I’m too sexy for Milan

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Jen has given us plenty of information about Italy over the half-year or so, but she saved the most terrifying until almost the very end.  A week before our trip, as we start packing our clothes, she tells us all: “The Italians are very fashionable people.  They don’t think much of people who dress sloppy. ”  
                I know how crazy you all think Jen is, but her story somewhat checks out.  The other night she and I went to our town’s newest (and fanciest) restaurant and we saw a fellow localite who said her family was going to Italy this year, too, and that her daughter insisted on going first  to Milan to buy lots of clothes.  Not Venice for the boats.  Not Pisa for the leaning tower.  Not anywhere for linguini.  Straight to the fashion capital to outfit herself for the rest of the trip.  The girl is nine.  So yeah, the Italians are clothes crazy.
                This is cause for concern.  I’m not saying that several of us Pavliks don’t think we’re pretty snappy dressers, but Jen had to drop a real bomb on us: “Nobody wears shorts in Europe.  If you wear shorts they’ll think you’re an American tourist.” This statement sure sent ripples through our family.   Many of us self-styled snappy dressers rely heavily on the short pants and sandals look.  Just last week, on the first sunny day of spring, Nadia was ready to trade in all her winter clothes for one pair of shorts and a tank top.  That was all she’d need until December, she said.
                But none of us wants to be lumped in with rude American tourists, me possibly the least.  And as it stands, I think I’m the one who’s in most danger of being singled out. 
Here’s why.  After several hours of fretting over shortslessness, the rest of the family got a reprieve.  Jen managed to explain that modestly long skirts would be comfortable and stylish, and they’ll likely be acceptable in all the famous old churches we’ll find ourselves in.  The Italians really go in for skirts, Jen says.  On women. 
Here we get a sense of the nature of the problem. Sure, day-glow yellow
shorts, white socks and black shoes were fine in Crimea 20 years ago  –
otherwise why would Kathleen, Axwig and this unidentified Ukrainian
young woman been walking the streets of Yalta with me.  But I’ll have to
shift my style to adjust to a more discerning fashion culture in Western Europe.
                I will have to walk the medieval streets of Lucca and Siena the way Columbus himself did, in chinos (flat-front, of course.  History shows it was Columbus who began the arduous work of undermining the Native American tradition of pleated pants).  I don’t think I’ll risk jeans, even.  Pickpocket magnets, those are.  I can wear a bathing suit for swimming – go ahead, conjure up an image of me wearing a European-style speedo, that still won’t make it happen.  And anyway, regardless of my style of suit, don’t expect me to come home with a leg tan.
                I do at least have some snazzy shirts to bring along, including a nice red and black number that I got at Easter.  The Italians will eat that one up.  I think I’ll risk the pickpockets a few times by wearing my US soccer shirt.  Rude Americans don’t wear soccer shirts, I’ll venture.  So I should be ok.  Also I have a money belt.
That’s right, I’ve been to Yalta.  And I rode the bumper cars
there with Dave Baxter.
                My wardrobe will be nothing like Zoe’s, who has already packed a range of dresses, skirts and colorful capris.  Nadia might fare the best of all, because she’s got a sense of style that is pretty well-developed (although she could not convince Jen – even with the unlikely backing of Grandma – that her leggings should be worn without a skirt or long shirt to cover her bottom).  At any given time, Lanie will likely have on multiple shades of pink and a disarming grin, so I’m not worried about her.  
                It’s me who’s most likely to cause an international sartorial incident.  Wish me luck and send fashion advice.

On the road again

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Emboldened by our success this summer, we’re gearing up for our next adventure.  This time, we’re off to Italy!  So it’s not a “getaway van” so much as a “getaway plane/rental car”.
This is a big step for us.  Bob and I haven’t been to Europe since our study abroad days half a lifetime ago.  The kids have never been.  Their only experience outside the U.S. was not exactly a culture shock (Day 2: O Canada!).  Despite the fact that our 5-week cross-country road trip required LOTS of planning, it also seemed to me less intimidating than a trip that involves passports, foreign languages, different currency, and a six-hour time change.
While last summer we were engaged in laying in supply of beef jerky, peanut butter, and approximately 597 travel games/books for the car, this time our needs are somewhat different.  Where should we change currency, and how much should we bring?  What kind of rental car insurance do you need in Italy?  We’re buying money belts, a power adapter, a cheap European cell phone.  We’re listening to Pimsleur Conversational Italian CDs.  (We’ve been impressed with these, but I also think they are designed for a certain kind of traveler.  We’ve spent a lot of time learning such things as, “Do you want to come back to my place?”  The kids are fond of pointing out that we’ve learned the words for beer and wine, but not water or milk.  One particularly hilarious lesson involved a man repeatedly trying to get a woman to go back to his place, and her escalating series of refusals.  (I guess the Pimsleur folks feel that a visitor to Italy is likely to be able to use either one side of this dialog or the other.)  In any case, it’s entertaining listening to your 5-year-old dutifully parroting back such gems as “Would you like to drink something with me?” and “I’ll have two beers, please.”)
My friends Nancy and Julie with our ubiquitous backpacks

I’m the only one who’s been to Italy before, but under very different circumstances.  It was my friend Julie and I (and sometimes her brother Jim, and possibly our friend Nancy – was Nancy with us in Italy at all?  This is the kind of trip it was, where fellow travelers came and went, and the details fade after 20+ years).  We were carefree college students rambling our way around Europe, carrying only our Eurail passes, passports, remnants of various currencies, and whatever small amount of clothing would fit into our backpacks.  We rented bunk beds in cheap youth hostels and made meals out of bread and cheese bought from street vendors and rated museums by their “life-suck” potential.

This is the sort of scene that most likely will NOT occur
on this European vacation.
The regular American tourists we saw back then – people like we are now, with kids and rolling suitcases and rental cars – existed on a completely different plane than we did.  Despite the fact that they had private hotel rooms and regular hot meals and various other creature comforts, I wouldn’t have traded places.  To me, they were Tourists with a capital T, seeing the sights but not really feeling the life of whatever city we were in.  For the most part the only locals they spoke with were those who were selling or trying to sell them something.  Though we were often visiting the same sites they did, we felt like we were in a different world – immersed in the crowds of young multi-national grungy backpackers, riding city buses and striking up acquaintances from all over the world.  (Also, given our appearance after weeks on the road, certainly no one would have bothered trying to sell us anything.)
I think this is the Spanish Steps in Rome.
When Bob saw this picture, he started
shouting, “The puzzle!  The puzzle!”  It seems
we spent several months of our lives this year
working on a puzzle of this very scene.  (No, I
didn’t recognize it.)  We had to get out
the box to confirm it.

With three kids in tow, and rather higher standards for safety and hygiene, I have no illusions that I can replicate this earlier experience.  But I’m hoping to travel (relatively) light just the same.  This passage from The Joy of Less by Francine Jay made me think of our earlier travels:

Think about what a pain it is to drag around two or three heavy suitcases when you’re on vacation.  You’ve anticipated the trip for ages, and when you disembark from your plane you can’t wait to explore the sights.  Not so fast — first you have to wait (and wait and wait) for your bags to appear on the luggage carousel.  Next, you need to haul them through the airport.  You might as well head to the taxi stand, as maneuvering them on the subway would be nearly impossible…When you finally reach [your hotel], you collapse in exhaustion…

This is the sort of classy accommodations
Julie and I stayed in.  This was in Venice —
I wonder if they have any vacancies?

Imagine traveling with only a light backpack instead…You arrive at your destination, leap off the plane…jump on the subway, catch a bus, or start walking in the direction of your hotel.  Along the way, you experience all the sights, sounds, and smells of a foreign city, with the time and energy to savor it all.

So my old friend the backpack is coming down from the attic.  And we’re asking the kids to fit all their stuff into their school backpacks, so they can carry it themselves.  We won’t have a car while we’re in Rome or Venice.  Certainly we’ll do a lot of walking, and maybe we’ll take a city bus or two.
Our friends the Brookses, who we’re spending most of the trip with, certainly have this down.  They’ve spent much of the past 8 months biking around Europe, lugging all their possessions (including camping gear) along with them and having fabulous adventures.  Surely we can survive a 12-day trip with substantially less.

Days 35-77: Epilogue

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OK, so we’ve been a bit remiss in wrapping up this trip blog.  I’m sure no one even remembers at this point that we were gone.  (We sometimes can barely remember ourselves.)  But I’m up to the final page in my online scrapbook, which has been so easy to put together thanks to this blog, so that has forced us to finally wrap this thing up.
The final 2.5 hours of our trip, home from western Massachusetts, proved uneventful.  We were all pretty excited as we got close to home, especially the kids.  (“Look, it’s Home Depot!  OUR Home Depot!”)  Though Zoe and Nadia were not in fact excited enough to make it all the way to our actual house.  They’d gotten a better offer for a pool party at their friends’ house, so they elected to get dropped off there on our way back.  
Bob, Lanie, and I were pleased to find that nothing had burned down or fallen over in our absence.  The garden was wildly overgrown but we managed to find some vegetables lurking in the underbrush.  Fang, our cat, was extremely happy to see us once he had expressed his initial displeasure with our being gone so long.  (At 17 years old, Fang has abandoned the wilder tendencies of his youth and pretty much likes to spend all his time sleeping in one of our laps.)
Check out the size of the white carrot in
Lanie’s left hand!
I rejoiced in my brilliant decision to hire someone to clean our house a few days before we got back.  (It took her twice as long as she had estimated based on the size of the house.  She said, “Things were really dusty!  I’m sure it was because you were away.”  Because we were away — yes, let’s go with that.)  Cleaning the car was bad enough — we couldn’t have coped with the house too.
We didn’t really get to ease back into normal life slowly, since school (which included new middle school for Zoe and the start of kindergarten for Lanie) began five days after our return.  Though I had expected that life on the road, camping without creature comforts, would be stressful at times, we actually found it to be a refreshing break.  We may have had to walk across a campground to get water, but what did it matter?  We were in no rush.  No one had to be anywhere at any particular time.  We may have had to cook on a picnic table with minimal equipment and only basic ingredients, but that sure simplified the process of choosing and preparing meals.  (The contrast between this and our normal existence became painfully obvious very quickly after returning home.)
*****
From Bob:
Last week, I finally vacuumed out the car. 
We’ve been home from our trip for a month and a half, and not only have I not sat down to write a final blog posting, I’ve only just finished emptying the Getaway Van. 
This is sad, I know; however, we’ve really been enjoying having faucets of hot and cold water close at hand.  And sleeping quarters that we don’t have to roll up.  And it’s been so long since we’ve had just peanuts for lunch.   
Welcome back, says the rut.  I knew I’d see you again.
No, not really. I wouldn’t say we’re in a rut.  Life has taken off in different directions, with middle school and another round of kindergarten and two kids taking violin now.  Cross country has just ended.  Swimming is in full swing, and so is gymnastics.  
Our first course on our
first night home
The garden was overgrown when we got back, but we got that under control and we were getting cucumbers and tomatoes until last week. There were good crops of leeks and tomatillos, but only a pint-sized butternut squash.
Fang has forgiven us – his hunger strike over, he’s started to put some weight back on.   We still have the “Welcome Back, Pavliks” sign in the entryway.  Many thanks to the Zamanskys.
Everything is ok.
Apparently the main thing Lanie missed
was her jewelry.
So, with so much else under control, I revisited the van and its sediment.  In crevices I found almonds, likely distributed when the bag was dropped on day two as we left Niagara Falls.  There were lots of crayons and granola bar wrappers.  I found a ticket stub from our Chicago river cruise and a few unused post cards from Howe Caverns.  There was also a wooden nickel from our Mammoth Cave tour. I found map of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone that (I hope) we paid 50 cents to take with us.  I did not see, but it was probably there, way down deep, lots of red Arches sand.   There probably is still more stuff in there – I eventually turned the job over to the eminently helpful, but not always thorough Lanie.  We may have an almond tree growing behind the middle row in a year or two.
Despite my fears, the van has not fallen apart.  I took her to the garage a week after we returned and we didn’t need new brakes at all, and the tires were good enough to carry us until winter (I just got them changed this week, because winter may be closer than we know – but the brakes are still good).  All it took in August was an oil change to turn off the “Maintenance Required” light, and we were all set to roll on.   All credit to Toyota engineering.  Here are some details from our trip, as preserved in our trip journal:
o   Total mileage covered:  7,042
o   Gallons of gas purchased: 277.941*
o   Average price per gallon: $3.64  (trip low:  $3.38 Wyethville, VA; trip high:  $3.89 in Yellowstone)
o   Total paid in gas: $1,011.70*
o   Average gas mileage: 25.336*
* We left Durham with a full tank of gas and returned with one a few gallons shy of full.  I never registered the next fill up in the trip journal.  If you want the precise numbers, you would have to factor this in.  Also, I am suspicious of the gas mileage numbers, as the van is only rated for 19 city / 23 highway, and I considered it pretty weighed down.  I may have failed to register a fill up or two along the way, although a quick analysis shows that we got really great mileage (like 26+ mpg) in Yellowstone and Utah.  Is mileage usually better at higher elevations?
This is Fang showing his opinion of us leaving him for 5 weeks.
He got over it though.
This should answer a few of the most popular questions that remain about our trip.  Luckily we blogged well – completely and with good detail.  This has helped Jen as she has pieced together a book of our adventures, with text and plenty of pictures.  Look for it on a coffee table in our house sometime soon.  Judging by what I’ve seen of it so far, it will be stunning to see.
Once that’s finished…well, there may be another adventure on the horizon for Jen to get her traveling hands dirty.  I won’t say too much, except that we may be leaving the Getaway Van behind this time. 
Thank you for reading.  See you soon.  Arrivederci.  

Dinner on the porch!  One thing we did miss.  And our friend Leah too.

Day 34 – Homeward Bound

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Arrival in Philadelphia

Bethesda, MD to Chicopee, MA

Our final real travel day!  (After all this, the 2 ½ hours from my mom’s house to ours will seem like nothing.)  We’d been planning to get a somewhat earlier start, but we all were having too much fun spending time with our friends to be too efficient in the morning.  After Kathleen headed off to work we finally got everything packed up and on the road again.
The Liberty Torch in the Please Touch museum
When we’re looking for a break-up-the-long-drive destination, children’s museums are generally our go-to option.  Kathleen suggested the Please Touch! Museum in Philadelphia, and that seemed to fit the bill perfectly.  On the way we pretty much managed to eat up the last contents of our snack box – beef jerky, peanuts, granola bars, fruit leather – and call it lunch.  (I think that after this trip all of us will be ready for a break from these items.  Which is rather inconvenient with school starting so soon, as peanut-butter sandwiches are also a very popular school-lunch choice.)
The museum turned out to be quite stunning.  The setting was a large city park, and the building had once been the art gallery for the centennial World’s Fair in 1876.  It was ornate and beautiful, with a huge glass domed roof, and immaculately maintained.  (The other stunning part was the price.  It was very fortunate that we had our handy Children’s Museum Reciprocal Membership card with us, which covered four members of the family.  The price for the remaining ticket for one child was $16!)
Actual walking piano used in the movie Big
In fitting with their environment, the exhibits were beautiful too.  The kids had a great time playing in all the exhibits, but the part Bob and I liked best was a section on the 1876 World’s Fair.  There was a very large model of the fairgrounds with lots of information, and some replicas of exhibits that were seen there. We also took in a show called “Eat Like a Pirate” (with an extremely heavy-handed message about healthy eating that I doubt took in even the two-year-olds).We got through the museum in about three hours, which was just right for our planned time for hitting the road. 
Remember that Simpsons episode about the monorail?
I hear that song (“Monorail!”) in my head every
time I see the word.
Things did not go quite so smoothly for the remainder of the day.  We figured that leaving Philadelphia at 3:30 we might have some issues getting through New York near rush hour, so we called our friend Justin, New Yorker extraordinaire, for guidance.  He gave us some advice that I’m sure would have been very useful if we managed to follow it, but we ended up taking a wrong turn and going a substantial distance northWEST rather than northeast (though this certainly did help us avoid traffic, since apparently not too many people were interested in going to western New Jersey). 
Dinner was a surprising problem too, given that we spent a large amount of time on a road covered in strip malls, with restaurants everywhere.  The problem was that the restaurant we wanted always seemed to pop up at the last minute on the wrong side of the road with no break in the traffic to get to it, and an opportunity to turn around wouldn’t appear for so long that we couldn’t face the thought of going all the way back.  Or, in one instance, we happily saw a billboard for a place “ahead on the left” and managed to get into the left lane, only to find that it was one of those stupid “jug handle” turns where you have to go right to go left that New Jersey seems unaccountably fond of.  Eventually we made it into a Panera – which was fine until after we’d finished and the kids were crushed to discover an Olive Garden literally 100 feet down the road.  (Luckily the box of frosted scones we’d bought on the way out seemed to help ease the pain.)
Kids in space
Lastly, we had to contend with rude, Type-A drivers.  Usually we don’t have this problem unless we go to Boston.  (If, say, a lane is closed in New Hampshire and traffic has built up, you will see the cars from each line politely taking turns, and everyone gets through as efficiently and calmly as possible.  Connecticut drivers, on the other hand, seem to view this situation as some sort of contest for dominance, where their pride hangs on never allowing another driver in front of them, no matter the cost.  At one point Bob and I were actually annoyed enough that we both opened our windows and yelled at this particular woman simultaneously, which is probably something neither of us have ever done before.)  But eventually we made it to Grandma’s and comfortable beds.
On the positive side, our last few days of car rides have been made very pleasant by the two forms of CD entertainment we’ve been alternating – the radio drama version of the original three Star Wars movies (given to us by Bob’s sister Kris) and the four Melendy Quartet books loaned to us by our friend Katie, which were written way back in the forties but which everyone in the family loved.  (This not that easy when kids’ ages range from 4 to 10.  The other all-star in this department was Beverly Cleary – Ramona and Henry Huggins have stood the test of time well.)  Much thanks to Kris and Katie.

***
From Bob:
Many people are asking us: “What is the worst state you’ve visited on this trip?”  Until today we might have said Kansas, although that wasn’t that bad, or maybe mentioned our Great Salt Lake misadventure, though even that should not tarnish the whole state of Utah.
                Now, we have a clear winner, and we had to wait until our last new state to find it.  Connecticut stinks.
Having spent the first 23 years of my life there, I maybe should have known this.  The 90s-era tourism posters that said, “Connecticut: It’s between Boston and New York,” may have given me some idea there really wasn’t much going on in my native state to crow about.  In retrospect, is seems clear.
But I used to like Connecticut, and our drive through there today was filled with more than a tinge of nostalgia.  The corridor between NYC and New Haven is pretty well known to me, and once you get near Bridgeport, you’re right up near my points of origin.   It was a great place to grow up, largely because we took back roads everywhere.
Now I know that if you drive the highways in Connecticut, particularly after dark, you’re asking for congestion.  The already smooth and comfortable roads need belt sanding or something.  On 95 and 91 they’ve cut three lanes down to one in multiple places, and the population density of the lower half of the state can’t take it, even at 9 pm. 
That wouldn’t be that bad of the Nutmeg Staters were not in some competition with Massachusetts and New York drivers for the mantle of rudest in the US.  The captain of the Connecticut team drives a brown CRV and staunchly refused to let me merge at construction near the North Haven Costco.  There was no reason for her not to let me in.  Jen leaned out the window, arms spread wide in a “what’s your problem?” gesture but she squeezed on by.  What we should have done was taken her picture and posted it on the blog where this person could live in ignominy.  The best I can do it relay Nadia’s comment, “I can’t believe she was so rude; she was an old lady.”  Take that, CRV woman.
This is all included not because I needed a rant – I’ve calmed down in the soothing environment of Grandma’s house (Grandma is never rude) – but because many readers of this blog are from Connecticut.   We’ve been all across this great country and the Costco conflict was the only such effrontery we experienced. Just this one lady in five weeks of driving.  I want all our Connecticut readers to know that there are other places you can go to get away from this lady and her ilk – an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, for instance.

Sunset over the George Washington Bridge


Day 33 – Dude, where’s our car?

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Washington, DC

 We had a lazy start today, which I think we probably needed.  The kids were having a great time eating pancakes and playing with their new friends, and Bob and I were enjoying a comfortable bed, showers, a reliable internet connection, and friends to talk to.  (Interestingly, both friends we’ve stayed with on this trip were the ones who introduced us.  Kathleen, Colleen, and I were good friends in college, and during junior year they studied abroad in Russia on the same program as Bob.  We met when he came to visit them our senior year.)
Our announcement that it was time to go see monuments was met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, in fact.  Nevertheless, we hopped in our cars and began a caravan to the city.  Kathleen was kind enough to call us from the road and give us a guided tour of all the sites we were passing, including a lot of embassies and eventually the White House.
Downtown Washington is really beautiful, with everything pristine and perfectly manicured.  Apparently parking lots and/or garages are not sufficiently picturesque, because we discovered 
parking is a major issue.  In the midst of one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country (the Mall, the monuments, the Smithsonian, etc.), pretty much the only option seems to be on-street parking, which is limited and only lasts two hours.  Eventually we managed to find a couple of spots along the Potomac and close to the Lincoln Memorial (which Zoe later admitted to me she did find very cool, despite her earlier resistance to “monuments”).
That’s them, in the spinning car.
In our second search for parking, we found a spot right in front of the Museum of Natural History, and Bob actually managed to parallel park the van very competently.  We were very proud of ourselves.  (Note: this is foreshadowing.  If this were a film ominous music would be playing here.)
The Museum of Natural History is very large and information-dense, and we had to make a pretty high-level pass with all the little ones (despite the fact that Zoe wanted to stop and read every sign).  Lanie takes a dim view of museums that don’t have the word “Children’s” in the title (apart from the City Museum, of course), and much of the crowd were eager to get to our next stop – ice cream and the carousel on the Mall.

When it was time to leave, we wandered back toward the car, until we eventually noticed that (1) we were now past the museum, and (2) there were no longer any cars parked on the street.  Closer inspection of the sign that we’d blown past revealed that there was no parking from 4-6:30pm.  This was not our happiest moment.  Luckily we were able to get a little humor from the situation when Bob called the number on the sign and we learned that they don’t actually tow cars to a lot, but instead just tow them to a random “nearby street” – and no, the man on the phone did not in fact know which nearby street now contained our car.  Quite a system!  Too dispirited to randomly walk the streets in search of our car, we waited half an hour until the towing company figured out where it was.
The place where our car should be
Just to add insult to injury, two tickets — one for the
parking violation and one for the towing.  As though
they were separate offenses.
Send donations to: Jen & Bob Pavlik, 4 Pinecrest Ln,
Durham, NH  03824.
The night ended on a higher note with a nice takeout BBQ dinner at Kathleen and Daniel’s, with a special guest appearance from our good friend Ken – who, even though he’s a hip, single, TV-industry type, was enough of a sport to drive out to Bethesda and eat dinner with 6 young children so he could see us.  Ken gave me a very cool gift – a CD upon which he’d recreated a mix tape that he and I had made 20 years ago, in the summer of 1992.  Remember mix tapes?  A lost art.  He and I even snuck out for a beer after the kids were in bed.
***
From Bob:
I have many really good ideas that I often just throw out there for people to use to make their fortunes.  One I’ll throw out right now.  It’s a company that gives demographic data based on t-shirt logos seen at various high-traffic areas.  Someone must be interested in knowing which NFL franchise captures the most shirt space at Mount Rushmore or which corporate logos get the most walking billboard time in Times Square. I came up with this idea at Disney World.  It’s a good place to people watch.  Why not get paid for it?  Go ahead, knock yourselves out.
                For this trip, I have eight or so shirts and four logos among them.   Two are on the oldest pieces of clothing in my entire wardrobe, I think.  There’s the black Malerba’s Bail Bonds shirt given to me by my good friend Dee Dee Sonsini (whose grandfather played on a bocce team underwritten by said company).  The other is a maroon shirt with a big silver star on it and the words “Central Star – Central Avenue School, Naugatuck, CT.”  It was given to me by a lady who brought a bunch of kids to my office one a week for a while when I was a newspaper editor.  I helped them with their school newspaper.  Both of them prove conclusively that they made better t-shirts in the late 80s and early 90s than they do now.  They’ve gotten a lot of wear, but they don’t get many comments from people who behold them.
                The newest logo shirt in my suitcase is one that I just got for Father’s Day.  It has a stair car on it and it says, “Watch out for hop-ons!”  Some blog readers may get the reference.  A youngish park ranger in a Grand Teton visitors’ center got it.  She was the only one on the trip so far.
                The most recognized shirt I’ve got with me is shiny blue with a red stripe at the collar, and has the logo of the US Soccer Federation on it. It was given to me a few years ago, and I treasure it.  I also try to wear it on particularly patriotic occasions, such as today’s trip to the nation’s capital.  Just about every time I’ve worn it this trip, someone has commented on it.  In Custer State Park it led to a nice conversation with a high school soccer coach from Wisconsin. (I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but this guy gave me a pretty solid warning to be careful of bears in Yellowstone.  I’m just remembering it right now. He wasn’t scary bear lady or anything, but for those who have commented on my bear paranoia, this guy may have planted the seeds of my cautious approach in Wyoming.)
                Also, there was a fellow who worked at the YMCA camp who said he had a jersey from the year after the year the national team’s journey looked like mine.  He is big fan of US soccer and also a season ticket holder for the Columbus Crew of the MLS.   Later that day, there were the two ladies in Rocky Mountain National Park who noticed my shirt when we passed on the trail.  They asked me if the US women won their gold medal game.  The Columbus Crew man told me they had so I passed that along to the hikers, who were very happy.
                One surprising place where no one commented on my shirt was St. Louis, which I had always heard was a center for the sport in this country.  It might be that everyone was looking at all the other things in the City Museum and didn’t notice me. 
                Today, wearing the red, white and blue at the Smithsonian today, I was approached by a man who asked me if I knew who Sunil Gulati is.  Of course, you may also know that this is the name of the president of the US Soccer Federation.  This man sat behind Sunil Gulati in high school and says Gulati was a good forward on the soccer field despite being small in stature.  Had I known then what I know now (I just looked up Gulati on Wikipidia to get the spelling of his name), I would have commented to the Smithsonian man about the quality of the high school team Gulati played on.  I played against them several times in my own soccer career.  Guliati went to Cheshire High School in Cheshire, CT (according to Wikipedia).  Our paths did not cross on the field, however.  He is 12 years older to me (also according to Wikipedia).
                Aside from this Cheshirite Smithsonian man, we were pretty anonymous in DC.  There is a lot going on here — rangers and Park Service here and everything.  We got our own personal audio tour of Embassy Row and the environs from Kathleen, who works in DC and knows. The embassies we saw were too many to list, but some impressive ones were Togo, Indonesia, and, especially, Ivory Coast.  Many of the diplomats in side these buildings were wearing their own national team jerseys.  It was like a car ride through the World Cup. 
                I am left now only to lament that we did not return to our van a little earlier.  The tow truck driver and/or parking code enforcement officer might have mistaken me for Carlos Bocanegra and torn up the ticket.

Patriotic popsicles

Day 31 – OK, just a little more about the cave

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Mammoth Caves to Wytheville, Virginia

It wasn’t easy to photograph the
lantern tour.  Flash would not have
been appreciated.
 Throughout all the many caves we’ve visited on this trip, Zoe has been desperate to get more of a genuine caving experience.  She’s always disappointed when either she’s not old enough, or her sisters aren’t old enough, to do the tours she really wants to do.  (It was a crushing disappointment to her that the Mammoth Cave Trog tour, which was for 7-12 year olds only and involved wearing overalls and headlamps and crawling through tunnels, was no longer running because the crazy Kentucky schools are back in session already.)  So this morning she and I went on the Violet City Lantern tour, a 3-hour, 3-mile strenuous trek through the cave by lantern light.
The rangers had all raved about this tour, and we weren’t disappointed.  In addition to the cool cave scenery, made especially romantic when lit only by old-fashioned gas lanterns, part of our route was along what’s called the Historic tour.  Now I’m as shallow and easily bored as the next person, and I have to admit the words “historic cave tour” hadn’t jumped out at me as bursting with excitement.  I thought it would be dry statistics about who discovered the cave and when and blah blah blah.  Instead, we saw the following, perfectly preserved due to the cave’s constant 54 degree temperature and 80% humidity: wooden pipes, made of poplar trees, that were used in a saltpeter mining operation run during the War of 1812, a ladder installed by Native Americans 2000-3000 years ago, various other Native American artifacts and drawings, 2500-year-old human poop, and stone huts – build right in the middle of the cave’s large passages, about a mile in – that were used to house tuberculosis patients in the hopes that the “healthy” cave air would provide a cure.  (In fact, it had the opposite effect – but the patients had agreed that they wouldn’t leave the cave until they were cured or dead.  Some of them spent 10 months in the cold, damp darkness of the cave – until there were sufficient fatalities that the medical authorities in charge decided to ban the experiment.  And in the meantime, tours were going through the cave, passing by the huts and peering at the patients.)  We saw the original rock paths used by tours in the 1800s, and walked on paths built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.  All in all, quite an experience and well worth the price of admission.
Endless Kentucky (or possibly Virginia) road
After this exciting morning, we got in the car and drove approximately 27 hours across Kentucky and Virginia.  Or at least it felt that way.  Someone needs to build an east/west highway here, stat.  It seems impossible to believe that the route we took was the most efficient one, so maybe google was just messing with us.
***
From Bob:
The driving portion of this day got off to a bad start and it didn’t end that well, either.  The best thing about today is that we got our laundry washed and dried (though not folded and sorted) and we got out of our campsite on time.  Also, Zoe got to do a special lantern-lit cave tour with Jen.  Nadia and Lanie are probably happy that they could afford Pop-Tarts from the camp store while we laundered.   We managed to get some postcards off, too, and the laundry room had a few spare outlets that I could charge things in.  So the morning was actually a pretty productive time.
                Then we went to leave and drove around for a half hour and things started looking familiar.  Hey, there’s a sign for Mammoth Caves.  Is this a different part of the park?  No, we just drove in a big circle.  Jen was making sandwiches in the passenger seat and I must’ve got wrapped up in the book on CD (thanks for nothing, Crossman-Ellis family and your engaging audio literature). 
                After that it was just a slog through Kentucky, which I’m sure is a fine state, but it was like driving through molasses.  Even the brief bit of Tennessee we got into (I would not have thought it was possible to be in a state for a shorter duration than we were in Idaho, but such was our experience in Tennessee) and the novelty of going through the Cumberland Gap did not save the afternoon.   This is because driving through western Virginia is rather like driving through Kentucky.
                Even the knowledge that there was a mattress waiting for me and not a Thermarest did not perk me up.  I was perked up a little by the pizza from Pizza Plus in Duffield, VA.  We’ve been pizza-starved this trip, so any that we get seems good.  We may have left our one true chance for great pizza behind in Chicago with Colleen, but that was so early in the trip that it wasn’t high on our agenda.  And Colleen took us to some really top-notch places to eat, too, so we have no complaints.  It won’t be too long before we can order a White Buffalo at La Festa again.
                Talking about pizza is not making my headache feel any better.  I would say I’m dehydrated, but I had seven glasses of water at Pizza Plus.  It’s rather a hybrid fast-food, waitress-service place and although we sat near the soda fountain, the waitress was pouring our waters from a pitcher she brought out from the back.  If I could have gotten to that soda fountain, I might have drunk more water.   I don’t feel thirsty now, I feel smoky.  On this, our last night in a campground (we’re in spacious, two-room KOA cabin), we seem to be downwind from all the other sites.
                Enough complaining.  Good night.
                One more complaint: Although they clearly call it Mammoth Caves, there was not a single mammoth to be seen.  This seems like false advertising.
Nadia’s violin teacher was very insistent that she not skip five weeks of practicing.  Through a combination of threats
and bribery, Bob was able to get her to practice on occasion.  We expect a medal from Miss Louise for this.

Day 32 – Back on the Eastern Seaboard

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Wytheville, VA to DC

Atop Stony Man
Zoe’s nature journal
Another substantial driving day today, but still felt pretty minor compared to yesterday.  We were a little slow getting moving, having not quite caught up with last night’s transition from Central to Eastern time.  We had stayed in a cabin (“kamping kabin” as they irritatingly call them, which almost made me not stay there) at another KOA, chosen for convenience, and actually found this one to be a step up from the others we’ve stayed at – convenient to the highway but not right on top of it, and very large and wooded.  There was also a pool with a water slide, and we were anticipating difficulties getting the kids to leave without trying it out (since it didn’t open until 11).  We needn’t have worried, however – the unseasonably cool weather continues and we were all still huddled in our sweatshirts when we eventually departed.  (Don’t get me wrong – that factor alone would not have been enough to keep the kids off the waterslide.)  The worst thing about this KOA is that their brochure promised free coffee in the office and when I eagerly went to take them up on it, found only a dry, empty coffee pot.
 
About three and a half hours of driving brought us to Shenandoah National Park.  We drove through on the famous Skyline Drive, atop a ridge in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and luckily found it not at all terrifying.  The air was wonderfully cool and fresh and piney smelling, and we opened all the windows and enjoyed the scenery.  We happened to arrive at the visitor center just in time for the kids to do a junior ranger program on nature journaling, and then set off on a hike the ranger had recommended called Stony Man (which actually covers a bit of the Appalachian Trail).  It was a fairly easy hike – a 1.6 mile loop leading to the summit of the second highest mountain the park – but Lanie is reaching the end of her rope with any kind of hiking, so threats and bribery were required to get her to the top.  (Our main threats on this trip consist of work detail (mainly dishwashing duty) and loss of dessert privileges, and bribery is usually food-related.)  The view was stunning and well worth it, and the trip back down was quick and easy.  Later we stopped at the road at an overlook to see where we’d hiked – the mountain is shaped like a reclining man gazing lazily up at the sky.
The afternoon nearing an end, we set off for an additional two and a half hour drive to DC (or actually, to our friend Kathleen’s house in Bethesda, MD).  On travel days we usually stop at a restaurant for dinner, which keeps the children from mutinying over the peanut butter lunches.  Today this was particularly necessary because we didn’t even really eat lunch – our car supplies are running low (just about out of peanut butter and beef jerky!),  and we didn’t want to take the time to stop, so lunch consisted of a can of honey-roasted peanuts and various other scraps from the snack box.  (The kids didn’t even complain about missing lunch – I think the monotony has successfully demoralized them to the extent that they didn’t even notice.)  So we were off to Applebees, which turned out to be a good choice because apparently kids eat for $.99 on Tuesdays.  (This was not quite as good of a deal as it could have been, since Zoe has now decided that her tastes are too sophisticated for the children’s menu.)
This is Lanie’s hint that she’s had enough hiking
We successfully reached Bethesda just after 8pm, and it was wonderful to have a friendly house to arrive at rather than another campground or hotel room.  Of course, I think we managed to arrive at the worst possible time and completely sabotage the Keller/Volchok’s bedtime routine, but all the kids immediately started having a great time together and we did too.
***
Did you know that we’ve been to the first two tourist attraction in the US?  The first was Niagara Falls and the second was Mammoth Caves.  They both opened within a few years of one another in the early 1800s.
                Now that I’ve established myself as an authority on US travel, let’s see what else I can tell you.  Surely you knew that Colonel Sanders was born in Kentucky because of the chicken, but did you know that Lee Majors is also from Kentucky?  He is, and just a few towns over from where the Colonel’s birthplace is marked with a KFC Café.  I don’t have many regrets about this trip, but I’m thinking now it would have been nice to stop by there.  It smelled like free chicken as we were driving past.
                We’ve passed many so many notable things that I can’t recall them all.  I know we passed through the home town of Little Miss Tiny Kentucky 2011, but I can’t remember her name or which town it was. Surely someone will pipe in with this information within a few minutes after this blog is posted.
                Several signs have pointed out Civil War battles that took place right along the side of the road.  We have not suffered any anti-North bias because of our New Hampshire license plate, though.  Rather, things are starting to look like home.  The hills here look like our hills, though the valleys and fields here look a little more productive than the ones around here.  If they put a road atop some of the Presidentials, it would be very similar to Shenandoah National Park (not that I’m advocating this, by the way).  
Once we got in the DC metro area, the cars started looking like ours.  Minivans have replaced pickup trucks.  Zoe asked a few weeks ago if we lived in the only part of the country that had neighborhoods.  We’re giving the kids exposure to vast swaths of the US that you can see from the highway.  Well, here we are tonight in a very nice house is a very nice neighborhood in Bethesda.  It all seems very close to home.
Very unscary road!

Day 30 – Just one more cave, I promise

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Mammoth Caves

We had a nice relaxing morning today, since we’d booked a cave tour that started at 10, and was only a short walk away.  (The best part of the Mammoth Cave campground is that it’s so close to the visitor center and all the tours, along with many hiking trails.  We’ve become accustomed to all the huge national parks where you might have to drive half an hour to get to where you want to go.  We love it when we arrive someplace where we can set off on foot and give the poor van a break.)
Mammoth Cave is thought to be the largest cave in the world, and much of it is still unexplored.  There are quite a variety of different tours here, ranging from short and easy to long and strenuous.  We chose a middle path, and went with a two-hour, moderate difficulty tour called the New Entrance tour.  (It was not actually all that strenuous, since most of the walking was down stairs, but since the stairs were very steep and spanning deep chasms below, it was definitely not for the acrophobic.)  This was probably my favorite cave of the trip – the cave scenery was impressive and the ranger was knowledgeable and fun. 
In the afternoon we dragged the kids (or at least 2/3 of them required dragging) on a hike down past the natural entrance of the cave.  In the other caves we’ve visited, there was never much of a natural entrance – sometimes a small hole in the rock that the guide would point out on your way through the revolving door that they’d drilled into the cave for tours.  This cave had a real entrance like you’d picture a cave should have – a great black opening in the hillside, with cold air rushing from it.  You could walk into the “vestibule” without a tour, and we even saw a bat hanging on the wall.  Further along the hike, we saw the place where the underground river that had formed the cave emerged and joined the Green River above ground.
The natural entrance to the cave.  
We’d planned to do another hike into a sinkhole, but Lanie was just about at the end of her rope (her enthusiasm for hiking having been on the wane for several days), and Bob and I weren’t at our best either, since we both seem to be coming down with something.  So it was a quiet afternoon at the campground, which now – on Sunday afternoon – had become almost as much of a ghost town as Hannibal.  Tonight we had a campfire – probably our last, so we finally used up the rest of our s’more supplies.
***
The River Styx emerges from the cave
Lanie has declared, “One of my talents is
drying dishes.”  It’s nice to have one child
who’s still at an age where they feel it’s
fun to do chores.  She is pretty talented
at doing dishes, except that it takes her
approximately 10 minutes per dish.  She
is very thorough.

From Bob:

This is considered one of the three crown jewels of America’s caves (along with Carlsbad Caverns and Jewell Cave) according to our guide Ranger Steve. This gave me a pang because, as you know, we passed on Jewell Cave when we were in South Dakota.  Ranger Steve said that Jewell Cave really pales in comparison to Mammoth and Carlsbad, and that he wishes he went to Wind Cave instead of Jewell when he was in South Dakota.  This made me feel better.
There were some beautiful, very old trees along our hike
                Truthfully, although the caves are very interesting here, the most remarkable part of our tour was the stairway that leads you down hundreds of feet of vertical channels once you enter at what they call the “New Entrance.”  They wind among the rocks and give brief glimpses of the 100-foot drops stretch below.  Of course, by now we know that I eat 100-foot drops for breakfast with my granola bars, so I really enjoyed this part of the journey, though some of our co-spelunkers had trouble with it. 
                Ranger Steve said the man who created this entrance and exploited the caves in the 30s built wooden stairs down.  When it came under the NPS, they ripped out the wooden stairs and contracted out to have metal stairs built.  Nobody could figure out how to do it until one submarine contractor came along.  His company took six years, but they engineered what I think is a marvel.
                Another highlight of our cave tour: We got to see a bat and cave crickets.  Unfortunately, the tour where you get to see the eyeless cave fish was sold out.  All-in-all, though, I am happy with our cave adventures on this trip.   It’s always nice and comfortable down there, just remember to bring your sweatshirt.
                We’re down to just one night in the tent left.  Then it’s bed, beds, beds all the way home.  

Day 29 – Back into the familiar territory of zoos & carousels

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One last view of the City Museum from below — we drove past it on our way to the zoo.

St. Louis to Mammoth Caves

Look at this crazy thing.  Giant anteater!
After another hearty breakfast, we sadly said goodbye to the Drury Inn and headed over to the St. Louis Zoo.  Unfortunately we couldn’t walk there.  After a lovely day with no driving at all, we paid the price by getting caught in various construction detours and, later, zoo traffic, but with the help of our GPS we eventually arrived in Forest Park, home of the zoo.
It was another beautiful day – sunny and low 80s – and the zoo was a great way to spend our morning.  Since it was Saturday, it was pretty crowded, and I was almost wishing for a little of the ghost-town feel that we’d had in Hannibal.
We wanted to get on the road by around 1:00, so we hit upon the brilliant scheme of withholding lunch until we left the zoo.  That eventually got the kids out of there without a battle (possibly because they were weak from hunger).  Then it was our usual lunch buffet in the car: peanut butter and bread, peanut butter and tortilla, peanut butter and banana, or peanut butter and apple.  (Also, we have sun nut butter.)
We had around a 5 ½ hour drive to Kentucky, so we decided to stop for dinner.  (The vision of a restaurant is one thing that really keeps the kids going these days.)  However, it never seems to fail that when dinnertime arrives, we’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing to be seen but farms and trees.  In this case, we eventually happened upon a Dairy Queen – not Bob’s and my first choice, but one that was met with much enthusiasm from the back seat.  Did you know the kids’ meals there come with a whole soft serve ice cream cone?  We are thinking of our friend Jamie, who practically had Dairy Queen cater his wedding.
Elephant mom & babies
Butterfly garden
We got to Mammoth Cave National Park with some daylight still left.  Although the cave is of course the main attraction here, there are also miles of unspoiled countryside, and we saw several deer and turkeys.  In stark contrast to Hannibal, the Mammoth Cave campground was hopping.  It was a Saturday night, and people were living it up.  Still, we had a nice large site among the trees, and speedily set up our tent for the last time. 
The inevitable carousel
***
From Bob:
We have not crossed so many states in one day since we entered Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah again.  This time is it was Illinois and Indiana (both of which we passed through on the northern run), sandwiched between Missouri and Kentucky.
                We definitely did cross the Ohio River this time, a few hours after the Mississippi.  Aside from that it was an uneventful drive, save for the mess getting out of Forest Park in St. Louis.  It was a beautiful summer day – mild for August – and everyone seemed to want to go to the zoo.
                We have been very fortunate weather-wise.  It is not oppressive at all.  The mid- to high 80s feel fine when humidity is low.  We have been sparing on the A/C in the car and not suffering too much for that. 
             We have not calculated our gas efficiency yet, but we’ll have to factor in an interesting (maybe) car-related note that some people may have realized: The gas has changed as we move back east.  Somewhere along the line out west the regular gasoline became to 85 octane, though the prices were similar all along the way.  I thought this was strange, but figured maybe I was imagining things; but, behold, we get back close to the Mississippi and the octane for regular gas goes back up to 87, where I always thought it had been.  What happened to those two octane?  Did they get lost in the high altitude?  Why was I paying just as much for 85 as I am now for 87?  Can I get a refund?

Day 28 – Possibly the highlight of the whole trip (for at least 3/5 of the family)

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St. Louis

Today, right after breakfast, we set off on a 15-minute walk to the long-awaited City Museum.  This place really defies description, and I have to assume is unique in all the world.  It is not, as you might think by the name, some dry historical, educational kind of place.  Instead, it is a kid’s (or kid-at-heart’s) dream come true.  It is not, however, a place for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.  Or claustrophobic.  Or inflexible.

This place used to be a shoe factory.  It’s since been taken over (presumably by some kind of brilliant and crazy mad-scientist-type) and turned into the most eclectic “museum” you’ve ever seen.  Almost everything is constructed from found and salvaged materials.  There are no maps.
On the 11th floor roof, you’ll find a school bus hanging off the corner (you can sit in the driver’s seat, actually off the edge of the building).  You can ride a Ferris wheel, which evidently has been
Outside of the school bus (look up)
Inside the school bus

 considerably souped up, since it goes about five times faster than any Ferris wheel I’ve ever been on, and gives you the distinct impression that you’re going to soar off the edge of the roof as you come down.  You can climb a 3-story cage tunnel up into the sky, then take a deep breath and plunge down the steep, fast slide underneath the tunnel.  You can climb and slide and swing and hop in various structures everywhere you look.
Looking down the barrel of this slide was
scary.  The bottom actually had a rough
surface to slow you down, but you couldn’t
tell that by looking.
When you’re tired of the roof, you can go inside and take a 10-story spiral slide down to the bottom level.  The slide is inspired by the old spiral slide that shoes traveled down in the factory, and looks similar.  It’s inside this eerily lit industrial courtyard, and involves plunges into darkness and strange flickering lights.
Where Lanie emerged during one of her
 caving adventures
The slide will let you out into the cave.  This is a multi-level, dimly lit area full of tunnels, wire ladders, slides, and rock carvings.  A huge pipe organ resides above, playing creepy music.  Some of the tunnels are so small you have to crawl to get out, and your parental commitment will be tested when you have to follow your four-year-old into a dark hole, where you find the floor dropping out beneath you.  (Eventually, your four-year-old will crawl into a space you just can’t fit into, and you’ll give up and hope that she manages to find her way back to you at some point.)
Looking down upon the 10-story slide.
There was a TV screen at the top showing
the bottom, so you’d know when the
person ahead of you was off and you
could start down.
Heading back outside, you’ll find wire tunnels everywhere, spiraling up to the sky and leading high above the heads of those below.  Every now and then you’ll come across a slide hidden in the tunnel-work, and bravely plunge down it, unsure of where you’ll end up.  (If you follow your children, sooner or later you’ll find yourself fighting your way uphill in a tunnel that is really not designed for someone your size.)  And everywhere, there is elaborate and beautiful artwork built into everything.
An alternative to the stairs
There are still four other floors to explore.  Maybe you’ll see a circus act, or maybe you’ll crawl through the tunnels that underlie the circus bleachers.  You can play in a huge indoor skate park (but without skates), or view the world’s largest pencil or largest pair of underwear, or take a train ride through a creepy museum of neon signs and old carnival equipment.  (This part reminded me of our Scooby Doo Wii game, which is set in an old abandoned toy factory.)  You can see turtles and fish in the undersea area, which is covered with beautiful mosaics everywhere you look.  If you want to go from one floor to another, you can take the stairs – or you can find a Slinky-like coil of wire that lets you climb there, hanging over empty space.  And there is much, much more.  We were there for the entire day.
See those feet in the top left corner?  They are on a grate
that comes down from the roof far, far above.  I was very
glad when Lanie looked at the horizontal portion forty feet
up and decided no way, so I didn’t have to follow her.
I still don’t think I’m doing this place justice.  Maybe you should look at the web site (http://www.citymuseum.org)  But really, that probably won’t help either.  You should just go there.  We’ll come with you.
In the caves
***
From Bob:
There was a lady sitting next to me down in the lower level of the caves and she told me her family has been to the City Museum about 20 times.  Her kids love it.  The family was from Akron.  Akron, she said, was about eight hours away from St. Louis.  I asked her if there wasn’t a City Museum in Cleveland or Cincinnati.  She said there wasn’t a place like this anywhere else.
                That’s about all I can say about the City Museum, except to add that is not a place where one asks, “Should I do this?”  The only question at the City Museum is, “Can I do this.”  Anything you can figure out you can do. 
Climbing across the ceiling to the tree house
The whole room was detailed mosaics
like this one
                Also, although it might not show up in the pictures, I went on the Ferris Wheel, the school bus, and the big mantis slide on the rooftop, and – although I still can’t believe it – I made it up the green tower to the airplane, then off the wing to the other airplane, and then over to the castle.  There were many other climbs and slides, but that was the hairiest.
                The Drury Inn provided us with three meals today – breakfast, including nice waffles, biscuits and sausage patties; lunch, which was mostly bananas and peanut butter taken from the breakfast spread; and dinner.  The seasoned taco meat and refried beans were just as good on a hot dog as they were on the nacho chips.
***
You never know where you’re going to emerge from
 the caves
From Zoe:
We went to the City Museum.  It was awesome 
but very hard to describe.  First we went to the roof.  On the roof there was this big white thing going up.  It was like a tube with a slide underneath.  We went 
Under the bleachers
World’s largest pencil
on it lots of times.  There were also stepping stones, a rope swing, a Ferris wheel, a slide where you could climb up the rope on one side and slide down the other, and a school bus hanging off the roof you could go in.  Near the rope swing was a ten story slide.  The slide went down to the caves.
The caves were my favorite part of the City Museum.  They are awesome.  They have places to climb and secret passages and no maps and are lit up creepily and dimly.  Mom let us wander the caves and explore them.  Next we went to a undersea area.  It was awesome.  Then we went to the huge outdoor structure to climb on.  It was awesome.  There were jets high in the air and wire tunnels and all kind of stuff.  We had lots of fun there.
Another scary slide.