I love small towns. While I’ve never lived in one (I would say the relatively small New Jersey suburb I grew up in *probably* does not count, ha), my mom grew up in a Minnesota small town (Long Prairie, for those of you Minnesotans out there) and I love visiting them. Especially ones where a friend is the library director of a beautiful Carnegie library.  Yesterday, I drove to Ritzville, WA in eastern Washington, a primarily farming town relatively close to Moses Lake, Spokane, and the Tri-Cities to meet my friend Kylie Fullmer, who became the library director of their gorgeous library this past November and to do a storytime this morning. (Check out the Ritzville Journal newspaper blurb announcing the storytime!)

I did the Water, Water Everywhere: A Liquid Adventure storytime this morning for about 8-9 kids and their parents, and the storytime confirmed that this is my calling. I love everything about getting kids excited about reading through fun and silly activities. I’ll have to add a picture later that Kylie took of me actually doing the storytime, but I read three books to the preK through early elementary school kids, all of which were interactive in some way. Each of the kids got to use one of our many props and puppets, ranging from 3 clownfish puppets (yes, that is the Finding Nemo fish), a manta ray puppet, a (plastic) lobster, a bucket full of (plastic) fish, a few alligator puppets, a shark puppet, sailor caps, and fish hats, to mention a few. We read the stories There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell, Very Boring Alligator, and Over in the Ocean on the Coral Reef (which is a song, and it has the lyrics and musical notation in the back, although we just read it as an ocean counting book). I also had prepared a water tornado using two soda bottles, which they absolutely loved and all got a chance to try. (Do it at home! It’s super easy…all I ended up doing was duck-taping the two bottles with no caps on together. I wouldn’t leave it turned on its side, but it works perfectly well and no drilling needed). The other thing they loved was mixing oil and water together. I put food coloring and glitter in the water and then added oil and shook up the bottle. They loved watching it separate and guessing the color it would turn. Afterward, I gave out books, which worked out really well, although we’re still working out some kinks in our record-keeping of book giveaways.  I so appreciate the Ritzville Public Library (in particular, Kylie Fullmer for advertising and supporting) for hosting the Literacy Lab. While my mom had presented story programs elsewhere, this was my inaugural event and it went off beautifully.

Something to note for the future: figure out how to loosen the safety straps of our rolling book carts! 20 minutes before the program was set to start, I was pulling all the materials needed and decided to pull out the book cart. But ha! Could I figure out how to get them loosened? No, even when a friendly man stopped to help (another reason I love small towns). As it turned out, I just put books in a box, which worked for the better anyway, since we ended up going to the basement for the storytime and there is no elevator for a *very heavy* book cart.

The second leg of our Orlando to Seattle drive has begun! I (Erin) flew out yesterday morning to Minneapolis to meet Cora and my sister Allie. After a Father’s Day lunch, re-packing the van so that someone could actually sit in the back bench seat took a while, so we didn’t actually get on the road until 5pm. But we had a reservation in Chamberlain, SD that night, so we were determined to drive the 6 1/2 hours.

The funny thing about road trips is that ideally you want them to be uneventful, but when describing them later, it’s usually more interesting to have a story. Well, our car didn’t break down, the driving was quite lovely in that there were no huge semi’s and no traffic (ha!) on southeastern Minnesotan or South Dakotan highways,  and the scenery was green (see evidence below).  

The main two annoying things were: (a) driving in the dark, because, although we got the Literacy Lab checked out by a dealer and were promised that we would now be able to see the dashboard lights, we could not. We’re hoping there’s a knob that we’re missing that turns them on, but that did not help last night. (b) Cora had made a reservation at a Howard Johnson in Chamberlain, SD through Orbitz, but when we arrived, exhausted and ready to hit the hay at 12:15, there was no record of our (paid) reservation, which meant calling Orbitz, waiting 10 minutes on hold, explaining the problem, having Orbitz call the hotel, etc. etc. The gist is, it went through and we fell right to sleep at 1am.

Today is our sightseeing day, so we’re pretty excited! Our options are: Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands National Park, a Flintstones Theme Park apparently (thank you brochures in hotel lobby), and of course, “America’s Favorite Roadside Attraction,” Wall Drug! Unfortunately, we weren’t able to plan ahead for any book route stops, but who knows? Maybe we’ll set one up ad-hoc.

This is Cora, not Erin.  After two rather long days of driving, Claire and I are 6 hours from New Jersey.  Tomorrow the Lit Lab will be parked in Claire’s driveway in New Providence while we enjoy a Memorial Day BBQ.  Unbelievable!

Getting ready to leave only took about twice as much time as I had imagined.  Without Claire, I think I would still be loading books and stuff in Florida.  But between my willingness to miss a few hours of sleep and Claire’s talent for visioning the packing, we managed to leave on Saturday morning with several boxes of books and costumes, a sound system, a plastic alligator head, a few puppets, cameras, a trolley cart, green wigs, a six-foot-long stuffed caterpillar, a tool kit, two flowered fly swatters, assorted scepters, a first aid kit, two reams of 11×17 paper, a battery charger, our suitcases, two lattes and a robot  (from now on to be named ISBN).

We set out thinking we knew where we were going, only to discover that the southern route to I-75 would have been shorter.  But then we wouldn’t have seen all the amazing resale places, antique shops or flea markets that we restrained ourselves from visiting on the way.  We were seriously tempted to stop when we saw 20 or 30 wild animal statues along the road, but there was no parking for a newly wrapped Sprinter van.

We did catch some attention at the gas station when we couldn’t find the gas tank door.  It might have made a pretty funny YouTube video – two middle-aged women spending 10 minutes patting down every inch of a Sprinter that was decorated with a crazy scientist and a blue robot.  Fortunately I remembered that I had filled the tank somewhere near the driver side door and found the gas tank door under the vehicle wrap.  Claire dug out a pair of scissors so I could carefully cut around it.  We quickly filled the tank and got back on the road.  It still makes me laugh when I think about it.

I’m happy to report that the Lit Lab is traveling well.  So far so good.  Only one box fell off the shelves and that was before we improved our bungee chord techniques.

Time to rest up for the rest of the drive.  More on the trip tomorrow …

The shelves have been put in (thanks, Uncle Tom!); the costumes, props, and books are being packed as we speak; the Literacy Lab is currently being wrapped with really awesome graphics thanks to Elite Signs and Graphics; and Claire has arrived in Winter Park ready to drive the Literacy Lab to New Jersey with Cora this Friday. Oh yeah, and we have a logo! 

Can you tell I’m excited?! Looking to see all of you on the road…