Author Archives: Heidi Phelps

Recent musings: 17 years ago, I heard these words with respect to parenting my child: “All this hardship is given to you because God knows you could can handle it. My life is easy because God knows I can’t handle any of what you are going through.” For 17 years I have pondered this statement […]

Proverbs 14:26 Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for their children it will be a refuge. My father died. Until yours dies, you don’t understand the tragedy, the rift in the fabric of creation, left by the death of a parent. That is as it ought to be. This is one of […]

Despite best laid plans, children packing boxes means that we may not find our cooking tools in a timely manner upon unpacking. I brought my Instapot in the Suburban with me, anticipating such challenges. We had bean soup, ham soup, split pea soup, vegetable soup, more bean soup, did I mention ham soup? Then one […]

Well, when you raise kids free range, you might have to say something like that. “Don’t swim in the pond in February, even if you are wearing you warm winter jacket!” You wouldn’t think I would need to say this even once to children when the pond was frozen over just the day before. I […]

Some things I never thought I’d search for: How to use a burn barrel, will a bull break through a barbed wire fence, are primates legal to own in Missouri (because they sell primate food at the feed store!!! What???), how to use a pellet stove, coal heaters in Missouri. So, yeah, I am buying […]

That’s right, we did it! After 25 years of talking about moving to the mid west and buying a farm, here we are. We had a good run in California, but it’s time for something new. When one crosses the border from California, there is an immediate difference. What we appreciate is the difference in […]

When I was 20-ish years old, I took my 10-year-old brother on a road trip from San Diego to Buffalo, and we stopped at the Grand Canyon. I remember being very aware that if I somehow let him slip off the edge, not only would I be incredibly sad, my family would also disown me. […]

Today we go to another place I have never been to: Moab, Utah, and Arches National Park. The drive through Colorado was generally green, and there were many ranches with fat cattle munching happily. It seems that more rain falls into those valleys than in eastern and central Wyoming. The valley walls were sometimes red, […]

Today we came to something I have never seen before. When you have made over 20 trips across the country by car, that is a rarity. We left the pretty little hotel on the perfectly picturesque Belle Fourche River, Remember, the hotel is for sale. Someone buy it!!! Devil’s Tower is a grade work of […]

We should name our road trip “There and Back Again.” Today we start our journey home. We started on the east side, went west, came back east, and now we are going back west. It has been a good investigation trip, we know a lot more now than we did a month ago, some surprising […]