Innehållsförteckning för September 2020 från Country Extra

Unexpected Beauty Since retiring five years ago, I’ve taken up photography as a hobby. It’s really opened my eyes to the world around me, so now I always have my camera with me. You never know when something magical might happen. Well, I found one magical moment when we visited our son Jeremy after he moved to Lake Placid, New York. While on an errand to the grocery store, I looked out across a parking lot and saw this scene. The afternoon sunlight filtering through the autumn foliage onto the surrounding river and rocks highlighted a view that I will never forget. An ordinary errand became an extraordinary memory. KERRY LOVING Carlisle, Iowa…

We needed to get out of this isolation, get out of this funk and get out of this mindset. I woke up early one Saturday, which is not at all normal for me. It was a glorious morning, with the clouds and mist hanging low in the mountains after an overnight rain. As soon as my husband, Dennis, stirred, I told him I’d like to go out and take some photos. To my surprise, he was all in and said, “I’ll make the coffee.” We were out the door before 6:30 a.m. with masks, camera bag and coffee in hand. This wasn’t the first time we’d escaped our confines and taken a ride since the COVID-19 pandemic began. “Should we turn right or left?” Virginia has 3,000 miles of scenic…

AT 96 YEARS OLD, Nettie Nadine Daily still remembered the one-room school she attended with her brother in the 1920s. While on a drive near the Marion Reservoir Dam with her caregiver, Donna Evans, Nettie recounted her fond memories of the school, which once stood near the dam. Constructed in 1873 using native limestone, Dobbs Schoolhouse was the oldest one-room schoolhouse in Marion County. The building’s grounds and stone were donated by L.D. Dobbs, for whom the school was named. When the dam was built in the 1960s, the people of Marion County didn’t want to see the important school structure with its rich history destroyed. The school had served students for nearly 80 years before it was vacated because of consolidation. In 1969, Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Kruse purchased…

I was the teacher at Big Bar School in the mountains of south-central British Columbia, miles away from the nearest small town. One day I was there working late with my two youngest children, daughter Chia and son Jesse, who were also my students. Chia saw a car pull up to the school fence. Someone flung a tiny kitten over the fence and then sped off. Chia rushed outside and brought him in. He was a black-and-white male, maybe 3 months old, and he was squealing in terror. We petted him, gradually calming him down, and gave him some water and fed him a hot dog—the only thing we could find in the school fridge—which he eagerly gobbled up. We made a bed out of an old quilt and set…

The road that leads to my late Aunt Beulah and Uncle Nobel’s house, a place near and dear to my heart, is narrow, twisting, and lined with thick woods, blooming chicory, Queen Anne’s lace and orange daylilies. Flowing in a black wave, the road is best traveled if you’re the driver. Along the way we pass small towns that are barely surviving. We wonder how the local churches can survive, but on a Sunday morning, it is apparent that they do. We see six cars at one, nine at another—and in towns with populations of under 100, that is significant. In sweet anticipation we pass dusty crossroads: Sassafrass Ridge, Velvet Antler and Justa Drive. And we wonder who came up with these quirky names deep in the Ozark foothills of…

IT’S SUMMER AND THE OPEN ROAD IS CALLING! We know you’ve taken photos of your trips across America. Did you visit unique attractions? Discover out-of-the-way places? Delight in small-town charm and scenic beauty? Enter your gorgeous snapshots in any of these four categories—destinations, scenery, people and wildlife—and you could win! One grand prize winner will receive $1,000. We’ll also award $200 for first place, $100 for second place and $50 for third place. ENTER TODAY!  Go to country-magazine.com/contests for official rules. SUBMIT YOUR ENTRIES ONLINE BY NOV. 13, 2020.…

WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, NH Let nature take your breath away around each highway bend in the White Mountain National Forest. Take a scenic drive through a sea of hardwoods in autumn as colors change from yellow to orange to red and back again. Think about the conservation that went into this forest—more than a century ago it was being ravaged by unregulated logging and forest fires. Now it’s a diverse mosaic of spruce, pines, beech, birch and maples. Explore those restored forests from within or from above. There are seven wilderness areas that have hundreds of miles of hiking trails, wind-scoured peaks and expansive vistas. WHEN TO GO: Visit in the fall for one of nature’s most colorful shows. MUST-SEE: Drive the 34-mile Kancamagus Scenic Byway. PLAN YOUR TRIP:…

I would never have guessed I’d grow up to use the same parenting phrases my mom used on me. As a kid, I swore my children would never hear me say such things as “Because I said so.” But daily I hear myself repeating her exact words: “Don’t make me come over there!” and “I am not going to tell you again!” I turned into my mother the moment I became a parent. The scary thing is that I don’t have any kids—I have dogs! I’ve had Cooper, a stubborn but affectionate chocolate cocker spaniel with big lion’s feet and an overall teddy bear appearance, for about a year. Sometimes I say mom things to him simply for my own entertainment. For example, I tell him, “Your face is going…

As the alarm blares in my ears, I hop out of bed, shaking off a night’s slumber. After slipping on a pair of bloomers, a hoop skirt, an undershift and a handmade dress, I hastily gobble a bowl of cereal, lug my spinning wheel into our 2010 Toyota Sienna minivan and drive to volunteer at a picturesque farmhouse (getting a few weird stares from drivers along the way). Don’t worry—you didn’t miss Halloween! It’s just a day in the life of a historical reenactor. For five years I have volunteered at the 17 Mile House Farm Park, a farm built in the mid-1800s that catered to travelers on the trail to Denver (the name actually comes from the fact that it’s 17 miles away from Colorado’s biggest city). My job…

I WANT TO TELL you how much I enjoyed your article about Highway 1 north of San Francisco in the July issue (“Ocean Drive,” page 28). My wife and I have enjoyed that area on many trips, especially our stays at Heritage House at Little River. That nice place situated on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean with marvelous views later closed but has reopened. TOM WILBANKS Dallas, Texas I WAS SURPRISED to see a story in the May issue about the Mayfield Congregational Church in Sycamore, Illinois (“The Mayfield Way,” page 48). My brother, retired Rev. William Nagy, was serving that church when the ceiling fell down. He always talked about how the surrounding churches graciously offered their buildings for services. And he often mentioned how friendly Mayfield’s congregation…

My kitchen window looks out over our farm pond and a gazebo tucked away in one corner. I spend many moments glancing through this window to see which wildlife has blessed me with a visit. I often dry my hands, grab my camera and run out the dining room door to stand on the deck. I search for the duck, goose, woodpecker or other creature that caught my attention from the kitchen window and prepare for a one-of-a-kind photo. Photography is my favorite thing to do here on our farm near Troy, where my husband, Gary, and I have horses. Located about 20 miles from St. Louis, Missouri, Troy is a typical small town with schools, churches, parks and friendly people. My gallery contains many photos of the wonders of…

All around our little house in the woods, an East Texas autumn engulfs us with pure life and the vibrant colors of auburn maple trees, rich brown oak leaves, and resilient, green, ever-present pines. From the rolling pastures where the longhorns graze, the chilling wind brushes past our cheeks. When fall settles herself in this special part of the world, there’s nowhere more beautiful than the Piney Woods. Covering 23,000 square miles, this patch of northeast Texas is home to abundant natural beauty nestled between the pines’ whispering green needles. Summer is hot; winter is a week long, if we’re lucky; and autumn is just about perfect. The Piney Woods is a must-see for your next fall vacation. The natural beauty of our soft hills, blanketed by thick forests of…

A Cowboy’s Gentle Side While I was working one summer as a wrangler at the Vee Bar Guest Ranch in Laramie, Wyoming, I really hoped to take an iconic cowboy photo—think bucking broncos and calf roping. To my surprise I instead captured the gentler side of a fellow wrangler named Tommy. He’s been a fixture on the guest ranch every summer, cracking wry jokes and telling rough-and-tumble stories about how he made a living as a cowboy during his younger years. On this day and in this quiet moment, he wasn’t cracking jokes or telling tales. He was just a cowboy tending to his horses.…

My pop, Clifford Woodman, always loved selling things. After getting married in the mid-1950s, he purchased a country store in Frankfort, Maine. The store needed work, but Pop didn’t mind. The building had a kitchen and two upstairs bedrooms. There was an attached woodshed, some outbuildings and an outhouse. Later on, Pop built a living room, bathroom and another bedroom, plus a large addition onto the original store. The hardworking, low-income families that lived nearby soon learned that my father would extend them credit on essentials as long as they paid their bills on payday. Pop always tried to treat others the way he would like to be treated. One Saturday morning in September 1968 at about 2:30 a.m., Pop ran through my room yelling, “Get up! There’s a fire!”…

Growing up, we did canning in the summer. Those of us who lived on farms or in small Midwestern towns were never dogged by boredom as urban kids were. Pulling endless weeds, watering gardens and stocking up for the winter captured our days of freedom from school. As an adult looking back, I think some of my favorite memories are those of canning late into the night with my sister and mother. With no air conditioner, it made sense to heat up the kitchen only in the cool of the evening as bullfrogs and crickets burst forth in concert. The sticky residue from a bushel of peaches was scrubbed before the ants woke up for a morning march. When Vern and I married, the lure of canning caused me to…