We chose the St. Louis West KOA as our home base for our St. Louis trip because it had great reviews and, in particular, came highly recommended by Kerri of Travels with Birdy, both on her blog and on the Campground of the Week podcast. I reread her review right before I sat down to […]
Tales from the Road: When Nightmares Come to Life (like, literally)
When I was a kid, I had this nightmare that, it seems, affected me so deeply that I remember it in detail decades later. In this dream, my mom, my brother, and I were out going to garage sales, and my mom said she would take us all to McDonalds. But she missed the turn […]
Our First Day in St. Louis: The Museum of Transportation and the Gateway Arch (sort of): Spring Break Trip, Part 3
I think the greatest compliment you can pay a city is looking at real estate listings after you visit. I paid St. Louis this compliment, even though, to be clear, I’m never moving again. But we really enjoyed St. Louis and barely scratched the surface of things to do there during our three day visit […]
Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial: Spring Break, Part 2
Some people travel to see beautiful scenery. Some people want to eat at the best restaurants in the world. For some, it’s all about touring masterpieces of architecture. Me? I’m mostly in it for the Abraham Lincoln stuff. We plan to do a big tour of Lincoln-related sites sometime in the window when our own […]
Jellystone Mammoth Cave Campground Review
We had big plans to stay at the campground at Mammoth Cave and give dry camping a try for the first time. Then we kind of panicked, mostly about the possibility of it being very cold, and booked the Jellystone down the street instead. It turned out to be very cold indeed–below freezing one night–so […]
Mammoth Cave Weekend: Spring Break, Part 1
We actually had a trip to Asheville, NC all booked for spring break. Campground booked, list of places we wanted to see all planned out. We’ve passed through Asheville and stopped there briefly before, but never spent any significant time there. Then I started to get a little nervous about planning a trip that involved […]
Red Top Mountain State Park and Campground Review; or Continuation of Remains of Industry Tour: THWARTED!
As regular readers will recall, we are, it seems, on a quest to become experts on the history of the iron industry in the Southeastern United States. Or, anyway, we saw a lot of iron-related sites on our recent trip to Birmingham. And we happen to have a state park nearby that hosts an iron […]
Making a Magnet Board for the Trailer (and How NOT to Make a Magnet Board)
Post contains affiliate links; thanks for supporting Boxy Colonial on the Road! Magnets are our go to souvenir on trips these days. They’re pretty, they’re functional, and, of course, they’re cheap. When I win the lottery, it’s matching T-shirts for the whole family from every gift shop we pass! But until then…. Magnets. But, sadly, […]
Birmingham, Alabama: The Remains of Industry Tour, Part 2
When we left off, we had just finished our first day in Birmingham with a visit to an old quarry, and we were all set to see more industrial relics the next day. But first up on Sunday, we checked out Oak Mountain State Park, a large state park about 20 miles south of Birmingham. […]
Birmingham, Alabama with Kids: The Remains of Industry Tour
There’s something very….American about a city founded with the express purpose of becoming an industrial giant. Birmingham (named, confidently, for the industrial city in England) was founded in 1871 at the site of a planned railroad crossing in an area rich with iron, coal, and limestone–the three materials which, it just so happens, are the […]