Tumbleweeds and Shiny Braids is a travel journal ideal for RVers and others planning a trip out west. Tumbleweeds and Shiny Braids Provides you with a guide to your trip with little research on your part Enables you to do the exact trip just by following along Provides you with must see attractions along with extra attractions for each state Tells you which cities to visit in that state Informs you of mountainous winding roads that large RVs should avoid Tells you which campgrounds to visit to centralize your location in order to see all the areas attractions without moving your home base constantly
Heinrich and Anna Marie Oster are invited by the Czar to move to Russia. Their excitement runs high when a son of their family is selected to serve in the Czar's elite body guard, the Imperial Hussars, and life is good. Life next to the Royals is full of thrills and color, but before long the corruption and greed in high places are exposed, and soon bitter persecution of the family makes their days difficult. Their children flee to America and accept the government's offer of free homestead acres on the great prairies of the heartland. The free land, however, extracts a heavy price. As they wrestle their sod house out of the stubborn buffalo grasses, they discover that their new "palace on the prairies" is only three miles from the Native sons of the warriors who scalped George Armstrong Custer. It leaves their days uneasy, their nights uncertain. At every turn, Nature confronts them with immense battles, from killing blizzards and sweeping fires, to plagues of grasshoppers. From years of deathdealing drought where nothing grows but tumbleweeds and biting flies, to international conflicts that drastically change their lives. Through it all they come together in faith and turn their little spot of earth into the breadbasket of the world.
The average length of time before an RV campground is put up for sale is just seven years--and as it turns out, there's a good reason for that. While campers are out to experience fresh air, bucolic surroundings and the easy-going camaraderie of fellow travelers, the people who create that environment are often over-worked, under-paid and stressed out. And to make matters worse, their efforts are too readily dismissed as just "renting dirt." This frank, first-hand narrative describes one couple's journey from wide-eyed occasional campers to full-time owners and operators of a medium-sized campground and RV park in the Shenandoah Valley. Buying in early 2013, as the campground industry was just regaining its feet after the Great Recession, the Zipser family soon realized that managing the property was not their biggest challenge--it was managing the people: campers with diverse and often unrealistic expectations, a franchise system led by a brain trust without much operational experience, a transient workforce with employees stuck on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Each of these challenges was addressed by the Zipsers over the next eight years, most notably by exiting the KOA system and using the savings to improve pay and working conditions. At the same time, however, larger developments were reshaping the entire campground experience. A trend toward more creature comforts--including significant inroads by the digital world--and less tolerance for nature's discomforts gathered strength. Corporate buyers became more active in consolidating the industry. Climate change and extreme weather became more pronounced, battering campgrounds from coast to coast and causing many owners to question the long-term viability of their operations. And then the pandemic hit, turning what had been shaping up as a record-breaking 2020 into a roller-coaster ride of government orders, RVers clamoring for a place to stay and a severely curtailed workforce that never increased enough to adequately meet demand. By late fall, the Zipsers were wide-eyed no longer and ready to call it quits--and when a buyer unexpectedly showed up they did just that, selling yet another family-owned business to a corporate buyer.
The year is 1838. A young Scotsman forced from his homeland arrives at Hudson’s Bay. Angus McDonald is contracted to British masters to trade for fur. But the world he discovers is beyond even a Highlander’s wildest imaginings: raging rivers, buffalo hunts, and the powerful daughter of an ancient and magnificent people. In Catherine Baptiste, kin to Nez Perce chiefs, Angus recognizes a kindred spirit. The Rocky Mountain West in which they meet will soon be torn apart by competing claims: between British fur traders, American settlers, and the Native peoples who have lived for millennia in the valleys and plateaus of the Shining Mountains’ western slopes. In this epic family saga, the real history of the American West is revealed in all its terror, beauty, and complexity. The Shining Mountains brilliantly limns a world now long forgotten: of blended cultures seeking allies, trading furs for guns and steel, and a way of life in collision with westward colonial expansion.
Drumroll, please: Judy Moody is about to become a poop-scooping, hinny-riding, one-girl band extraordinaire as she takes on her very own Bucket List. Judy is visiting Grandma Lou one day when she accidentally finds an uber-mysterious list of activities — a Bucket List! Which gives Judy an idea: How rare would it be if she made her own way-official bucket list of all the things she wants to do—before she starts fourth grade? Pretty soon Judy is off and running trying to cross off all her items: learn to do a cartwheel, invent something rad, go to Antarctica (the real one), ride a horse—the list goes on. But what happens if Grandma Lou achieves everything on her list? Does that mean she’ll be ready to . . . kick the bucket?
After Trick Garradine saved the life of Christa's newborn daughter, he thought he'd never see either of them again. But when Crista heard that Trick needed a cook, she saw a chance to repay him for his kindness. She made his rough-and-tumble ranch a home and lit a fire inside the cowboy's lonely heart. And suddenly, Trick longed for more than the wide-open plains.
Jane Gordon had it all: the perfect knight in shining armor, loving, husband for thirty-six years; ten beautiful, adopted children, and a successful career as a nurse practitioner. It all came crashing down when she found Scott dying on their kitchen floor Thanksgiving Eve of 2019. In The Missing Scott Chronicles, she narrates the subsequent nightmare of losing absolutely everything in the heart-wrenching first year without her husband. This memoir offers a raw and vulnerable chronicle of one woman’s nightmare of grief. Gordon’s perilous and painful journey shares a beautiful, prosaic story of images, thoughts, sounds, and profoundly expressed feelings. In The Missing Scott Chronicles, she pours her heart out, bares her grieving soul, and by sharing, hopefully eases her pain and that of others.
“[A] graceful and brilliant novel . . . leads the reader on a journey through childhood autism that proves enlightening as well as fascinating.” —ForeWord Magazine Burton Rembrandt has the sort of perspective on life that is almost impossible for adults to understand: the perspective of an eight-year-old. And to Burt, his parents and teachers seem to be speaking a language he cannot understand. This is Burt’s story as written in pencil on the walls of the Quiet Room in the Children’s Trust Residence Center, where he lands after expressing his ardent feelings for a classmate. It begins: When I was five I killed myself . . . In this rediscovered modern classic from “one of France’s best-loved contemporary writers,” Howard Buten renders with astounding insight and wry language the tale of a troubled—or perhaps just perfectly normal—young boy testing the boundaries of love and life (Time). “Buten uses his wit like a whip to get at the heart of this boy’s own story . . . bringing some shock and some power to that delicate line between youth and the rest of the world.” —The Austin Chronicle “This psychologically intense tale moves quickly, and the difficult task of creating a child’s voice with authenticity and depth proves Buten a gifted stylist and storyteller . . . [an] imaginative and provocative book.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Certainly Buten offers some insight into a troubled child’s mind.” —The New York Times Book Review
