Danita, you'll be my muse for the homeschooling story. I'm going to devote some time next week to focusing on queries and submissions (didn't I say that last week??), and you've inspired me to get moving with the homeschooling piece. (And what editor could resist photos of homeschooled kids in hand-crafted Colonial garb?)

I've been meaning to return to rockgarden's questions. I apologize for taking so long. Let me talk about her campground safety question:

Yes, I did feel safe and secure at the campgrounds we chose. But this was not wholly by chance. As you know from earlier posts, I don't leave safety to chance when I travel, especially when I travel alone or alone with my kids. I felt safe because I picked "safe-feeling" places. On our trip, we were always on the road by 8 am, usually before. We tucked about 300 miles each day under New Paint's tires. The early departures made it possible to stop driving by early afternoon, which had numerous benefits. The kids (and I) had plenty of time to hang out, use the campground/motel pool, explore our destination, watch TV, meet other people -- whatever.

And, I was able to check into a place, whether a motel or campground, in daylight, which gave me a chance to scope things out pretty thoroughly before checking in. If something didn't feel right (remember intuition?), we had pressure-free time to look elsewhere. We passed on more than a few campgrounds (pigs snuffling around the grounds; men and boys in camouflage t-shirts riding around in pickup trucks...).

I took other measures to increase the safety factor at campgrounds:

-- We always chose a site that afforded us privacy but was close enough to others that they could hear us and reach us quickly. We never camped "far from the madding crowd." "Remote" was not something I was after when sleeping in a tent with the kids. Even in some of the more hardscrabble federal campgrounds out west (Bluff, Utah comes to mind)that had no staff, few or no facilities and check-in by the honor system (you throw your five bucks into a box nailed to a tree), I sought out people and camped near enough to them to feel that help was a shout away.

-- I always made it a point to introduce myself to campground owners and staff and to make sure they knew where our site was. They were invariably interested in our journey, and more often than not, would come around to chat or check on us. I also took care to introduce our happy trio to camping families, and they kept their eyes on us, too.

-- I kept my cellphone and pepper spray with me in the tent, and each of us had a flashlight. No one made a long, dark trip to the outhouse alone at night. We peed near the tent if the toilet was beyond viewing distance from the tent.

-- At night, I parked New Paint very close to the tent, sometimes in front of the tent door. This meant less distance to travel if we needed something from the van and created a buffer between us and a would-be intruder.

And, I'm a light sleeper, a condition that can be annoying -- or fortuitous.