Hello, Central Elementary!
We are looking forward to meeting you all!
HELLO, EDUCATORS!
We invite you and your students to join us for a virtual tour of America’s unsung wonders and off-the-beaten-path communities. At every step, we’ll be documenting our travels via daily photos, essays, sketches, and videos.
Instagram: @robbi.and.matthew
Facebook: facebook.com/robbiandmatthew
YouTube: search for Robbi & Matthew
The latest on Instagram
The Daily Minute: 3.30.23
In which Matthew demonstrates the transitive power of the crank crevice.
#busloadofbooks
Here’s a photo I should have posted a month ago, the mural as it stood on March 1.
I’ve been dragging my feet for a number of reasons. Long and tiring days. The (self-imposed) pressure to say something meaningful and conclusive). The math involved to see how many miles we’d travled in February.
But mostly because March 1 marked six months since we left home. Which meant our adventure was more than halfway done. Which was not something I wanted to admit.
This trip has been the greatest six months of my life, and it’s hard to imagine anything that happens hereafter measuring up.
I’m already nostalgic for September when we were just getting started. I’m already nostalgic for yesterday.
This photo is badly outdated, but I’m putting it here for the sake of posterity. I don’t have the energy to process our travels on a day-by-day basis, so these posts will be the record I’ll return to as I try to make sense of all this once we’re sitting still again.
Breadcrumbs in the woods, leading me backward to the place and the moment we started.
#busloadofbooks
In which Robbi wants you to know we are often to be found doing nothing in empty, windswept places.
#busloadofbooks
Good night from Milford State Park in Milford, Kansas, where we were not planning to sleep tonight.
We started the day in Oklahoma and loafed a while before driving north to Tanganyika, an interactive wildlife park in Goddard, Kansas. We fed romaine to giraffes, tortoises, and guinea pigs, little tubs of milky fluid to lorikeets, and craisins to lemurs. We pet kangaroos (who were surprisingly chill). Kato fell in love with the lorikeets and Augie with the guinea pigs. I’m guessing there will be another power point presentation in my future.
Afterward, we drove to Wichita and found a grocery store. The kids stayed in the bus to do their homework, and Robbi and I spent a few minutes strolling the aisles, totally alone except for the other hundred or so people in the store. It was the closest thing we’ve had to a date in a while. We were hungry and probably bought more food than we needed, including an inadvisable box of Peeps-flavored cereal.
Then we drove two hours to our next campsite, a lovely spot on the banks of a lake, where we parked and set up camp only to discover the bathrooms were locked for the “off season.” The “off season” ends in two days, but Robbi couldn’t wait that long. She scowled profoundly by the lakeside as I packed up the bus for departure. She consulted the Google and found a new park an hour down the road.
On this drive, I made a terrible error, opening my driver window at the wrong moment and creating a draft that blew my favorite lei from Hawaii out the window. I despaired, but Robbi did not. We turned around, found my lei, and rejoiced as the sun set.
Then we drove another hour to a new park where we poked around in the dark for a bathroom that worked. The first set of bathrooms we found was also locked, but we persisted and finally found a set with doors that actually opened. More rejoicing transpired.
Now we are parked and Dumbles is getting his frisk on. Robbi is making a salad, and soon we will all pile onto the mattress on the back and watch TV.
It’s good to be back in Kansas, where I lived from sixth grade through the end of high school. Stay tuned for blasts from my past.
#busloadofbooks