Rhubarb on the Road

I did finally make a rhubarb/strawberry crisp, with a recipe I found online. It was fun, but not what I'm looking for, so I won't put the recipe here.  Rhubarb is supposed to give a baked dish a zippy, tart taste, but this crisp had too much sugar, I suppose, and it was just sweet. No zip.

I'll keep hunting. I made it Thursday evening, and EARLY on Friday morning (like, 5:50 AM), Julia, Sandy and I jumped in the car and drove over to Lookout Mtn., Georgia, to pick up Philip from college. I took a little serving of the crisp with me, in the cooler, for a snack. Here's the view as you drive up I-40 over the "big hill" just west of Old Fort. I always feel like an old-timey prairie woman, heading through the pass in the Rockies. Or not! A Rockies pass wouldn't look this forested, I guess.

I'm originally from West Virginia, and the sight of mountains -- Appalachian Mountains, mind you -- makes my hillbilly heart flutter, and I feel all warm and fuzzy inside :) You may think I'm jesting, but I'm dead serious.  I adore being in the mountains. They are great, sleeping giants, and God has thrown a fuzzy, multi-colored blanket over them. You can see their hips and knees. Sometimes I half-expect to hear a deafening roar of snoring from those mountain tops.

The highways snake through them. I remember years ago, when we'd travel from Brevard to West Virginia, to visit my brothers, before I-26 was cut through to Tennessee. We traveled little roads like 23 and 19, and saw the mountain ladies' quilts hanging out on their clotheslines, for sale, to passers-by.

The sky was big and blue. You'd never know that storms ravaged this area, just days ago. Philip seemed very relieved when I came to get him. The campus was in a chaos of departure, parents, students and stuff everywhere. No one cared about cleaning -- without water or power? Plane reservations were being changed, students were sleeping on professors' floors in their homes. The college community united to care for its own, as only a small body like that can. Philip said that they'd had a fire alarm in the middle of the night, and then everyone realized that, without water, the whole campus was in real danger. The students, RAs, RDs -- everyone -- had to leave, and leave fast.

I love having all my kiddos under my roof again. I'm imagining what it will feel like when I have 3 in college, and they all come home. What fun!