East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 34
We spent Wednesday in Charleston. The real newsflash is that we *didn't
drive* anywhere the entire day! Amazing! We had a relaxing morning and
then took the [water taxi](http://www.charlestonwatertaxi.com/) to
Charleston. We had great barbecue for lunch at [Jim n'
Nicks](http://www.jimnnicks.com/) and in the afternoon we went to the
[South Carolina Aquarium](http://www.scaquarium.org/).
Mazie didn’t dig the water taxi in the morning. It was her very first time on a boat and when we got going she got scared. She overcame her concerns quickly though and on the ride back over in the afternoon she sat in her stroller on her own the whole way over like a champ.
The aquarium was nice. They have the tallest glass wall in the country in their huge reef tank. It’s a full two stories tall. At the bottom of it, it looks pretty immense. The picture on the right shows the wall. For scale, that is 20 feet tall. I’m excited to see the aquarium in Atlanta on our way home. It’s wall isn’t as high, but it’s 60 feet wide.
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 33
On Tuesday we loaded up in the van and headed for a short drive to Savannah, Georgia. Drive more? Absolutely! Why not… we just can’t get enough driving. Savannah is such a notable city and we thought since we were so close we should check it out. It took about 2 hours to get there.
Savannah is a really nice city. It’s smaller than the others we’ve been to. We didn’t have a ton of time so we drove through many of the parkways and then headed into the historic area of downtown.
We had lunch at The Lady & Sons restaurant. This is the restaurant that Paula Deen started before becoming the celebrity chef on Food TV. The Lady & Sons is best described as a Temple to Butter. The food is incredibly rich. As you sit there with biscuits immediately delivered to your table, you can envision truckloads of butter being constantly delivered to the loading dock to keep the cooks going. At one point while we are eating lunch one of the waitresses breaks out into song to praise frying! “I don’t want no grilled fish” went the lyrics, finishing with “give me my fried chicken and fried gravy”.
We spent the afternoon in Forsyth Park and took a bunch of pictures before heading out and returning to Charleston.
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 31
Let me get caught up first. On Friday we left Asheville and headed to Charlotte to spend the weekend with Tammy’s biological father Ed and his wife Nancy. We had a very nice time with great company, amazing food and wonderful accommodations. We got to meet Ed & Nancy’s son, and Tammy’s half-brother, Christopher. Christoper is a little over 3 and is all boy. What a great kid! We also spent the weekend with Tammy’s aunts, Betty Lou and Sandi, as well as Sandi’s husband Bob. (Whew, got the whole role call there.) It was very nice to get some home cooked meals after being on the road so long (31 days!) and to spend some time just relaxing. I think the highlight for me was just sitting on the deck in the back on Friday night chatting and looking at the stars.
On Sunday we headed out and continued the great adventure to Charleston, SC. We arrived in Charleston right around 5:00 pm and got checked into the Belvidere Club Resort. This place is pretty great. We have an entire two bedroom “cottage” to ourselves. It’s very comfortable.
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
Mazie's Words
Over the last couple of months Mazie has really started to develop a lot more language skills. It’s so fun to watch her pickup new words. Tammy and I were curious how many words she knew. Not just words she would mimick, but words that she actually uses on her own. Here they are in no particular order.
- Help
- Up
- Down
- Please
- Keys
- Credit Card
- Water
- Ball
- Hi
- Bye
- Mom
- Dad
- Shoe
- Sock
- Book
- Lion
- Kitty
- Dog
- Duck
- “All Done”
- Okay
- “Oh Jhez”
- “I know”
- No
- Bra
- Nose
- Mouth
- Eyes
- Meow
- Roof
- Keys
- Towel
- Blanket
- Fish
- Bee
The list gets longer everyday, so this will be instantly out-of-date.
MacBook, Parallels and Windows Vista
Just because I’m on vacation doesn’t mean that “geeking on the ‘puter” stops. I’m happy to report that I was able to successfully install Windows Vista RC 1 (Build 5600) on my MacBook using Parallels (Release Candidate, Build 1898). This is the first time I’ve been able to make this work. There was no magic involved, the latest release of Parallels offers Vista as an “experimental” option in the drop downs. I mounted the ISO image in the virtual machine, booted and installed.
It works just fine. You don’t get Aero Glass, but you do get Aero. Haven’t played with it much, don’t expect I will until I return from vacation. However, I’m glad this configuration finally works.
Fender Bender
Here’s a big bummer.
Last night while driving back to the hotel getting ready to put Mazie down a car was trying to run the light as it turned red. The other car was turning left onto my street, I was going straight. I honked and the other driver slowed, but did not come to a complete stop. Luckily the other driver slowed to probably less than 5 mph. Very unluckily, the other driver was uninsured and I’m probably going to get stuck with the repair costs or face my insurance going up since I actually used it. [Insert rant here about the scam that the insurance industry is.]
The damage is to the rear lower panel on the passenger side. It’s totally drivable, thankfully. The other car hit the wheel and then scraped the crap out of the panel.
The even bigger bummer is that the panel that got dinged up is the entire rear bumper. I imagine they are going to have to replace the whole thing which will add up quickly.
East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 28
Today we ventured out of Asheville again and went to Chimney Rock Park. The park was pretty cool. We did a short hike to the base of a 400 foot waterfall. Mazie did really good in the carrier, although we failed her by not bringing warm enough clothes. We had to bug out pretty quickly since Mazie was cold.
We also went to the North Carolina Arboretum in the afternoon. It was nice. They had a great bonsai exhibit that I really enjoyed. Mazie enjoyed running around for an extended period of time.
We have moved to a different hotel for this last night in Asheville. This hotel is much better equipped for Mazie and we are hoping she gets a good nights sleep. I didn’t need to put tinfoil on the windows here. 🙂
Lastly, I updated the Google Earth file with our Asheville adventures. Load the Great Adventure KMZ file to check out where we’ve been.
Add link.
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 27 - AT
Today we left Asheville and headed into the mountains. We drove about 30 miles northwest of Asheville to Hot Springs, NC. Hot Springs is one of the cities that the Appalachian Trail goes right through the middle of. The sidewalk that is on the main street of Hot Springs has “AT” trail blazes embedded right into the cement. Our visit was more to the AT than to Hot Springs, so Mazie loaded up into the kid carrier and we headed out for the trail.
I knew we weren’t going to get much of a hike in. I figured Mazie would make it an hour in the carrier and she did just about that. She did a great job walking by herself on the flats. She navigated the roots like a star and looked smashing in her bright green fury jacket.
It was fun to be on the AT and hiking with the white “blazes” of the AT in sight. Honestly the trail was no different than any other hiking trail we could have been on. However, this one could take you all the way to Maine if you just kept on walking. How cool is that?
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
Crazy, Sleep Deprived Dad!
Ever since we’ve arrived in Asheville, Mazie has had a horrible time sleeping. She’s just screamed all the time in her crib and for the first time ever she has been waking up in the middle of the night and we’ve had to bring her to bed with us where she proceeds to kick us and wake up constantly making everyone unhappy.
The sleep issues have driven her father to the brink. I left the grocery store tonight with two 50 foot rolls of tinfoil. You bet, tinfoil! I’m determined to get this kid to sleep better. The room she was trying to sleep in was too bright. So there I was at 7:00pm tonight slapping tinfoil on all the windows to black out the room. I have to admit that I felt a little crazy while doing it.
So far it’s worked. She went down on her own (first time in Asheville!) and is still asleep. I only hope that she makes it the whole night. Oh please, oh please…
Update: While the blacking out of the windows did get Mazie to go to sleep on her own, it didn’t solve the problem of sleeping through the night. She woke up at 3:30am and would not get back in her crib. After 30 minutes of attempting to calm her I brought her back to bed with us.
Traveling With a One Year Old
It’s now the 25th day that we’ve been “on the road”. For me, this now marks the longest I’ve ever been away from home. While it’s not a huge deal, I do miss the creature comforts and the simple familiarity of your own domicile. Traveling is always a bit stressful. Yes it is fun and all, but I find that I never really relax. Even now, sitting in the hotel unwinding and tapping on this laptop it’s not like if I were at home doing the same thing.
However hard the travel may be for me though, it’s peanuts to what it’s like for Mazie. We are still just getting going on the vacation part of our trip but Mazie is taking a while to get used to it. The biggest problem by far is sleep. She just isn’t getting enough of it. And as anyone with kids knows, a lack of sleep results in a very unhappy baby, and equally unhappy Mom’s and Dad’s.
At home Mazie is a great sleeper. You put her in her crib at bedtime and she just goes to sleep. On the road, she screams. And screams. And screams. Getting her to sleep is an accomplishment of it’s own. Tonight we let her cry for 10 minutes (blood curdling, shaking the other hotel rooms kind of crying) and after that I went in and held her in the bed while she fell asleep and then moved her to her crib. Last night she woke up at 2:00am, ready to go. Wide awake. Oh, and screaming. I brought her to bed and she finally went back to sleep in our bed, but it was a long night for everyone.
She has refused to take a nap anywhere other than her car seat since we left Minnesota. This issue highlights one of my pet peeves on toll roads. While driving on the toll roads Mazie would be sleeping away, ever so happy, then we’d have to stop for a toll. As soon as the van came to a complete stop she’d wake up and it took some extra special quiet to get her to go to sleep again. Usually she was then up and ready to complain about the car seat. Toll roads and sleeping babies do not mix!
The hotel we are staying in has three rooms, but unfortunately the only door is to the bedroom. Tonight we put her in our bedroom to see if that works better. I sure hope it does, the meltdown that took place at 3:00pm today doesn’t need to be repeated. This afternoon’s meltdown included a full on screaming festival followed by rubbing food into her hair. Tammy’s looking at other hotel options now, just in case.