Spring Floods and the Oregon Trail

Here in the Midwest, we are experiencing serious flooding this spring. St. Joseph, Missouri, one of the prime “jumping off” points for the Oregon Trail, has had worse flooding this year than in any year in its long history. On March 22, 2019, the Missouri River reached 32.11 feet at […]

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Liberation and Independence

One of the joys of blogging is finding other writers who touch your heart and soul. My last post was about my mother’s death on July 4. That night I was unable to sleep. The Independence Day fireworks screamed and popped throughout our suburban neighborhood, their celebratory bursts incongruous to […]

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Provisioning for the Journey West

Emigrants preparing for the move to Oregon had plan carefully what they would take. They had to balance the amount of food and other supplies they needed for the journey, what they could afford to buy, the weight their wagon and teams could pull, and what mementoes and tools they […]

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A Novel Blog Hop: Lead Me Home

J.G. Burdette, who blogs at Map of Time: A Trip into the Past, tagged me to participate in a Blog Hop for authors.  What’s a blog hop? This one is an interview with ten questions posed to a writer about the novel he or she is writing. The author answers […]

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Jumping Off to the Unknown

Part of my horoscope on my birthday this year read “Develop a way of handling the unexpected, as it will become a regular occurrence for you.” But isn’t this true for everyone? The unexpected becomes expected, because change comes to all of us. Sometimes we seek the change, other times […]

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Two Ends of the Trail

I’ve lived at both ends of the Oregon Trail.  I grew up in eastern Washington State, near the site of the Whitman Mission.  The story of the Whitman Massacre was part of my childhood.  I now live in Kansas City, Missouri, near Independence — one of the main jumping off […]

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