Vid comments

Posted a couple of videos to YouTube somewhat recently, but never mentioned it here or gave my commentary. Might as well now.

St. Charles evening - This was the night of the first day of the big 07 trip. This video represents one of the two main things I go looking for on a road trip like this. Simple pleasures. Taking your kids to a playground. What could be simpler? And as I've gone down this road of parenthood, it's become something I cherish. I know that it's not long until the innocence of swinging and sliding fades and it takes more and more to entertain my children. Somehow I've always known that I will remember these times on playgrounds so fondly, and I will probably be sadder about not being able to take the kids to playgrounds than any other part of their growing up. Whenever we travel now, I research parks along the way to let the girls go play on a park they'll probably never see again. I remember looking up parks near where we stopped on the way to Jacksonville in 05, and realizing it poignantly then. I feel blessed that it's 3 years later and we still go regularly and it's still fun for them.

The other thing I look for in a road trip this video isn't the best example of, so I'll save that for another time.

Anyway, the point is...this was a really nice memory. Driving all day, the mystery and excitement of the remainder of the trip ahead of us, and taking the time to stop at a playground which was a mile or so from our RV park. The music captures the contemplative mood (despite the grisly title), and there are a few sort of 'iconic' pictures as well. I particularly like the one of all of us walking away from the camera (director's secret - that was actually us walking INTO the playground, but it looked so much better as us leaving, so I stuck it at the end...revisionist history!) and the sort of 'artsy' one looking down at faith and the red stepping-stone things. Steph is a big fan of the ones with Zayde swinging.

In other random info, the restaurant scenes at the beginning were from the on-site restaurant at the RV park. The "Beefeaters" restaurant had apparently been named the best on-site restaurant at an RV park in the nation by some magazine or group or something. Kinda cool. And it was pretty good. And we would have liked to explore the shopping district in St. Charles more than we did. But, oh well. On the next west trip, maybe we'll do it then...

Okay, enough for now. I'll talk about the other vids another time.

Matt