17 Days, 11 States, 1 Giant Road Trip

Well! Two Four months later and I have finally finished adding pics to the (now backdated) road trip posts from our lovely trip this summer. It was WONDERFUL.

Links here!

Days 1-2: North Carolina: my Grandpa's house, Tweetsie Railroad

Days 3-4: St. Louis: Cardinals game, religious art, a riverboat ride, and did you know the arch is made of metal??? My mind was blown.

Days 4-5: Rural Illinois, including a prairie park (yes that's a thing), and then Iowa, all the corn, Field of Dreams, oh and also we slept in a caboose. And broke into a zoo.

Days 5-6: Wisconsin Dells, yes it's a real place, yes for real, I know it sounds fake but it's real. Very waterpark. Many kitch. Much delightful.

Days 6-11: MinneEFFINGsota, Take Four: the one where I post pics of tractors and grain bins on my blog. And also Northfield, Another Nathan, popcorn and beer, St. Olaf, waterfalls, adults on swings, and Charlotte Booler's fourth birthday! Oh and saying goodbye to Marky. Sad face.

Days 12-17: Southbound! Including me drinking a beer on Hillary's Cincinnati porch swing, and the kids riding boats at Lake Wateree, with surprise appearances by my dad and also Emily! AND THEN WE MADE IT HOME.

Days 4-5: Illinois, Iowa, Prairie Park, All The Corn (We Broke Into a Zoo)

(Still backdated.)

Night 4: In a Caboose, On a Prairie Farm, the Middle of Nowhere, Illinois

We crossed the Mississippi back into Illinois and drove away from St Louis, going north into the middle of nowhere. (The town is Hanna City, but trust me, it's in the middle of nowhere. Google maps calls it a village, which would cause me to type the laugh-cry emoji if such a thing existed on this non-mobile PC qwerty keyboard.)

So in Hanna City, well not in but near Hanna City, there is this prairie park that Natalie told me about, and while I had never even heard of a prairie park and didn't fully understand what it was, apparently they had cabooses you could rent for the night, so I rented one and we drove there. Because my kids like cabooses and I like adventures.

So it turns out it's something of a cross between a state park, and a campground, and a zoo, but really it's all three of those things put together. It was totally fun!

We checked in to our caboose, which was like renting a cabin or something for the night. Very basic, not fancy, but my lower bunk was super comfy and the kids were effing delighted.

And then we went and explored the park. There were a few playgrounds, one of which had a giant slide down the side of a hill.

The map showed us there was some sort of zoo, which we assumed, once they locked us in the park all night, we could go walk through any time. But it turns out it was closed for the night, but, I mean, look at that gate. It's totally jumpable.

So we broke into a zoo.

Why, what do you do on your family vacations?

(Stop clutching your pearls, we only wanted to walk through it and see the animals, we weren't going to hurt anything or get into any trouble. Our kids were fairly scandalized though. Convinced the police were going to come take us to jail. SUCH RULE FOLLOWERS. They totally get that from Mark.)

When we got to the back end of the loop around the zoo, we saw some other people - someone who must take care of the animals at the petting zoo. We just blatantly played on a swingset nearby and they didn't say boo to us. What's that thing about how if you act like you're supposed to be somewhere, you will get away with it? Yeah, that.

Basically though, halfway through our walk, we got a little creeped out. A zoo, after hours, with no handlers around, even though the animals were all in cages (although Mark was not reassured by some of the "enclosures" which were wide open on top for, like, mountain lions), totally spooked us. We felt like we were in Jurassic Park by the end. That eerie feeling that some sh!t is about to go down.

(We are all rule followers at heart, is what I'm saying, even me.)

We're scared in a zoo after hours and I don't
think our tour guide can even read that map

Anyway it was a delightful night in a caboose, and if you ever find yourself in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, you should absolutely go spend the night there. It's a beautiful part of the country.


Day 5: Iowa

The next morning we kept driving north and then crossed the Mississippi (again) into Iowa.

I should stop here and say two things:

1- is your midwestern geography as bad as mine? When I first learned where all these states were, in relation to each other, I was like wuuuuut. Is this how other people feel about the deep south? Or New England? Anyway.

2- There is so much corn in America, y'all. At this point we had been driving through corn for two straight days, and there was no end in sight, and when we got on back roads in Iowa it was just corn and corn and corn and corn. I thought I was ready for it after my trip last summer, but what you can see and wrap your brain around from major interstates is NOTHING compared to the miles and miles and miles of nothing but corn that exists when you get deep into those counties. How are we using so much corn? How?? HOW. I mean yes, I know it's in everything, but. But. It's so much. Nothing I write here can describe it. It's hard for me to remember anymore how many other things we grow in America, because you can drive for two days (and even more!) and see nothing. but. corn.

Okay so after miles and miles of corn, we arrived at the Field of Dreams movie site for a picnic lunch! This was a totally delightful stop worth going a bit off the beaten path for. It was pretty, and easy, and oh man what a beautiful day.

Mark and the kids threw the ball around (yes we remembered gloves, of course we remembered gloves, my secret superpower is maybe packing lists), and ran the bases, and crept in and out of the cornfield like creepy creepsters pretending to be creepy historical baseball ghosts, Anneliese had a minor breakdown (the first Incident of the trip!) but lunch turned it around.

Speaking of packing, our intelligently-packed cooler was such a great move for this trip. It made meals cheap and easy and ready whenever we were. I am very pleased with myself for that level of planning, I have to say.

(Self-five!) (Are you picturing Tina Fey right now? Good job.)

I should do a You Know What You Should Do type blog post about my pro tips for road trip packing, but. Another day.

Road Trip, Days 1-2: Millers Creek, Tweetsie Railroad

Y'all. Remember how I drove up the country last summer with Another Nathan, and it proved delightful? I tempted fate and did it again. This time with Marky and all the kids. Intentionally slowly, with many stops along the way, making a vacation out of it, and you know what?

IT WAS DELIGHTFUL AGAIN.

I know, I kind of can't believe it either. Except I can. Let this be a public service message to people with toddlers, doing nightly rounds of abject weeping about the state of chaos: it gets better. Babies are cute but big kids are awesome. You can throw them in the car and drive around the country and all fully enjoy each other. I know. I KNOW.

Anyway. Now backdated, but here goes.

Yes, yes we did buy a selfie stick.

Day 1: Millers Creek, NC

We spent the first night on the road at my Grandpa's farm. I was so full of feelings, knowing it would be the last night ever to be there, since he died earlier this summer. Grandpa built the house himself, in the 50s, when my dad was just a toddler and they were living in what's now the rec room as he added onto the rest. My dad and aunt grew up here, and as grandkids we had so many summer and Christmas visit memories, and it's such a special place. I was glad for one more night to wander through and smell the smells and touch the counters and books and furniture, and cry a little. It's beautiful.

We also had Igloo hot dogs and ice cream for dinner, because obviously.

Day 2: Tweetsie Railroad! 

(This is an amusement park. It's named after a train that used to go over the mountains between NC and TN. I had no idea how many people didn't know what I was talking about when I posted this on facebook. It's just... a train themed, wild west expansion themed, slightly politically incorrect amusement park.)

Okay, so my previously nervous children have apparently become Amusement Park People this year. My dad took Nathan and Anneliese to Carowinds earlier this summer, and they rode a ton of rides, and generally became fearless (??) so when we were at Tweetsie, they clamored to do things that, a year ago, I would never have dreamed they'd be interested in.

Look at this! It's a thing that drops from the sky! Anneliese basically bounded onto it. What??

Also Nathan and Anneliese rode this fast spinny thing many many many times, and never looked less happy/thrilled than they do right here:

Even Charlotte was quite insistent on any ride she was tall enough to get on.

(She also walked straight into a beam and conked her head got a giant goose egg, so some things stay super normal even on vacation.)

We rode a chair lift and I only freaked out a tiny bit. Nathan and Anneliese rode the spinning teacup thing at least ten times, enough that Mark and I had to bail and watch from the sidelines because we were done. (See? Big kids! Best!)

Oh! And there was a little petting zoo area, where you could pay fifty cents and get some feed for some animals, and they told us to please try not to let the goats out (!!!) and also don't pick them up (!!!!!!) and we didn't know what they meant until we got inside and there's like... goats wandering around. Not in pens but on the sidewalk. Like puppies. (It was surprisingly hard not to pick one up. I can see why they had to ask people.

Anyway so my suddenly fearless children are not only not scared of rides, but now not scared of animals they don't know. Apparently. They happily fed goats and lamas and alpacas and all manner of petting zoo creatures. From! Their! Hands!

Also, we sat in a covered wagon and I joked that that was all I even needed from a road trip so we could just go home now, and the kids pleaded with me not to, because they are very serious humans, apparently.  So earnest! I WAS KIDDING, DEAR CHILDREN.

And then we drove down the mountain (this portion of our trip sponsored by Dramamine) and drove north and west.

We stopped at a rest stop at the Kentucky line for dinner from the cooler, including monster apples I had purchased on the sly at Tweetsie.

We made it a few more hours, as far as Lexington, and we stopped for the night. We threw the kids in bed and high-fived oursleves on pricelining a great hotel suite and for remembering to put beers in the cooler at the rest stop. Cheers!

Aaaaaand I thought I was going to write our whole northbound journey in one blog post, but HAHAHAHAHA *wipes tear* y'all knew I couldn't do that, right? Stay tuned.

Family Weekend in DC

So, before Anneliese's birthday, we took a little family weekend jaunt to Washington, DC.

why, with the monument and my head, random-passers-by-photographer? why?

Our impetus was twofold:

1- The National Geographic Museum's special rotating exhibit right now is a big thing about spinosaurus, and... yeah. I just realized that sort of explains itself. SPINOSAURUS. So, we knew we wanted to take Nathan to see that this fall.

2- Anneliese has been asking for an American Girl doll for months and months, so we wanted to surprise her and get her one for her birthday. Yes she's a little young, and yes they're too expensive, but she made a giant effort at keeping her room and toys organized to prove that she is a big girl five-year-old who can handle having nice things, and I find zero objectionable anything about American Girl dolls in general (history! dolls! characters! books! they're good toys).  Anyway, the closest store to us (which is more fun than ordering online) is in DC.

So we mapped out the calendar looking for a weekend after the spino exhibit opened, before Anneliese's birthday, and when Mark was actually off work -- and last weekend was it. So we went! It wasn't the most conventional "Washington DC Family Trip" but we had our own goals of stuff to do, and we live close enough that we didn't feel like we had to do All The Important Things this time. So here's what we did:

1.) Rode the Metro a Lot - as far as Nathan and Anneliese are concerned, this IS seeing the sights of DC. That dark tunnel. Right there. Super! Exciting!

2.) National Geographic Museum - Mark and I know DC well, but had never been to this museum. Fun to do something that's new to us too. Also, the look on Nathan's face here, when we saw the spino they had specially installed outside the museum = maybe worth the whole weekend away.

3.) American Girl Doll Store - oh man Anneliese was so sweet wandering through this whole store (we had never been in one! I was overwhelmed) and seeing all the dolls and books and outfits and such. She waffled a while but then settled on Kit, and seems really happy about that, and she was so happy I thought she would burst. It was lovely and special in a way that 5th birthday treats should be, and it was so fun to shop excitedly with her. So, meet Kit, from 1934.

PS I just realized why we can't find Anneliese's orange hoodie anywhere at home. :/

4.) Air & Space Museum at Dulles - another new place for Mark and me! This is an extension of the Smithsonian museum downtown on the mall, and we have heard great things about it for years, but have never gone out to Dulles to see it. We did this time, and we are so glad. It was very cool. Like, the other museum sort of pales in comparison (don't hate me, internet, I still love the original too!) -- it is really hard to overstate the massive numbers of planes housed in this one giant hangar out there. Like, hundreds. HUNDREDS. Including some tough ones (the Enola Gay? Hm I don't want to explain that history to my fascinated child, kthx) and some cool ones (space shuttle!) and everything in between.

There was also a section with a tower where you could go up and see what was happening at Dulles airport, and a small exhibit on radars and air traffic controlling, which Nathan found a little more fascinating than the rest of us, but he was cute. (His favorite lego things to build these days are airplanes; this trip was good timing.)

I will leave you with this oddly fascinating fact from the museum at Dulles: the space shuttle is covered in... thermal blankets.

THAT BEAST WENT TO SPACE COVERED IN QUILTS. That is all.

5.) Air & Space Museum at the Mall - it was the most crowded I had ever seen it, and it was hot inside, and the throngs of people were overwhelming, and also there was an area cleared for salsa dancing lessons, and I don't even know. We hit a few exhibits and climbed in two display planes and Nathan gleefully spent some allowance money at the gift shop, and then we were done. Basically I could not get us out of there fast enough. (And I love that museum! Just, not that day.)

we saw a lot of planes last weekend, y'all

6.) Carousel on the Mall - because obviously. It's close, it's easy, it's fun, it wasn't raining, so yes.

And then we sat and had a funnel cake, and let the kids run around and play, because sometimes unorganized fun is just... necessary.

Walking back to the Metro, Nathan wanted to take some pics with us and the Washington Monument. He clearly has a future in photography.

I mean. Yeah.

7.) Adorable Cosi Dinner - this is DC dining at its finest, right? HA HA HA. But it is a good place with kids, it's tasty and relatively fast and relatively inexpensive, and it ended up being a delightful dinner. The manager thought they were out of stuff for make-at-your-own-table s'mores, but then found more fire, and comped us the whole thing and extra brownies, for no reason at all other than he said we were sweet. SO NICE. It was all lovely. And cozy. (See what I did there?)

8.) Walk Around the Monuments - on Sunday morning we took a walk in a big loop around part of the mall - from the Washington Monument down past the White House and then over to the World War II Memorial.

It was gorgeous and sunny out, and the kids needed some time to run in circles where they wanted, instead of us clutching their hands crossing a million trafficky intersections, so they played in the grass and chased each other and had lots of big talks about being president. They somehow decided it would probably be Charlotte, because she's a lefty (?) and they kept asking her if they could visit when she lived in the White House. Adorable. (She said yes.)

Lying in the grass looking up at the Washington Monument. I totally remember doing this as a kid.

Aaaaaaand that was our weekend. Honestly, one of the best parts might've just been staying in a hotel all together. We had two big beds and a sofabed so it felt big, and who doesn't like hotels, just in general, right?

this is like a vision of my own childhood, right here

The second night wasn't great sleep, but a slumber party in one room was mostly really fun! I like having all my people close. Especially when get all angelic when they sleep.

Speaking of Random Train Rides...

So there's this train kind of near Raleigh that you can ride on (the New Hope Valley Railway).  It doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't do anything fancy, it's just a train ride.  And I know it sounds completely random (because, um, it is) but I've wanted to take my kids to ride it for a while now. 
So a couple weeks ago, the stars aligned and the schedule worked for us to go (they only do the rides on the first Sunday of the month, only about half the year, and Mark frequently works on Sundays too).  Yes, on a holiday weekend.  Yes, it was approximately eleventy billion degrees outside.  Yes, I'm still very pregnant.  We were hot.  I don't know how to emphasize that sentence enough, but you can get the general idea from this pic:

Our most attractive (dare I say hottest?) family moment ever.

Another Nathan (and his parents! what good sports!) came with us.  They're from Iowa.  They're not used to our hot humid Julys (to be fair, we should know better).  Logic says their midwestern summer fragility should have caused them to wither in the heat before we did, but somehow they didn't actually look as melty as the rest of us felt.  Which means I should probably stop talking about their midwestern summer fragility.

Anyway.  I covered the fact that it was hot, right?  It was hot.

Nathan, predictably, asked endless questions about the caboose, the engine, the cars, and everything else under the (hot. I said that right?) sun.  Anneliese mostly just said chooooo chooooo. 

They also got to explore and climb on some restored train cars that are on exhibit at the departure platform.  I got to explore and climb on some apparently-still-in-use engines parked behind those (oops).

The whole thing is billed as a "scenic" ride but really it was mostly just woods.  But it was good enough for the kids (us too; we just enjoyed the breeze).  They got to watch out the window and see the tracks and the engine and the other cars.  They mostly liked the ride, but there were a few times when the engine blared and it was just too loud for them, and they got a little Daddy-clingy.  Which was sad and sweet at the same time.

When we stopped and they moved the engine from one end of the train to the other to go back to the station, I know one or two Nathans who were literally hanging on the edge of their seats to watch the action. ;-)

And when we were done sweating it out on the train, we hit up Cracker Barrel for dinner.  Train day win.

We *Heart* Metrorail

Well, we are home from Washington and we're all sort of tired, but not the kind of exhausted you get after a vacation where you try to do too much. Just the kind where you're satisfied with a fun time away but glad to be home again. Which means I think we planned and executed this one pretty well, if I do say so myself (and I do).

Last night we met my college roomie Betsy for dinner downtown -- despite the fact that it took forever and Nathan wasn't asleep until after ten (and therefore didn't sleep well at all the rest of the night), the food was great and the company even better. I love being around people who just get me.

On the way back to the hotel (and then this morning again when we hopped over to Union Station to see some trains and enjoy a quick food-court lunch before we left town) it hit me that part of what Mark and I enjoy so much about these urban vacations is the public transportation. I know I blathered on about this when we were in New York, so I won't do it again. But I have to say this: it's just so... freeing not to have a car. We didn't have to drive or park or worry about getting lost or whatever.
We did drive to Washington, so we had a car in town, but with very few exceptions, we pretty much took the Metro everywhere we needed to go. And we loved it.

Nathan loved it too, as you can see.

And by the end of the trip, he knew all the metro lingy-loo. He would say orange circle, and blue circle (those were the two lines that went to our hotel), and we also heard a lot of here it comes! and ride the train? and go on the elevator? when we were in the stations. (We did attempt the escalator most of the time, though technically it's not allowed with a stroller since it's not the safest option. In fact, he came to associate the escalators with the trains so much that he would get excited just to see the moving staircase -- it never failed to bring on a round of ride the train? where's the train?)

When we were actually riding, he would say here we go! and three stops! the whole time. We decided that even though he "knew" which lines to take, he could never actually get anywhere on the metro, since he would always be "three stops" from where he was going. :)

He also managed to talk to pretty much any stranger who would make eye contact with him. I guess we need to start working on that whole "stranger danger" thing, since the idea seems kind of lost on him at this point.

But the main thing we heard over and over again riding the Metro with Nathan was it's coming! He must have said it a thousand times while waiting for each train. Sometimes he would add a few minutes at the end, but usually he thought the train's arrival was absolutely imminent. He was just SO excited that the train was coming. And when it pulled into the station, his eyes would light up and he would get this huge grin on his face. Man that boy loves a train!

Anyway here's a short video of us waiting for the train last night. You can see he says it's coming! pretty much constantly. Bonus: at 24 seconds into the video, you can also hear his extremely southern right there. We have no idea where he picked up that accent but it's a little bit hilarious.



All that to say -- we officially all love public transportation and would love a lightrail system here in Raleigh!

We had a great time in Washington and I'm so glad that we got to spend a few days with Nathan -- just the three of us -- focusing on stuff that he likes. An early birthday present (for him and us!) and a great way to shower him with some extra attention before Beanie gets here. It was the goal of the trip, and I definitely think we accomplished it. For more pictures of our weekend in the district, click on Mark and Nathan at the reflecting pool, below.

by mgoetts