42 PENNIES: Take THAT, Charlie Card!

What's All This About, Then?
(aka Your Many Questions Indelicately Answered)

(hint #1: scroll down and this won't be as hard to read. You're welcome.)

We go on trips. Road trips. Other trips. But mostly road trips. Sometimes (ideally) long ones. Sometimes not.

Yes, this is the same blog as the one about the Oregon Trail. Yes, it used to have a stagecoach and a dusty feel to it, which went along with the Oregon Trail very nicely. Yes, that was a great trip. That was three years ago. (the blog is still here if you want to read it...it starts here)

So...as we embark on the latest chapter of our roamin' ways, we want to invite you to come along. First, we might get lonely. I mean, we don't really get lonely much, but it's possible. Second, you might miss us. Third, you just might be nosy. And fourth, we are notoriously and and historically bad at sending postcards, circulating photos, keeping up with a scrapbook; as a matter of fact, with documenting our trip in most every way. We figured this might be the 21st century solution. It worked for the last trip, which was (as you know) three years ago (sniff). So we're keeping it going.

We hope you'll pop in, read about where we are, what we're doing, see photos of our adventures, and experience our gypsy hardships (like no room service) vicariously! Most importantly, we hope you'll add your comments and greetings, which we will get when we get to one of our stopping points. Souvenir requests will receive due consideration (Hint #1: Success is highly correlated with tackiness).

For those so inclined (you know who you are), we will also list links to related sites so that you can learn with us as we learn on the road, and maybe visit some of the same sights in the future!

Happy Trails to us all!

Love, Phoebe and Robin

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Take THAT, Charlie Card!

Well, we're off! Tomorrow (Sunday), we take off for stop number one on our great adventure...Independence, Missouri, home of Harry Truman and the "Jumping Off Place" for the Oregon Trail! We'll check in tomorrow night from there, and fill you in. In the meantime, check out this copy of a payment note (which functioned kind of like a fare card for the subway these days) signed by Preston Roberts, Jr, who established the Missouri Stage Company (headquarters in Independence) in 1858. Cool, huh? We'll let you know what we can find for 25 cents.

2 comments:

Julia and Leora said...: Good luck on your adventures, pioneers! We'll be (virtually) following along. Git along, little dogies.

do·gie also do·gy (dō'gē) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. do·gies Western U.S.
A stray or motherless calf.

[Origin unknown.]

In the language of the American West, a motherless calf is known as a dogie. In Western Words Ramon F. Adams gives one possible etymology for dogie, whose origin is unknown. During the 1880s, when a series of harsh winters left large numbers of orphaned calves, the little calves, weaned too early, were unable to digest coarse range grass, and their swollen bellies "very much resembled a batch of sourdough carried in a sack." Such a calf was referred to as dough-guts. The term, altered to dogie according to Adams, "has been used ever since throughout cattleland to refer to a pot-gutted orphan calf." Another possibility is that dogie is an alteration of Spanish dogal, "lariat." Still another is that it is simply a variant pronunciation of doggie.; July 15, 2007 at 9:22 AM
Eastbound Mama said...: Yee haw! Head 'em up and move 'em out! Can't wait to hear all about the jumping off point!

(And I shan't define "Yee Haw!"); July 15, 2007 at 9:53 AM