her wings and either takes off in a shaky half flight, or nose dives, whatever course of flight she decides, is hers to own. Some tears trickled down our eyes as she hugged us, smiled, and was on her way, but the tears were momentary, for her we are proud, proud of the hard work she's done to get what she wants, and we couldn't be more happy. Keep flying, keep flying, our shining daughter.

We have another bitter sweet moment, our youngest son, is a high school senior this year, he has a course of his own ahead. A thorny, sometimes, bitter, high school road ahead, that he'll accelerate in it, we're sure. He has a head for academia and will thrive this year to make it to his long term goals, i.e. college and more studying. He has made leaps and bounds in his life, and will continue to grow into an even smarter, hard working young man that he's already diligently being today.

It starts with love, no, you don't minimize it, you grow love by nurture, by memories, by living the life before you. It's a grand thing, really, most of us take it for granted. Some of us abuse it, and let it fly away. Some take on other things to deter from the love that has surrounded them. We held onto it, without reluctance, we only minimized those things around us, not people, not those we love. We moved into this one room schoolhouse, Dark Nest, to literally "nest" into our life, our marriage, and to watch the last of the younglings leave and fly to their own destinations. It's a good feeling, seeing children grow up before you, see them in flight, crash, get back up again, and spread their wings. It makes you realize that the love you've shown, as their parents, the love you've had for your marriage, has a return, a return of success, failure, and growing up, for us as well as our children. 

On minimizing, well, I do have to talk about it at some point, and will go into depth about it in the near future, either video or blog post. We've only minimized our debt, and the square footage of our living space, not some of the collectibles or antiques that surround us, it's our own way to minimize but enjoy some of the treasures, other than our family, along the way. 

Keep traveling, all of you, travel to our blog, to your marriage, with your significant other, your children, most importantly, keep traveling down the road of life and embrace it all! Never let love get away from you.

Watch the video tour of Dark Nest's exterior (make sure to subscribe, please, we're trying to reach 100) just click here: The Exterior Tour

Thanks for reading about our lives. Don't forget to subscribe to Dark Nest Travels on YouTube and follow us on Instagram at: darknesttravels. Thanks for stopping by and keeping up to date on our life, in its genesis and the unfolding path that is just ahead.

Dark Nest Travels : Holly Pond, 42 lbs of Turkey, and the Grotto

There was a time in our history when Thanksgiving meant sitting around the table, eating dinner with family and talking about Christmas. That kind of evolved into something else with a history/job change (in the near future, 2003), but in 1999, it was still wholesome.

My grandparents moved away from the Upper Peninsula when they realized that it had become an inconvenience to live hundreds of miles from medical facilities. They traveled to many other places in exploration and my mom and dad often went with them helping to lead the expeditions. They decided to relocate to Holly Pond, Alabama. After many renovations that my dad and Grandpa had performed on the house, it was a quaint place for them to nest.

Alabama was moderate in climate, there were hospitals nearby, and the winters included none of the white fluffy stuff, or just a fluff that would disappear after a couple hours of the temps rising. The home they settled in still allowed for their privacy, set on a paved road but neighbors were still distant enough. In ninety-nine, we decided to take our kids to Holly Pond to visit and spend Thanksgiving. At the time I was working in a Cytology lab in Detroit, the midnight or "gravy" shift as some called it. I arrived home, got a few hours of sleep, and we loaded the Suburban with our travel gear and how could I forget, the monster turkey.

My cousin Tony was a farmer, he grew a large garden, raised farm animals, pigs, cows, turkeys and chickens. His family members always got first dibs on the turkey. The turkey he gave us weighed in, prepped and ready to bake, at forty two pounds, it barely fit in a cooler we had to transport it in. It was massive and my grandma didn't know whether it would fit in her oven. Here's me holding the heart of the turkey and the gizzards, I know, right, I just couldn't let go of my long locks, and look at the size of those organs!

We entered Alabama where the highways were clean, the grass along them tidy and liter free, and the state a beckoning beauty, we instantly saw what my grandparents had fallen in love with. The dirt in Alabama was red, yes, red. I had heard of the "red" dirt being a delicatessen to some, at the time I believed it was an Urban legend, where people ate that "red" dirt, no I didn't attempt it myself. I heard it from someone I worked with at the lab, so maybe someone was messing with my overactive imagination, hindsight tells me they were, I've heard more bizarre legends in my life.

We planned a four day weekend around the adventure because I wanted to spend time with my grandma and grandpa to see how they were adjusted and to check out the area, which Maria and I had the pleasure to do the summer prior. My Grandma whizzed around the kitchen making pumpkin pie, showing me the ropes, which I never really put into practice, and we calculated when the turkey should go into the oven, after testing it, and nearly having to remove every oven rack to get it to fit. It had been a great Thanksgiving trip where the visit felt truly like it should have, and we like to think our children took the same away with them.

We talked my grandma into going to a beautiful place, near Holly Pond, in Cullman. She wasn't an outspoken religious person, and I, three years prior, converting to Catholicism, was excited to go. It was called Ave Maria Grotto. A quaint place sprawled over four acres of hilly Alabama land. It was known as the "Little Jerusalem" and was created by Father Joseph Zoettl. The detail in this gracious Grotto immersed me and everyone into it's beauty and grace. This man had recreated something that only imagination could muster and was amazing. I'm including pictures, which do not give near the immersion of seeing it in person. It was one of many holiday's to be thankful for.

Dark Nest Travel now has video, remember to click on YouTube link in the closing paragraph, and view our very first, yes, very first, Introduction Video, with a lot more to come!

Thanks for reading about our lives. Don't forget to subscribe to Dark Nest Travels on YouTube and follow us on Instagram at: darknesttravels. Thanks for stopping by and keeping up to date on our life, in its genesis and the unfolding path that is just ahead.

Dark Nest Travels : Introduction & Abduction, The first Video!

There's a signpost up ahead...it's a bit blurry..but you can make it out. The tiny reflective letters on the sign are glowing from the headlights of the RV and the green familiar mile markers shimmer in the high grass at the side of the road.  With squinting eyes you peer into the darkness following that infinite ray of light beaming on the green backdrop, a bright, very bright, light shines above you, and you feel the energy, this massive magnetism that continues to pull you in, "please keep reading," a voice whispers to your right, you look over, and...

Well, you've read about our history, you've read about the time's we've had in our past, and all of you will hopefully continue the vicarious journey with us. I am introducing our first Dark Nest Travels, video, albeit a total experiment, and experience, almost an abduction of sorts, I might add. I hope to continue to provide everyone with some form of entertainment, simply because my fiction usually scares or disturbs the hell out of most that know me, and although this is not fiction, it's an outlet that I'm greatly enjoying. I appreciate each and everyone of you! Watch now, hopefully it lives up to some kind of standard of video, if not, I'll get better in the future, until then, here it is...

Click Here to View the Video!

Thanks for reading about our lives. Don't forget to subscribe to Dark Nest Travels on YouTube and follow us on Instagram at: darknesttravels. Thanks for stopping by and keeping up to date on our life, in its genesis and the unfolding path that is just ahead.

Dark Nest Travels : Ending a Long Term Relationship (with work)

After many years, I've called it quits. This long term relationship had to end sometime, and it ended upon me getting a job relatively closer to home, so here...I...am, writing this. It's bittersweet, because I "liked" my long term job (it was far from a love affair, believe me, I wasn't in "love"), but the economics of the job began to get the best of me. The retail job took a toll on my life, as it had for the past fifteen and a half years. The ups, the downs, the crazy schedule, the holidays that I missed with my loved ones, it chipped away at my mental state, mostly, and I allowed it for a long period of time, without fail. I only lasted this long to inch my way closer to that "semi" retirement phase of life. Dark Nest Travels, hopefully, gets off the ground by mid summer next year, if not, I probably seriously screwed up with the timeline.

There were only a few of the "good ones" in the job I had. I will miss them. They were the ones who shared my work ethic, they shared a glint of hope that things just might get better. I formed relationships that lasted beyond the job when friends left prior to me. The friends established were the people in my life at this job who made it worth coming in everyday, and I thank each and everyone of them for being a part of my life. They meant a lot, mean a lot, but when life's goals come along, and that light to those goals is getting ever more clear, a move has to be made and the long term torch carrying will have to be passed along to the next.

It's been real, friends and co-workers, a long ride to the end of a roller coaster ride that seemed endless, and chasing that blazing orange carrot dangling on the end of the string. I hope everyone of you know how to get in touch, keep in touch, and watch the somewhat crazy spirals I clamber to make this social media, video, picture thing work. I appreciate each and every person that I've made contact with in my life, friends, family, even enemies, have all made a huge impact in my life in some way shape or form, and I could never ask for more. Thanks to all of you!

If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to Dark Nest Travels on YouTube and follow us on Instagram at: darknesttravels. Thanks for stopping by and keeping up to date on our life, in its genesis and the unfolding path that is just ahead.

Dark Nest Travels : Travel in 1999

Travel, where does it begin? Does it begin with  a new adventure, is it just a weekend getaway, a retake on life? The definition is in the eyes of the beholder of those who are doing it. As a child, I remember our cabin. It was constructed by my paternal grandfather, Carl, in the nineteen sixties. It was a two bedroom, one bath cottage, and believe it or not a pit toilet covered with an old wood structure, also a piece of my grandfather's handiwork, located near a tree line before a section of woods. It was an awesome weekend getaway for us. Our family spent long weekends and took many trips there. The ride was a short three hours or so, which as a kid was endless in the backseat annoying my two sisters. I remember the, what then, seemed, a long winding dirt road, where the excitement kicked in. When the tires hit the gravel to that road, I knew we were almost there.

When we arrived, my dad would go through his routines, turning the well pump on, twisting the old fuses into their sockets and giving power to the place. My mom opening windows to air out that faint mustiness that hung in the air from being closed for long periods of time. There was an old toy box to the right when you entered. In the box were old Archie comic books, coloring books and loose crayons to keep us occupied on a potential rainy day. The old thick wallpaper hung heavy on the walls adorned with sailboats, some of the adhesive, worn, through the years and weather, caused a corner or two to curl where the seams met. There was a sectional couch to the left and on the right was a pull out couch. Straight ahead a television on the left, a dinette on the right. The kitchen was a refrigerator, kitchen sink and stove, in that order from left to right at the far wall. There was a hallway, a doorway next to the television, in the center a bathroom, and to the right and left of that a bedroom on each side. The cabin was small, but extremely useful.

More than just the layout of the cabin hangs heavily in my heart, what I really remember was swimming, enjoying time with family, and huge campfires by our cousin Tony. It was learning that the smell of gas and oil from a chainsaw to make a vision across the street from our cabin a reality for our cousin's own piece of paradise, that helped make these trips so worthwhile, such a crucial part that helped build my travel bug. Tag, hide and seek, swimming across the river to the other side, which seemed miles away, were all memories that will stay with me forever.

In 1999, after our first two children settled, and we were all somewhat adjusted, I decided it was time to revisit the cabin. I thought that maybe I could recreate some of those memories with them. We loaded up our Suburban, Barney, our son and daughter, and with only the memory on how to get there in my head, we traveled north to the cabin.

The trip didn't seem as difficult as it did when I was a passenger. It seemed quick. We arrived. Nothing seemed the same. The memories floated around in my head, but there was something different. The beach that my cousin's once kept cleaned up at the bottom of their hill on their lot had been overrun with seaweed, because their own children were adults and they didn't spend as much time traveling there as they once did. We made the best of it. We had a small campfire, cooking hot dogs on an open fire and then settled in for the night. The cabin had some small changes to it, small enough for the common visitor not to notice, but I did, it didn't feel the same. We left the next day. I was slightly deflated that I couldn't recreate the times I had there growing up, but at least I was able to tell the stories of my own youth, and I think that may have been enough.

Time, it's a funny thing, it ages us, it takes a toll on everyone, including those places we once enjoyed. What time can't do is take away those memories that we hold dear. It shifts perspective, views, creates a different mindset that once may have been. That trip was okay, but seemed lonely, because everyone had aged, my sister's, cousin's, my family were living life, heading down their own paths, and correlation of our paths crossing was scant. It was a good time with my own family, but a sad reality that once time has taken a leap forward, nothing can bring it back around and recreate those minutes, those moments, or those days.

Thanks for reading about our lives. Don't forget to subscribe to Dark Nest Travels on YouTube and follow us on Instagram at: darknesttravels. Thanks for stopping by and keeping up to date on our life, in its genesis and the unfolding path that is just ahead.