Creeper pics

Vacation All I ever Wanted (HOL 98)

House of Laughter 98

When planning a vacation with a three year old, you have to include visits to places that are appropriate to the child’s interests, limit excessive amount of walking through un shaded, crowded areas, and schedule a reasonable end to a day so your child can rest. We did none of those things. We went to Washington DC.

Last year we planned an extensive road trip to New York City for our vacation. As summer drew closer, we scaled back our plans to renting a beach house. We then realized that most of the fun of having a beach house is being able swim throughout the day, something we can do at home for considerably less money. Isaac is also not a huge fan of sand.

We were content to sit home for a week when we got a very generous offer from a friend in DC to stay at her place. We planned for the last week of June.

Nancy was gone for the weekend before so Isaac and I did guy stuff. We went to garage sales where Isaac smartly purchase a Darth Vader mask, and talked the seller of a 12 inch Spiderman doll down from ten dollars to fifty cents. Isaac confided he liked going to garage sales with me better than Mom because I let him get stuff. We also went to Burlington city park where we rode the train, merry go round, and other carnival rides.

When Nancy returned, we packed up for the big trip Monday morning. When we travel, one of us drives, the other navigates. On this trip, I was driving and Nancy was navigating. After leaving Greensboro…(My attorney advises me to skip the part about the drive into Washington DC if I want to remain married to Nancy. We will pick up the story just after parking at George Washington University.)…..finally finished crying and cleaned up the blood, we decided to explore the city.

Washington is a city that is constantly under construction. Isaac made sure to point out every construction crane in the city. Isaac also made sure we noticed every squirrel. It turns out that they were all Obama’s pet squirrels.

Since I was traveling with Guilford County’s Media Specialist of the Year, a trip to the Library of Congress was not optional. I assumed they would have recognized Nancy when she walked in and whisked her back to the special “VIP Librarian” room where they hand out original hand written copies of “Pride and Prejudice”, swap war stories about shushing large groups of people, and keeping copies of “Harry Potter”, “Huckleberry Finn”, and “Daddy’s Roommate” in their collections despite the howls of concerned parents.

It turns out that the Library of Congress was a remarkable building with a collection of important American artifacts including Jefferson’s personal library. Isaac really liked the squirrel out front who was so fearless due to dropped tourist popcorn, he actually let Isaac pet him. The secret to touring a museum with Isaac is for one parent (the father) to find an exhibit that Isaac is interested in to distract him like a looping video of old vaudeville acts, and the other parent (the mother) to enjoy the rich tapestry of American history by actually spending more than 45 seconds at each display case.

This was the case at “The International Spy Museum”. I did the “Operation Spy” attraction while Nancy and Isaac toured the museum (which according to some guide books can take three or four hours to see) in about 20 minutes. When I finished the “Operation Spy” attraction, I found my family in the Snack Bar at the cupcake exhibit. On the second run through the museum, Isaac and I found an air conditioner vent that you could crawl through and “spy” on other visitors in the museum. After crawling through the tunnel a dozen times with Isaac, he and I found our way to a small theater showing old propaganda films including an old Donald Duck Cartoon where he fights Hitler. The spy museum was cool, but needs to be updated a bit. The “Cutting Edge” technology in the last room showing satellite images from around the world was pretty much the same thing as “Google Maps”.

The International Spy Museum had exhibits on espionage in battle throughout history and literature. Isaac and I admired a large model of “The Trojan Horse.” I tried to intrigue him by telling him the story, “Once long ago, some bad guys called ‘The Trojans’ kidnapped the most beautiful princess in the world named Helen. They took her back to their city and locked her up. The good guys, ‘The Greeks’ and their superhero ‘Achilles’ tried to rescue her. They fought and fought, but could not rescue the princess, so the Greeks built a big wooden horse to try to trick the Trojans. The Trojans brought the horse inside their city .”

At this point we walk around to the back of the horse and can see all the soldiers hiding inside.

“And Isaac, guess who was inside of that big wooden horse?”

Isaac answered, “Jesus?”.

The folks around us were amused.

Another highlight of our visit was during our visit to the Air and Space Museum. We were walking along the crowded second floor when Nancy stopped me and pointed out a famous, Oscar winning actress that we had just walked past. I asked her to point the person out. She pointed to a woman with three kids, bent over rifling through her bag looking for a camera. The thing we both noticed immediately was the three inches of white thong sticking out the top of her jeans. I walked back to where the actress was and verified that it was in fact who Nancy said it was. I made eye CONTACT, but didn’t want to be ACCUSED of harassing her. (I’m not going to say who the actress is to keep this blog from showing up when people Google her name and “thong”.)

Late one evening we were out on the National Mall. (Which was lined with vendors already selling Michael Jackson Memorial T-shirts by the way.) The sky was overcast and the wooded area between the Washington Monument and Vietnam Memorial was filled with thousands of fireflies. As the rain began, Isaac darted around the trees, catching fireflies and laughing…..180 proof childhood magic. Like all magic, it didn’t last. The gentle sprinkling of rain turned into a full force gully washer and we were 15 minutes from the nearest Metro station. It rained so hard that we didn’t hesitate walking through three inch puddles. Everything in my wallet was saturated. The hot shower I took when we finally made it home was one of my top 10 of all time.

Upon leaving DC, we drove across the state of Virginia to Abingdon. This was to be base camp for our trip up into the Appalachian mountains. In the morning a can drove us along with two bikes and a trailer to the top of the mountain where we spent the next few hours leisurely riding the 15 miles downhill back to our car. It was early July but still quite chilly. We stopped frequently to look at old railroad depots and throw rocks into rivers. The trail meandered over old railroad bridges spanning huge gorges and through canyons. We stopped and had lunch at a little café that catered to bikers on the trail.

We made it back to the bike rental place just as my front tire lost all of it’s air.
With only half a day left to our vacation and it almost being the 4th of July, we celebrated American life in the traditional way. We ordered pizza and watched hotel cable in bed for the rest of the night.

Strength and Honor
Big Matt

Hard Rock er...Freestyle Music Park (HOL 97)

House of Laughter 97

We borrowed a friend’s beach house for Father’s Day weekend. We arrived Friday afternoon and decided to explore the area. I looked up local mini-golf places in nearby Shallote on my cell phone. The web page described an “indoor black light” mini golf course, bowling alleys and go-cart tracks. We followed the directions out to a two lane road that cut through a forest and over a creek, but had a serious lack of go karts, bowling alleys or mini golf. We drove up and down the road several times until we saw a sign notifying us of the opening date in late 2009. Just one more reason to dislike GPS.

On the way out to Holden Beach in search of mini-golf, we saw a house covered in lights, with dozens of brightly painted signs and a network of tree houses in the front yard. After 18 holes amongst fiberglass crocodiles and giraffes down at the beach, we decided to check out what we later found out was called “The Bottle House” on the return trip.

We parked out front, and I wandered around the grounds to let someone know we were there. I wandered into the garage/ junk store hybrid. There were stacks of dishes and board games everywhere. It was clear that someone lived there, but I didn’t see anyone around. I wandered out into the front yard where there was a maze of ramps connecting a series of tree houses filled with dolls and sculptures and paintings of cartoon characters on every imaginable surface. It was completely overwhelming, and I was a little freaked out when the whole thing lit up suddenly with Christmas lights.

Meanwhile, Nancy and Isaac were waiting out in the car. She could not see me in the front yard 10 yards away from her. It was starting to get dark, and although the Christmas lights unexpectedly turning on startled Nancy, it wasn’t nearly as bad as when the owner of the house quietly walked up to the side of the car and knocked on the window.

We explored the grounds and talked with the artist. The pictures don’t really do it justice. We donated a little money to the artist’s charity. She raises money to feed hungry children. Isaac really like running on the ramps that spanned the tree houses like an Ewok village.

We slept well that night, and the next morning we went to the “Freestyle Music Park.” Last year, the park had opened as “Hard Rock Park” and went bankrupt a week and a half before we were scheduled to go. We arrived at opening time and there were less than 50 cars in the parking lot (about 200,000 less than Disney at opening time.) For around $80, Nancy, Isaac and I bought our tickets (about $200 less than Disney) .

Our first stop in the park was a pleasant surprise. The park had a wine shop that featured Nancy’s favorite, “Key Lime Wine”. We had only ever found it for sale at one place before in Key West. The women at the store offered us free samples of banana, kiwi, grapefruit, cherry, and orange wines along with tasty orange blossom mead. On the walk to our first coaster we hear “Somewhere over the Rainbow/ What a wonderful world” by Israel Kamakawiwo Ole. All day long, we heard really great music all over the park. Our first coaster of the morning, “The Time Machine” had no line what-so-ever. As Isaac and I waited for Nancy to ride, we watched “The Time Warp” from Rocky Horror Picture Show on a video monitor. It was then I knew the day was going to be forever known as “The Best Theme Park Day Ever”.

Most of the coasters at Freestyle music park have speakers built into the cars that play music synched to the ride. During my ride on “The Time Machine”, I got to hear the opening riff of “Foxy Lady” as I plummeted down the first hill which morphed into “Help”.

Isaac was more interested in “The Garage”, a huge room filled with foam balls and pneumatic cannons lined up around a balcony to pelt anyone running around below. Even Nancy couldn’t help launching an arsenal of balls at helpless children and husbands. Isaac was also a big fan of the dark ride “The Mon-stars of Rock”. (When the park opened originally, they had an LSD inspired ride set to the song “Nights in White Satin” which they lost the rights to when they went bankrupt.) “Monstars” made “Mr. Toads Wild Ride” look like “The Adventures of Spiderman”, but the boy asked to ride it again, and seeing how it was air conditioned, we were happy to oblige.

At the hottest point of the day, theme park magic happened. We were waiting to see the skateboarding show, and I went to get Isaac an ice cream and Nancy some water (the park was giving away water at every concession stand!). I also ordered a beer for myself. The young woman at the stand filled a glass with beer, said, “Go ahead and finish that, I’ll get you your ice cream.” She rang me up, but did not charge for the beer. We came back to the stand several times to buy other items. Each time, she gave me a free beer. I don’t know if it was because I was so incredibly good looking in my sweat soaked T-shirt, or if she was just honked off at her bosses, and frankly, I don’t care. What I witnessed that day was a theme park miracle.

Strength and Honor
Big Matt